City commissioners spend a good amount of time — and public money — coming up with ways that residents can rely less on personal automobiles. Hence all the talk about how Lawrence needs to be pedestrian friendly, biker friendly and public transit friendly.

Hopefully city commissioners will extend that attitude to the issue of Greyhound bus service and be sufficiently friendly in negotiating a deal to allow the bus company to operate in downtown Lawrence.

Greyhound for months has been looking for a permanent home for its Lawrence bus stop since a west Lawrence convenience store that once served as the stop closed. The city has been allowing Greyhound to use a portion of city right-of-way near City Hall free of charge, but both parties are looking for a change.

The city has proposed the Greyhound stop move to a portion of city right-of-way north of the Lawrence Public Library. Being close to the library may prove to be beneficial to Greyhound riders as they could wait inside the library, use the restrooms, and even take advantage of the library’s coffee shop and other such services.

City officials, however, have proposed Greyhound pay a $1,000 per month lease fee for the city right-of-way. Greyhound has balked at that price. City Commissioners at their meeting tonight will provide guidance on the issue.

Commissioners would be well-served to remember the big picture when considering the Greyhound request. If commissioners really do want local residents to rely less on personal automobiles, then systems need to be in place for people who want to travel outside the city.

Greyhound can help fill that need. Along with Amtrak train service, the bus line is one of the few ways for Lawrence residents to travel outside the city without a personal automobile. It is fine for the city to ask Greyhound to pay something for the use of city right-of-way. Greyhound is a for-profit company, after all. But whether $1,000 a month is the right number is debatable.

Lawrence should not let the monthly lease fee be an impediment to making a deal with Greyhound. It would be a shame if Greyhound made a decision that it no longer made sense to offer service in Lawrence.

City commissioners also would end up looking silly in such a deal. City residents pay millions of dollars in sales taxes to support the city’s transit system — the T — and will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to improve the Santa Fe Train Depot in East Lawrence to make the facility more attractive to Amtrak users. Compared with those types of expenditures, the $12,000 in annual lease payments from Greyhound seem pretty insignificant to help further a community goal of making Lawrence a more transit-friendly community.