By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
After more than a year with no bus service in Ellis County, Greyhound bus service has resumed with a stop at the A&W in Ellis.
Local officials said the stop is an important link in the public transportation system for the area.
Laura Allen, client services specialist at First Call for Help, said bringing back bus service to Ellis County will help transient individuals and low-income travelers.
Hays does not have an emergency homeless shelter. About a year ago, First Call for Help opened its transitional housing program. However, not everyone qualifies for placement in that program. Applicants have to have ties to Ellis County.
Large families can't be easily accommodated, and the program's insurance will not allow it to accept single men.
At one point, First Call for Help provided hotel vouchers to people experiencing housing emergencies. However, none of the local hotels will accept those vouchers anymore.
The nearest emergency homeless shelters are in Salina or Denver. First Call for Help had been providing bus passes for individuals in need of emergency shelter until bus service ended in Hays.
Now that service is operating in Ellis, Allen said First Call for Help intends to start offering those vouchers again to people who need to reach emergency shelters in other communities.
However, she said individuals in Hays will still need to find transportation to Ellis.
Allen said First Call for Help's new director Macey Pfeifer is working with local officials to determine solutions to get people from Hays to Ellis to access the bus service.
Toby Dougherty, Hays city manager, said although Hays could not find a partner for the bus service, Greyhound continues to be an important part of the local transportation network.
Outside of flying, there aren't many transportation options for people who don't have reliable vehicles, and flying can be cost-prohibitive for some residents, he said.
Ellis Mayor David McDaniel said the bus service would bring revenue into the city as bus passengers buy food or other items in the community.
He said he saw the service as a positive addition to Ellis.
The bus service resumed a week ago. Travelers can travel east toward Kansas City or west toward Denver. See the Greyhound website for more information on rates and destinations.
SJ Singh, owner of the A&W and Ellis Days Inn, said tickets are being sold at the hotel, with the bus stopping at the A&W.
Singh's company already had an agreement with Greyhound to have a stop at one of its properties in Abilene, so the addition of the Ellis stop was not difficult.
A media representative from Greyhound sent a statement on the company re-entering Ellis County.
"Greyhound is proud to be back in Ellis to facilitate connections between the city and our network in Kansas, Colorado, Missouri and more," the representative said via email. "We also recently combined our booking platform with FlixBus, so riders can now book trips for the entire FlixBus and Greyhound network on both brands’ websites to nearly 2,300 destinations throughout North America.
"A&W is one of many local businesses and bus partners we utilize to operate from convenient curbsides throughout the United States, which helps to reduce travel times and facilitate easy connections between cities and towns that may not have dedicated intermodal centers for bus and train travel," Greyhound said.
Without the Ellis stop, the next stop from Abilene was in Goodland, Singh said.
"We had a lot of stranded customers over here," he said. "We had to take them to Goodland to get a bus. We helped a lot of people whose cars broke down or something else."
He said he anticipated the addition of the stop would benefit Hays residents as well.