When New Bedford’s Bus Terminal Was Little More Than a Trailer

Years ago, the New Bedford Municipal Parking Lot occupied the spot north of City Hall where the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority bus terminal is now.

In the middle of the last century, the Union Street Railway Company operated a bus terminal at Purchase and Middle Streets. Greyhound also used the terminal.

Somewhere between then and the opening of the current SRTA bus terminal behind City Hall, there was a trailer in a lot on Pleasant Street in downtown New Bedford that acted as a bus station.

"We operated the ticket office and sold tickets for Greyhound, Bonanza Bus Lines, Bristol/Brander Bus Lines, which took over the New Bedford to Boston runs after Almeida Bus Lines folded," recalled Acushnet's Bruce David, who worked at the bus station for years.

The Fairhaven-based Medeiros Bus/American Eagle Coach acquired Almeida Bus when it went out of business.

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David's uncle, David P. David, and his business partner Frederick L. Duguay of Acushnet "had the ticket office for many, many years." David recalled the ticket agency that ran the bus station was Nationwide Travel.

David said he worked for the ticket agency from when he was 15 years old until he was in his early 20s.

"We also sold all of the Union Street Bus Company/SRTA commuter tickets and pupil bus passes," he said.

David was a student at Fairhaven High School at the time.

"I would work from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday after I got out of school," he said. "After graduation, I used to open the terminal up at 5 a.m. and work until 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday."

His experience with the New Bedford bus terminal led David to a job with Bonanza Bus Lines in Providence in 1984.

"It was a union job and a fantastic company to be a part of," he said.

While David doesn't recall the exact years he worked at the downtown New Bedford bus station, he remembers watching the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" Olympic hockey game "in the ticket office in the old trailer on my little 13-inch black and white TV with rabbit ears," he said.

He also watched the 1986 World Series game that was lost when the Red Sox' Bill Buckner let a ground ball pass between his legs.

The Bank of America building now stands on the lot where the downtown bus station once was.