Bus travel is making a comeback

There is a breaking dawn for a new age of bus travel. With airfares too high for a spur-of-the-minute trip, airline schedules too dicey to make close plans, Amtrak costing about the same as the plane and gas, tolls and downtown parking making auto travel less than optimal, buses are filling the cheap travel niche once again.

This time many of the newer bus lines are not only cheap, but clean and include WiFi and outlets so that passengers can plug in computers and work or watch movies along the way.

Andrea Sachs, writing for the Washington Post, dedicated a month of weekends shuttling between Washington DC and New York. She spent time talking to passengers, testing the seats, checking cleanliness, fearfully watching drivers chatting away on cell phones, singing along to cellphone ring tones.

The appeal is prodigious. The buses are cheap, convenient, well kitted-out and eco-approved. They are relatively hassle-free, especially because someone else is stuck navigating traffic. Baggage rules are more lax than on other forms of transportation, and there are no sneaky taxes or rules against carrying liquids, unless they have alcohol content.

For me, the bus provides the best cheap ($13), clean and relatively quick transportation from downtown Boston to downtown New York, dropping me off only four blocks from my hotel on 30th Street. Plus, I made my reservations, using busjunction.com, on Monday night for a Wednesday afternoon departure.

You know the routine — bus travel time is about four hours. Plane travel time is one hour, plus an hour at the airport for security etc, plus travel time to the airport, plus travel time from the airport downtown. On Bolt Bus, I can use my computer all the way to New York, read, listen to a book or watch a movie on my iphone and time will pass quickly. And you can’t beat the price.

The bus fares undercut Amtrak and, depending on the number of passengers, personal vehicles. One-way fares on the train start at $49, compared with $1 to $30 on the bus. As for my car, Townsend determined that gas for my make and model would add up to $43.78, plus about $20 for tolls.

Knowing the lay of the land as far as buses goes helps a bit. I decided, after hearing horror stories about the Chinatown buses, to avoid them. I’m sticking with the tried and true. In my case this means Bolt Bus between Boston and New York. But there are plenty of bus lines across the country to choose from.

Megabus, Bolt and the other recent entrants occupy the later chapters in the history of buses. Greyhound, founded 95 years ago, is in the front of the book, with the Chinatown buses filling in the middle. The pioneer of intercity express service was Fung Wah Bus, which in the late 1990s started transporting immigrant workers and pauper students between Chinatowns in Boston and New York. The concept soon expanded to Washington.

I’ve used the two search engines for multiple bus lines and www.busjunction.com is by far the best. The other, www.gotobus.com, just doesn’t measure up when it comes to selection of buses and, in my case, focused on the Chinatown buses from Boston to New York.

Tagged as: bolt bus, bus travel, greyhound, megabus