The Albany bus station on Hamiton Street offers not a single tree or plant, save a few weeds bravely rising from cracks in the concrete.

ALBANY — Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the state will spend $60 million on some sweet new upgrades to Albany's airport.

The coming perks, part of a $100 million terminal expansion project, include a modern business center for conferences, new stores, a children's play zone, an outdoor space with some greenery and even something the state is calling "a multi-sensory calming room."

Albany's bus station also offers a multi-sensory experience, although few would find it calming.

The building for Greyhound and Adirondack Trailways riders for inter-city travel remains as it has long been: A squalid little bunker located among the depressingly empty acreage of the Parking Lot District. Online reviewers complain of smells, crowding, dirty bathrooms and whatever other assault on the senses you can think of.

This is New York's capital? Welcome to Albany, folks.

The front of the Hamilton Street station offers not a single tree or plant, save a few weeds bravely rising from cracks in the concrete. Travelers wrestle their luggage through the building's entrance — no fancy automatic doors here! — only to be confronted by disintegrating floor tiles, battered vending machines and a dingy waiting room where, on Wednesday, buckets were assembled to catch water dripping from the ceiling.

There's nothing new about any of this. Everybody knows the Albany bus station, owned by Greyhound, is an off-putting embarrassment that gives travelers a grim welcome to the city. But despite long-standing plans for a publicly funded replacement that would also serve as a CDTA transportation hub, progress is always a distant prospect.

Meanwhile, train travelers to Albany enjoy a state-supported station built for $53 million in 2002. The location of the cathedral-shaped building might not be ideal and some of the building's shine may have faded, but it offers riders a dignified and comfortable place to catch a train — as does the new station in Schenectady, built in 2018 with $23 million in state funding.

But let's talk about the airport. Politicians love giving money to the airport.

Former governor Andrew Cuomo visited repeatedly in 2019 to tout the construction of a $50 million highway exit that cut a few minutes off the trip for travelers. The next year saw the addition of a state-supported gateway sign spanning Albany Shaker Road and a $40 million parking garage. Last year, Sen. Chuck Schumer came to the airport in Colonie to tout the $29 million the facility would get from the federal government.

Last week, Hochul announced $230 million in spending on airports statewide, including $27 million for a new terminal at the Saratoga County Airport that will offer "a first-class user experience" to include an exhibit area for local artists, an ice cream counter that will look out onto a courtyard and a hangar "finished with aged, reclaimed wood to mirror the look of the many Saratoga County horse and agricultural barns."

Governors and senators don't talk about the bus station much. Most wouldn't let themselves be photographed anywhere near the place, and they certainly wouldn't be caught actually riding the bus, even though it's a fairly efficient way to get to Manhattan.

Bus riders, generally poorer and with less influence than airport travelers, don't really matter. That's the harsh message sent when government spends so lavishly on one transportation option while ignoring another. And while there's nothing wrong with the region having lovely airports, there is something wrong with a transportation caste system that, year by year, becomes increasingly blunt in its disparities.

Airport users in the Capital Region get an ice cream parlor and a multi-sensory calming room. Bus riders get a dump.

I called Carm Basile, the CEO of CDTA, to ask about that long-planned new bus station, which has Mayor Kathy Sheehan's support and would involve a partnership with the Albany Parking Authority. Basile said the proposal, which would require state funds, is still considered a likely addendum to the so-called Liberty Park redevelopment of the neighborhood around the existing bus station, a project that has been stalled by land-acquisition squabbles.

Of course, nothing is stopping the state from funding a new bus station right away. The building would, after all, cost just a sliver of the newly announced $250 million for airports. But priorities are priorities, and it's clear where bus riders rank.

It is fitting and telling that the Liberty Park development is what it will take to finally force progress. Albany's squalid little bus station would stand out like a sore thumb among the gleaming new offices, stores and apartments. How embarrassing that would be.

cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill

Churchill is one of the most well-known names, and faces, at the Times Union. His columns - published on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays - are shared heavily on social media and have won several awards. Churchill studied English and history at the University of Texas before beginning his journalism career at small weeklies in Maine, later working at the Biddeford Journal Tribune, Waterville Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal newspapers. He started at the Times Union as a business writer in 2007 and became a columnist in 2012. Reach him at cchurchill@timesunion.com or 518-454-5442.