Swadian Hardcore
Engineer
Actually, you found the high-bucket Greyhound fare. If you ride Greyhound a lot, you'll know Greyhound long-distance tickets are significantly cheaper when book three weeks in advance. Greyhound's low bucket LAD-SNT is only $99. Definitely not $230.
Because Amtrak fares have less hierarchy than Greyhound fares, high-bucket Greyhound will often be higher than high-bucket Amtrak. One reason is because Greyhound has found that more civilized passengers book earlier in advance and more suspicious passengers book closer to the date of travel. So Greyhound wants to price the suspicious passengers out and price the civilized passengers in.
That being said, Greyhound's main corridor and focus is on LAD-DLD not LAD-SNT. On LAD-DLD Greyhound runs 5x daily, no transfers, and fares start at $85.50.
You'll often find Greyhound's route network to be staggered with Amtrak's. For example, Greyhound has no Chicago-Denver at all, it's all allies selling through Greyhound. But Greyhound does have Saint Louis-Denver which is part of the New York-Los Angeles corridor. Amtrak east-west usually goes through Chicago, but Greyhound has nothing heading west from Chicago so all their east-west must go through Saint Louis, Memphis, or down Atlanta-Dallas and Atlanta-Houston.
Another thing: Amtrak has a major base at New York City. Greyhound doesn't. But Greyhound has a huge base at Richmond where Amtrak doesn't have a base.
And one last thing relative to the SL: the SL runs New Orleans-Los Angeles. Greyhound has no major bases along that route except a huge one at Los Angeles. They do have a huge base at Dallas. So Greyhound runs Dallas-Los Angeles a lot, but generally ignores New Orleans-Los Angeles and even if they wanted to compete effectively, it would be very hard due to lack of bases. Greyhound has a small base at El Paso, that's it. That one serves the El Paso-Denver, Amarillo, and San Antonio. That's why you must transfer at El Paso: because the Los Angeles-El Paso is actually a Los Angeles-Dallas and it continues to Dallas while the small base at El Paso connects.
Then from Dallas the next bases east would be Nashville and Atlanta. The Nashville one is very small though and may even be gone by now. Again, Amtrak has no Dallas-Atlanta. Greyhound has 5x daily Dallas-Atlanta.
So basically, more often than not, where there's Amtrak, there's no Greyhound, and where there's Greyhound, there's no Amtrak. Oh yeah, did I mention Greyhound has nothing north of Denver until you get to Canada? Not even on I-90 or I-94, nothing, NO Greyhound in the Dakotas.
Edit: Oh, and one more thing regarding seating: You can't put 2-1 seating in a MCI or single-decker Van Hool. They have depressed aisles at the front. Greyhound has a lot of MCIs and MCIs must use 2-2 seating or 1-1 seating unless extensively modified (tear the floor out and put a new one in). Prevosts are different though, they have all-flat floors all the way to the front.
Because Amtrak fares have less hierarchy than Greyhound fares, high-bucket Greyhound will often be higher than high-bucket Amtrak. One reason is because Greyhound has found that more civilized passengers book earlier in advance and more suspicious passengers book closer to the date of travel. So Greyhound wants to price the suspicious passengers out and price the civilized passengers in.
That being said, Greyhound's main corridor and focus is on LAD-DLD not LAD-SNT. On LAD-DLD Greyhound runs 5x daily, no transfers, and fares start at $85.50.
You'll often find Greyhound's route network to be staggered with Amtrak's. For example, Greyhound has no Chicago-Denver at all, it's all allies selling through Greyhound. But Greyhound does have Saint Louis-Denver which is part of the New York-Los Angeles corridor. Amtrak east-west usually goes through Chicago, but Greyhound has nothing heading west from Chicago so all their east-west must go through Saint Louis, Memphis, or down Atlanta-Dallas and Atlanta-Houston.
Another thing: Amtrak has a major base at New York City. Greyhound doesn't. But Greyhound has a huge base at Richmond where Amtrak doesn't have a base.
And one last thing relative to the SL: the SL runs New Orleans-Los Angeles. Greyhound has no major bases along that route except a huge one at Los Angeles. They do have a huge base at Dallas. So Greyhound runs Dallas-Los Angeles a lot, but generally ignores New Orleans-Los Angeles and even if they wanted to compete effectively, it would be very hard due to lack of bases. Greyhound has a small base at El Paso, that's it. That one serves the El Paso-Denver, Amarillo, and San Antonio. That's why you must transfer at El Paso: because the Los Angeles-El Paso is actually a Los Angeles-Dallas and it continues to Dallas while the small base at El Paso connects.
Then from Dallas the next bases east would be Nashville and Atlanta. The Nashville one is very small though and may even be gone by now. Again, Amtrak has no Dallas-Atlanta. Greyhound has 5x daily Dallas-Atlanta.
So basically, more often than not, where there's Amtrak, there's no Greyhound, and where there's Greyhound, there's no Amtrak. Oh yeah, did I mention Greyhound has nothing north of Denver until you get to Canada? Not even on I-90 or I-94, nothing, NO Greyhound in the Dakotas.
Edit: Oh, and one more thing regarding seating: You can't put 2-1 seating in a MCI or single-decker Van Hool. They have depressed aisles at the front. Greyhound has a lot of MCIs and MCIs must use 2-2 seating or 1-1 seating unless extensively modified (tear the floor out and put a new one in). Prevosts are different though, they have all-flat floors all the way to the front.
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