The Intermodel Center

When it was built, it was envisioned as one of the major travel hubs in western Massachusetts, but Pittsfield’s bus and train station is far from a bustling cross road. It’s more like the dead transit stops you find outside of gas stations in the mid west. By that I mean its a pain in the caboose to get a ticket and there’s always somebody creepy staring at you while you wait for your ride. The only upside is the bizarre entertainment to be viewed within on days when weather doesn’t suit loitering in the park.

Whoever built the place either wasn’t a local or was completely out of touch with the community. It sits between the worse neighborhood in the city, a park where people peddle crack and a club for the mentally handy capped. Can you imagine what people must think of us after a layover in Pittsfield? Upon leaving their bus or train, they would first encounter a large room of sub-humans and drug addicts. If They walked to the corner in either direction they would encounter either gang bangers, nut cases or two dollar Nate (the old wino that always asks people for two dollars). If they were female, they would get hit on by frightening creatures or propositioned for sex, burping or any number of odd requests. If they looked lost, there’s a good chance someone would try to rob them. I’ve often encountered Europeans in the city on vacation. When asked why they came to Pittsfield, they express a feeling of having been tricked and say “it looked like such a nice place in the brochures.

Originally bookstores and fast food restaurants were going to set up shop within the building but after viewing the crowd that resided within from day break until 7pm, the franchises pulled out and the city was forced to give the spaces to the store front artist project (a ploy often used to make it appear as if downtown isn’t completely dead). Amtrak was also supposed to have an office within the center, but their financial problems coupled with the dismal profitability of the locale caused them to pull out. The only rep of their company in the entire place is the janitor. Getting a train ticket is damn near impossible. You either need to go to a travel agent or shop online and have it printed or sent to you and the first westward stop in Albany won’t accept under carriage luggage.

On a boring day, it can be amusing to sit around the bus station or go on one of their mobile zoos (BRTA buses). I once watched two giants with a combined IQ of 10 beat each other senseless on the concrete platform outside. On another occasion I watched a drunken elderly man argue with the station employees about bringing his dog into the building. They threatened to call the cops and he threatened to call the president. It was all I could do not to break into uncontrollable laughter. You may encounter such legendary figures as the lady who yells at traffic, the woman who scolds her backpack, the lady with the bunny in a baby carriage, the lady that moves like a lizard, the running man, agent orange, good mosh, burping Joe or any number of others uprooted from the asylums closed down in North Hampton and elsewhere in the 70’s and 80’s. If you have a morbid curiosity about how the insane live day to day this is the place for you.

The guy at the counter is the least helpful transit worker I’ve ever met. That doesn’t surprise me considering he used to run the old bus station with the pay toilets and the open whenever he felt like it hours. Even at port authority, you can ask questions. At the inter model center you’ll either be ignored or directed somewhere else. The upstairs BRTA office isn’t much better. I tried to complain about a driver one time and the lady at the front desk put me on the phone with another woman in the back who was extremely unhelpful and talked down to me like I was one of the missing links sitting in the room below.

The timing for all forms of transportation are absurdly off, as well. I’ve seen local buses off schedule by two hours, trains five hours late and greyhounds that were rescheduled for the next day. It sometimes seems as though the bus patrons run the place. Maybe they do. You could not possibly be surrounded by insanity day in and day out for years with out loosing it a bit, yourself.

I rate the place as follows: the service is ridiculously terrible. Everything from the impossibility of acquiring train tickets to the cost of a bagel in their coffee shop screams inconvenient. The experience of being stuck in the large room where people wait for buses (as I sometimes find myself on cold or rainy days) is sickening. Your ears are violated by the crude conversations of people you would rather assume are A-sexual. your nose is bombarded by the scent of unwashed bodies and soiled underpants and your sense of touch is utterly repulsed by the sticky and crusty surfaces all around. I feel I would find more comfort doing sit ups in a patch of cacti than spending twenty minutes in that hell hole.

To be fair, I have been in worse bus stations. At port authority in New York city, you could be stabbed while stepping out for a cigarette in the lower levels of the cavernous building. Also, the thieves that frequent the labyrinth are far more adept and much easier to lose than Pittsfield’s counterparts. Salt lake’s station is by far the worst. Not because of the thieves and swindlers or because its one giant room is hard to navigate. Rather it’s the city’s unthinkable laws that make Salt Lake the dread of all western travelers. The city’s police routinely check every single bag coming through the station and harass people worse than an airport’s security personnel over harmless things like shaving razors and nail clippers. Its illegal to drink caffeinated soda outside of the station and if you smoke a cigarette beyond the tiny designated square near the entrance, you can be given a $5000 fine and are expected to remain in the city until it is paid. Another terrible place to be stuck is Richmond Virginia. They have buses going in every direction but no times listed and the most backwoods people announcing arrivals and departures. I was once stuck in the place for twenty hours because all I heard was “ rebo’ babadoo baba dou!” every time a bus was announced.

So, compared with these places, Pittsfield’s bus station is great but all in all, on a national level, it’s inconvenient, it smells funny and it makes most of us look bad. If I were grading it for some magazine, I would give it an overall c-. it’s not the worse, but our inter model center is far from the best. Its sad, if handled better, Pittsfield’s in a great position to be a crossroads for most of the North East. Easily reachable from Vermont and Connecticut and on the direct route from Albany to Boston, it would make a marvelous place to stop and rest, but do to its reputation, People go out of their way to avoid it. We can only hope that in the future politicians will do more work on making the city hospitable and worry less about how pretty the granite blocks look on south street.