Hazleton area now has an “Intermodal Transportation Hub” where everyone can board buses out of the weather. That’s a very good thing. Wilkes-Barre will soon have its own “Intermodal Transportation Hub,” where people can similarly catch a bus around town or across country while waiting in climate-controlled comfort. This is also a good thing.

I’m all for these new efforts to streamline use of mass transit. We should do all we reasonably can to encourage folks to leave their cars at home and reduce the demand for gas. But there’s a nagging question: What’s “intermodal” about these places?

I couldn’t even find the word in my Webster’s New World College Dictionary, and had to search the Addenda of my much larger Webster’s Third New International, which gives this definition: “Being or involving transportation by more than one form of carrier during a single journey.”

So I guess if you come by car and leave by bus, or vice-versa, you are “intermodal.” In fact, by that definition, if you come on a Greyhound and leave on a city bus, you’re intermodal. It becomes down right poly-modal if you throw in some people arriving on foot or bicycle (the new Hazleton Hub has bike racks).

Frankly, the Hazleton hub struggles to meet even this broad definition of Intermodal. It was supposed to include decks of parking garage, but those got cut due to funding restraints – though they did have the foresight to put the infrastructure in place for a car ramp and elevator if money appears. As it stands, this is really just a souped-up bus depot. At least the Wilkes-Barre hub includes a parking garage.

The disparity in money the two cities got for similar projects raises the age-old question of why Wilkes-Barre seems to chronically get more federal and state dollars than its southern Luzerne County counterpart, but that’s fodder for another column.

Not all modes of transit included

Ever since “intermodal” became a local metropolitan buzzword more than a decade ago, I keep thinking you really need a form of transportation that doesn’t use roads to justify using the term. When former Hazleton Mayor Mike Marsicano first suggested an intermodal hub for his town back around the turn of this century, he seemed to concede as much by tossing out the idea of a helicopter pad on top of the parking garage above the bus depot.

It became a run-on gag in the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau, where I worked at the time. A chopper pad? Why not a blimp dock and horse stable while we’re at it?

The fact is that “intermodal” became the default term for a combination of bus terminals and car parking because the federal government started pushing the idea, offering beaucoup bucks to build such integrated facilities. In major cities, it made perfect sense. A true intermodal hub brought subways, surface rail, bus and car together in one building. Connect the building via surface transport to the out-of-town airport, and you’ve got the travel trifecta: road, rail and air (a seaport is a plus, but you can’t build one anywhere).

The reality, however, is that we kicked the third leg off of our transportation tripod when we nationally decided to let passenger railroad rot away. While other industrialized nations were converting their venerable track systems to bullet trains, we morphed them into biking and hiking paths.

I’m not criticizing the new facilities. They are potentially smart investments.

I’m just saying that, sometimes, a bus terminal is just a bus terminal.

About the Author

Mark Guydish covers education for the Times Leader. Reach him at (570) 970-7161 or mguydish@timesleader.com.

A West Hazleton native, I worked as a service technician repairing electronic mailing and shipping systems, a bike shop owner and an Emergency Medical Technician (among other jobs) before landing a reporter job at the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau in 1995. I started by covering primarily politics in Hazleton City and outlying municipalities, eventually became "social issues" team leader in the Wilkes-Barre office with the accent on education, and headed the Hazleton Bureau for a spell before returning to full-time reporting, my preferred position. I'm an avid cyclist and rode across the country in 1990, a trip of more than 5,000 miles from New Jersey to Seattle and down the coast to San Francisco. Years in the Boy Scouts made me a life long backpacker and camper, and I've yet to find a better way to enjoy the quiet lure of winter snow than cross country skiing.

Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.

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