FirstGroup weighs sale of US school bus and public transit units (in addition to Greyhound)

[Willbridge]

Bolt is part of Greyhound. In Portland they even laid over in the Greyhound station, deadheading to and from their nearby curbside location. This Christmas season the competition was joined by Flix in the Northwest on slightly different service patterns than Bolt. Amtrak and the legacy Greyhound trips (Table 601) also have different service patterns. This makes it hard to make perfect comparisons; however as I followed the clues in the four respective booking websites for the peak Christmas travel days it was difficult to find any sold-out trips. Bolt had several, Amtrak, Flix and GL were in the higher price ranges, but if they sold out it was at the last minute. In looking at maximum prices, it appeared that Amtrak acted as a ceiling, i.e., once Bolt and Flix fares neared Amtrak coach fares the bus fares flatlined. Business Class on Amtrak did well.

Regarding the auto market there was a university study in LA that identified low interest rates as a factor, and there may be long-term consequences. When for any reason rates go up, it may be hard to afford replacement autos. And the availability of used autos with easy terms (rates and/or payment time) is helping to fuel the "drive till you qualify" move of lower income families into the doughnut ring suburbs where there are physical barriers to non-auto modes. I think of a lady weeping on the phone when I explained as gently as I could why there was zero chance for her to get transit service at her new mountain-side home. She had moved there and then developed progressive vision loss heading toward blindness. If/when the used auto market sinks, there will be a lot of that.

Getting back to the intercity bus industry, suburban sprawl is another negative factor. It turns out that it's less time-consuming for a corridor train to add a suburban stop than for an express bus to wend its way off and back on the highway. In some cases intercity buses can piggyback on transit bus facilities, but these are not always set up well for i.c. routes. Flix tries to get around this in big markets by running direct trips for diverse locations.

 

[MikefromCrete]

Coach USA has announced it is shutting down the Chicago Trolley Co., a firm that operates double deck buses and replica trolley bus in the sightseeing business in Chicago. It is also shutting down an airport bus service from Northwest Indiana to Chicago airports. Must be tough times in the bus business.

 

[metrolinecoach111]

Coach USA has announced it is shutting down the Chicago Trolley Co., a firm that operates double deck buses and replica trolley bus in the sightseeing business in Chicago. It is also shutting down an airport bus service from Northwest Indiana to Chicago airports. Must be tough times in the bus business.

It's an after effect of the sale of Coach USA from late 2018 to Variant Equity. After taking a year to look at the entire operation, they're starting to pare down operations in low-yield, low growth areas. Leisure operations outside the Northeast have struggled in particular, thus these closures and the shut down of the Disneyland Express in California. We should expect more of the same in 2020.

 

[metrolinecoach111]

Bolt is part of Greyhound. In Portland they even laid over in the Greyhound station, deadheading to and from their nearby curbside location. This Christmas season the competition was joined by Flix in the Northwest on slightly different service patterns than Bolt. Amtrak and the legacy Greyhound trips (Table 601) also have different service patterns. This makes it hard to make perfect comparisons; however as I followed the clues in the four respective booking websites for the peak Christmas travel days it was difficult to find any sold-out trips. Bolt had several, Amtrak, Flix and GL were in the higher price ranges, but if they sold out it was at the last minute. In looking at maximum prices, it appeared that Amtrak acted as a ceiling, i.e., once Bolt and Flix fares neared Amtrak coach fares the bus fares flatlined. Business Class on Amtrak did well.

Regarding the auto market there was a university study in LA that identified low interest rates as a factor, and there may be long-term consequences. When for any reason rates go up, it may be hard to afford replacement autos. And the availability of used autos with easy terms (rates and/or payment time) is helping to fuel the "drive till you qualify" move of lower income families into the doughnut ring suburbs where there are physical barriers to non-auto modes. I think of a lady weeping on the phone when I explained as gently as I could why there was zero chance for her to get transit service at her new mountain-side home. She had moved there and then developed progressive vision loss heading toward blindness. If/when the used auto market sinks, there will be a lot of that.

Getting back to the intercity bus industry, suburban sprawl is another negative factor. It turns out that it's less time-consuming for a corridor train to add a suburban stop than for an express bus to wend its way off and back on the highway. In some cases intercity buses can piggyback on transit bus facilities, but these are not always set up well for i.c. routes. Flix tries to get around this in big markets by running direct trips for diverse locations.

Great recap - one point regarding Flix: many of their West Coast and Texas based routes feature multiple stops in metro areas to create greater access points for people to join the route. "Direct" on the website does not always equal express. For example, their 5:10pm departure from Dallas to Houston yesterday included three stops in Metro Dallas and two stops in Metro Houston. They're building out a different type of network than what Greyhound has established nationally but with the same premise of providing network access on a regional scale. Their core competency of leveraging technology to align schedules and route patterns to actual demand (they will often run a different schedule product everyday and change those schedules on a near monthly basis) will serve them well as long as they can maintain the service quality.

 

[metrolinecoach111]

I think that’s there’s argument to be made that the collapse of Greyhound, the last remaining nationwide bus line, would be as detrimental to many small communities.

A similar argument was made 48 years ago when the passenger railroads were on the verge of collapse.

There’s a lot of little towns in the US where the single daily Amtrak train or single daily Greyhound bus is the only connection to the rest of the nation without having a reliable car.

While the brand may be in flux, the network will survive in some form through interline agreements, regional operators jumping in to fill the void and state subsidized services (which is one of the few bright spots in the national intercity bus narrative).

One overlooked part of the national network is that the actual network is NABT (National Association of Bus Traffic). While Greyhound operates the largest and most well known distribution portal, the network itself can and will live on. Scale and scope - that's another story....

 

[metrolinecoach111]

I just looked up the 2019 Greyhound map -- they finally published one, after not publishing a map for years.

https://www.greyhound.com/-/media/greyhound/images/discover/2019-greyhound-network-map.pdf

Not much service. Green is codesharing partners, who are used to bulk out the map and make it look less pathetic. (Jefferson Lines is covering the Dakotas, and to their credit, they are apparently providing good service.)

An extraordinary number of the Greyhound routes are simply *paralleling* Amtrak, which is not good for either organization; if there were any sort of government bailout, those routes ought to be the first to be axed in favor of trains. Several of the others are routes which have tracks and ought to have passenger trains (such as El Paso - Odessa/Midland - Abilene - Fort Worth, or Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati -- or Grand Rapids-Lansing-Detroit where the state government actually wants to resume train service). Quite a lot more are actually paralleling other codesharing bus companies' routes, which again just drives both companies out of business.

The routes paralleling Amtrak = where there's profitable demand for LD travel. In the era of deregulation, the company's routes either have to make money, have someone else (state, private org) pay for it, or be an essential part of a money making operation to survive. There are no ifs, ands and buts about it. The company needs to pursue profitable operations in order to survive.

Most of Greyhound's "growth" over the past few years outside the Northeast, California and cross-border areas have come from state-subsidized services, which have helped many of these rural areas stay connected to the network.

 

[metrolinecoach111]

I think you guys are forgetting at least two other potential factors:

1. The rise of superbargain companies like Megabus siphoning off their profitable routes (at least that's my suspicion).

2. Cars becoming cheaper and more reliable (there have been numerous articles about this, primarily used cars, though they aren't cheap, they last longer) over time, also siphoning off riders who either couldn't afford a car in the past or had a car that they could drive over a distance.

Also, low gas prices, comparatively, means it is fairly cheap to drive as well. I'm wondering if the privatization of much of the drivers ed system will also increase non-drivers in the long term.

I'll give you one other factor - the public perception of the brand itself. When you type Greyhound in Google, most days you see negative news and commentary. Their word of mouth reputation is.....well....

It's one thing for a transport company to have a negative reputation and low fares if the perceived value proposition received is greater than "you get what you pay for." See Spirit, Allegiant and Frontier. It's a completely different story when people actively run away from a brand so they don't have to deal with the aggravation and baggage that comes with patronizing its services.

 

[Palmland]

It would seem that it’s a natural fit to have Greyhound fully integrated into Amtrak including scheduling, routes, terminals, fares, and customer service. With the exception of ‘experiential’ trains, where the volume warrants you ride a train, where it doesn’t you ride a bus.

So, for example, if you live in Nashville you ride a bus to Atlanta for eastern points on the Crescent, to Birmingham for southern and southwest points on Crescent/ SL, or to Memphis for CONO to Chicago and western points. Some states, like NC and CA have already figured that out.

Cities without Amtrak and rural towns get better service and LD routes get more passengers.

 

[jebr]

I'll give you one other factor - the public perception of the brand itself. When you type Greyhound in Google, most days you see negative news and commentary. Their word of mouth reputation is.....well....

It's one thing for a transport company to have a negative reputation and low fares if the perceived value proposition received is greater than "you get what you pay for." See Spirit, Allegiant and Frontier. It's a completely different story when people actively run away from a brand so they don't have to deal with the aggravation and baggage that comes with patronizing its services.

Definitely. It doesn't help that Greyhound has stations that often are worn down, dirty, and just feel extremely unpleasant to be in. In the dozen or so times I've been in the Chicago Greyhound station, I don't recall a single time that the men's bathroom has been even remotely clean. It also has been common for me to get on a Greyhound bus and have it feel very worn, with the seat either being uncomfortable or having something broken on it. Mix that with more competitive alternatives across the board (the curbside buses taking a fair amount of the short-distance market, and the ULCCs often being cheaper than Greyhound on comparable routes) and there's not a lot of reason for someone to choose Greyhound if another alternative exists.

 

[daybeers]

While the brand may be in flux, the network will survive in some form through interline agreements, regional operators jumping in to fill the void and state subsidized services (which is one of the few bright spots in the national intercity bus narrative).

One overlooked part of the national network is that the actual network is NABT (National Association of Bus Traffic). While Greyhound operates the largest and most well known distribution portal, the network itself can and will live on. Scale and scope - that's another story....

You wouldn't see those regional services on the Greyhound website though, correct? If not, that makes it terrible Greyhound is pulling out of routes. How can people figure out you can take two buses to get from their hometown of 1,000 people to Chicago?

That's one of the biggest issues with public transportation, especially in the U.S. with its ridiculous car culture: if you want to get somewhere without a car, you have to research it. How often does the bus/train/ferry/tram/subway come? How early/late does it run? What are my first mile/last mile options? How much does it cost? Can I use cash/credit card or do I have to purchase a card? Are there multiple operators? If yes, I might have to purchase multiple cards. Can I bring my bike/stroller easily? Does bringing a bike cost money or require a reservation? If I'm traveling with others, will we be able to sit together? Is there a shelter to wait in? A person I can ask questions?

What's nice is third-party websites like Rome2Rio and Wanderu make comparing transportation modes easier, but you still may have to go to multiple operators to purchase tickets. However, often (unless you use IRS reimbursement rates) driving is cheaper than other modes, depending on how you calculate it. Just gas, sure, driving is relatively cheap if your vehicle gets good gas mileage. Add in driver's license renewals, insurance, registration, tolls in some places, hotels if on a long journey, tickets, parking, maintenance (oil, brakes, shocks, sparkplugs, wheels, etc), and other modes are often cheaper.

 

[jebr]

You wouldn't see those regional services on the Greyhound website though, correct?

I think one of the requirements for getting federal money for the state-subsidized routes is that they have to be listed on NABT or a similar service. I know the regional carrier here, Jefferson Lines, shows up on Greyhound's website, and Jefferson Line's website shows Greyhound connections along with other regional bus carriers (Burlington Trailways, Indian Trails, etc.) As long as that requirement stays in place, there should be some availability to interconnect with some services.

That said, I still agree with the rest of your post. There's a lot of transit options that aren't available through that service, and even Google Maps,. Wanderu, and Rome2Rio don't find all of them. There's a couple of Mexican bus lines that leave from St. Paul and Minneapolis that I haven't found listed anywhere other than at the Mexican supermarkets where they pick up and their own company websites. Having all of the options available under one clearinghouse, with one unified purchase option, and with some protection for connections (even as simple as "yes, we'll put you on the next bus at no charge") would be a huge help to the ground transportation landscape in the US.