BBC News article: The American bus revival

[jamesontheroad]

Published this morning, an interesting take from this side of the pond on the British operators who have shaken up American intercity bus operations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16881957

...
According to ABA president Peter Pantuso, the last time most Americans took to the road in public transport was in the yellow bus that took them to school.

Persuading them to take their first trip on a modern coach is the toughest task he faces.

Not so 70 years ago. The heyday of long-distance coach travel in the US was during World War II, when seats on Greyhound buses were filled to capacity with troops and civilians.

The industry tried to capitalise on its new-found popularity with high-profile marketing campaigns but the rapid growth in cheap air travel and car ownership during the 1950s sent it into steep decline and it was steadily relegated to the margins.

It is unlikely to ever recapture its wartime glory years - the US is simply too big to make coaches practical for most travellers.

But rising petrol prices and a new breed of British-owned discount operators, based in the densely populated north-east corridor, have made the coach a viable alternative to the car, plane or train for a growing number of travellers.

...

 

[railiner]

An interesting arcticle, thanks for the link. I wonder why they couldn't have used a more recent illustration. That Greyhound MC-9, outside the old Greyhound New York Garage (now owned by the NY MTA) dates that 20 or so years ago....

 

[Anderson]

That's unintended irony for you.

We've got a lot of bus operators down here, ranging from Megabus to "Engrish" operators (i.e. Chinese bus companies with names that clearly show that the operator's first language is not English) that a friend calls the "Chinatown buses" (since they often drop folks off in the appropriate part of New York City).

There are also a number of coach tour operators; bus trips to Atlantic City and other gambling destinations are rather popular (though when I came across a tour catalogue last night at a meeting, of all times, I'll confess that I was rather nauseated at the idea of spending 2-3 days stuck in a bus going somewhere, no matter what the en route hotels were like...the repeated statement of "enjoy a continental breakfast" didn't help their case at all, either, since the idea of a week or more of such breakfasts...doesn't exactly excite me).

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

An interesting arcticle, thanks for the link. I wonder why they couldn't have used a more recent illustration. That Greyhound MC-9, outside the old Greyhound New York Garage (now owned by the NY MTA) dates that 20 or so years ago....

They would be much more accurate putting on a refurbished 102DL3 at a good bus station, not PABT. The buses are exploding in America but they don't seem to threaten Amtrak. Both are having large growth in parallel, but the bus growth is adimittingly more interesting, because there are so many new companies, new routes, new liveries, and interesting bus types. Amtrak is just Genesis locomotives, Amfleets, Viewliners, and Superliners, plus some rarer types.

It would be interesting to know how much seat pitch and width a Greyhound 102DL3 has, both before refurb and after.

 

[Anderson]

An interesting arcticle, thanks for the link. I wonder why they couldn't have used a more recent illustration. That Greyhound MC-9, outside the old Greyhound New York Garage (now owned by the NY MTA) dates that 20 or so years ago....

They would be much more accurate putting on a refurbished 102DL3 at a good bus station, not PABT. The buses are exploding in America but they don't seem to threaten Amtrak. Both are having large growth in parallel, but the bus growth is adimittingly more interesting, because there are so many new companies, new routes, new liveries, and interesting bus types. Amtrak is just Genesis locomotives, Amfleets, Viewliners, and Superliners, plus some rarer types.

It would be interesting to know how much seat pitch and width a Greyhound 102DL3 has, both before refurb and after.

The biggest problem as far as buses go is the lack of guaranteed connections, at least on Megabus from what I can tell. I went through a booking exercise with a friend at one point (he was trying to get from Nashville to Richmond, and we looked at both bus and bus/rail routings; I learned that Nashville is somewhere I do not want to live). There's also the fact that their hub-and-spoke model can lead to some bad routings (I think we generated Nashville-Atlanta-Charlotte-Richmond).

Greyhound has another complication: On the one hand, baseline tickets are first-come, first-served; on the other hand, while you can book a specific reserved ticket...that tends not to make you popular with the other riders, or so I've been told.

Just wondering, but how much of the cost of running a bus from A to B is fuel? I'm just wondering about cost elasticity compared to, say, Amtrak (where fuel is well under 10% of the budget).

 

[railiner]

An interesting arcticle, thanks for the link. I wonder why they couldn't have used a more recent illustration. That Greyhound MC-9, outside the old Greyhound New York Garage (now owned by the NY MTA) dates that 20 or so years ago....

They would be much more accurate putting on a refurbished 102DL3 at a good bus station, not PABT. The buses are exploding in America but they don't seem to threaten Amtrak. Both are having large growth in parallel, but the bus growth is adimittingly more interesting, because there are so many new companies, new routes, new liveries, and interesting bus types. Amtrak is just Genesis locomotives, Amfleets, Viewliners, and Superliners, plus some rarer types.

It would be interesting to know how much seat pitch and width a Greyhound 102DL3 has, both before refurb and after.

Besides the rebuilt and refurbed MCI 102DL3's, Greyhound's modern fleet also includes a large number of new Prevost X-3's, and some MCI D4505's, as well as some older unrefurbed 102DL's, 102D's, and a few old MC-12's.

As for seat spacing...I don't know the actual dimensions without actually measuring (maybe the manufacturer's website can supply that), but Greyhound has taken an entire row out for better seat pitch....width remains unchanged. The only bus I have seen in the Port with wider seats are the Prevost H3-45's run by C&J Bus Company that has a luxury "2 and 1" seating arrangement on their New York to Portsmouth, NH line run. There is a similar arrangement on the upscale 'Limoliner' operation between NY and Boston Hilton hotels....

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Well, I heard that a 102DL3 gets 5-6 miles per gallon of diesel. I also heard that a bus driver won't get more than $25 dollars per hour. I was also wondering if Greyhound still has 96A3, 102A3, and MC-9 buses? Probably not MC-9s.

 

[railiner]

Well, I heard that a 102DL3 gets 5-6 miles per gallon of diesel. I also heard that a bus driver won't get more than $25 dollars per hour. I was also wondering if Greyhound still has 96A3, 102A3, and MC-9 buses? Probably not MC-9s.

Haven't seen any of those types around NY in a while....the MC-12 looks a lot like an MC-9, but even those are dwindling. And once in a while I'll see a G4500 come thru.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Well, I heard that a 102DL3 gets 5-6 miles per gallon of diesel. I also heard that a bus driver won't get more than $25 dollars per hour. I was also wondering if Greyhound still has 96A3, 102A3, and MC-9 buses? Probably not MC-9s.

Haven't seen any of those types around NY in a while....the MC-12 looks a lot like an MC-9, but even those are dwindling. And once in a while I'll see a G4500 come thru.

The MC-9 has a squarer roof and round headlights, but the Canadian special version also has square headlights, like the MC-12. Unreliable source reports 96A3 retired. No information about 102A3.