DALLAS - Early next month, Greyhound Lines will wrap up the first phase of the massive makeover of its route system, with the last of the cutbacks in the western U.S. taking place.

The nation's only coast-to-coast line-haul operator announced early this month it is eliminating another 150 stops effective April 3.

Greyhound began its "network transformation" with an announcement at the end of last June that it planned to spend the next year eliminating hundreds of stops as part of a route-slashing plan to overhaul its route structure. The restructuring has moved along faster than originally anticipated.

Since the initial cutbacks, other announcements have come, the most recent in January when Greyhound revealed the first of 68 abandonments in the southwest and western U.S. Most of those cuts were along routes off Interstates 10, 20 and 40.

The cutbacks next month also are mostly in the southwestern U.S., with more eliminations slated for Arkansas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma and Utah, plus new ones in Kansas.

Roughly 43 percent of the latest cuts will occur in California where 64 stops are being eliminated. Three-quarters of the stations reportedly had no outbound ticket sales last year.

Many of the abandonments in California are in communities with familiar names - Irvine, Malibu Beach, Monterey, Napa, Pleasanton, Santa Monica, Soledad, Sunnyvale, Thousand Oaks and Vandenberg Air Force Base.

"This is all part of our ongoing strategy to restructure our network and really eliminate those routes that have low-to-nonexistent customer demand," said Greyhound spokeswoman Kim Plaskett.

Places like Fillmore, along Interstate 15 in south-central Utah. Four Greyhounds stopped at the local Fillmore station daily but only picked up an average of one person a week. Statistics were similar for both Beaver and Nephi, Utah, where each station only had two or three people a week.

The cuts will leave Utah with nine remaining Greyhound stations.

Next on the Greyhound chopping block will be the eastern U.S.

Throughout the abandonment process Greyhound has declined to indicate when cutbacks will be announced. Stay tuned.