Bus Travel -- not what it used to be

[JimMIA]

Remember years ago, people complaining about flying by saying, "The people who fly these days are just like bus passengers?"

Well that's changing. Now, people are starting to prefer modern bus travel to flying for reasonable distances.

We are familiar with one company in this article -- RedCoach. DD uses Red Coach often between UCF in Orlando and MIA airport, and they have created a large, loyal fan base among South Florida WDW-lovers. I have 4-5 families of friends who RedCoach from MIA to MCO and then DME to their Disney resort. (Not sure how much that will change with the cessation of DME)

RedCoach recently expanded to the "Texas Triangle" route between Houston/Dallas/Austin.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/26/bus...ravelers-with-upgraded-expanded-services.html

 

[bcla]

Depends. Greyhound is cutting routes and they also discontinued BoltBus. Greyhound Canada has shut down all operations. However, Megabus is doing fairly well. There are some interesting small operations that mostly deal with Asian expat customers.

https://www.chinatown-bus.org/coverage/
https://asamnews.com/2014/10/27/la-...-two-largest-vietnamese-american-communities/

Here in California there are a lot of different operators including the aforementioned Asian community bus services. Amtrak is actually one of the bigger bus service providers. They supplement the train services with short to long distance buses - what Amtrak calls "Thruway Service". It might be something really short, like to/from San Francisco to Emeryville or Oakland since Amtrak doesn't have a train station in San Francisco or to other places. They contract with coach bus operators, where some are marked as Amtrak, but others (where it gets confusing sometimes) are unmarked or carry the name of the bus company. And this service is subsidized by the state so for years the law that allowed state financing said that they couldn't be booked alone, other than a few specific routes (like South Lake Tahoe) where no other bus services had regularly scheduled routes. There were some tricks to book a bus ride that involved a short train ticket that didn't need to be used. That law was changed, but currently Amtrak doesn't allow direct booking of just bus trips, although a station agent at a ticket window can book some of these routes.

Some of these Amtrak bus routes are pretty substantial, such as Sacramento to Reno or Santa Barbara to Emeryville. It's going to be interesting once it becomes easier to book these routes without having to buy a train ticket.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Nah I wouldn't use a bus to travel this way. Maybe if I didn't have a car.

Then again it's unlikely I would fly short distances either.

We frequently enough travel between KC and STL (250miles+ each way). Flying is typically impractical (and when there's connections from STL back home to KC it's a bit silly) for that route because it usually costs more (a bus would cost more too) and takes about the same amount of time if you factor in getting to the airport, security, air, taxing, etc)

As for my husband as a business traveler um no he would not take a bus over flying, just nope. Also he earns rewards by flying.

 

[spiders]

I would have to be extremely desperate to get on a bus. I guess if my only two options were get on the bus or walk then I guess the bus — maybe.

 

[JimMIA]

We frequently enough travel between KC and STL (250miles+ each way).

That's almost the exact distance DD buses -- and I agree, the time would really be about the same as flying.

However, she typically pays $46 - $70 for a one-way ticket, depending on demand. On a "perfect" trip, she boards the bus right on campus at UCF on a Friday, stays home 9 days, and buses back directly to the campus the following Sunday. The downside of this option is that they only leave from campus on Fridays and only return directly to campus on Sundays. She could do Friday-Sunday trips if her class schedule permitted, but that's not usually the case.

When she can't come home on a Friday, she has to Uber to the RedCoach station at MCO, which is +/- $35, so that changes the calculus a little.

This time, she bused home directly from campus on a Friday, and we will be driving her back on a Saturday -- but that's because she has to take "winter" clothes back. But even that one-way bus trip saves a 500 mile round trip drive for us + $150 - $200 for a hotel room.

 

[bcla]

Nah I wouldn't use a bus to travel this way. Maybe if I didn't have a car.

Then again it's unlikely I would fly short distances either.

We frequently enough travel between KC and STL (250miles+ each way). Flying is typically impractical (and when there's connections from STL back home to KC it's a bit silly) for that route because it usually costs more (a bus would cost more too) and takes about the same amount of time if you factor in getting to the airport, security, air, taxing, etc)

As for my husband as a business traveler um no he would not take a bus over flying, just nope. Also he earns rewards by flying.

Depends on the service though. Part of the problem in certain areas (especially Amtrak's service are between Boston and DC) is that airports aren't located near downtown, so there's the security and connecting transportation time. Train stations are typically in downtown locations as are many bus services. Taking a car is going to be a pain - especially when parking is so expensive.

 

[JimMIA]

We are also eagerly awaiting the opening of the Miami-MCO Brightline high speed train. That is supposed to happen by the end of 2022 and will cut the travel time from 4 hours to 3.

We'll see when that actually happens and what the fares are, but it will be a fun trip if nothing else.

 

[JimMIA]

Depends on the service though. Part of the problem in certain areas (especially Amtrak's service are between Boston and DC) is that airports aren't located near downtown, so there's the security and connecting transportation time. Train stations are typically in downtown locations as are many bus services. Taking a car is going to be a pain - especially when parking is so expensive.

Actually both BOS and DCA are located very close to downtown.

BOS is just a Big Dig from downtown Boston, and DCA is in Alexandria, VA, and both have Metro routes running frequently right into downtown. People can, and do, ride Metro to both downtown areas from the airports.

In Washington, Dulles is somewhat farther out -- but Union Station is directly downtown, just across the street from the US Capitol.

 

[crazelion]

Depends. Greyhound is cutting routes and they also discontinued BoltBus. Greyhound Canada has shut down all operations. However, Megabus is doing fairly well. There are some interesting small operations that mostly deal with Asian expat customers.

https://www.chinatown-bus.org/coverage/
https://asamnews.com/2014/10/27/la-...-two-largest-vietnamese-american-communities/

Here in California there are a lot of different operators including the aforementioned Asian community bus services. Amtrak is actually one of the bigger bus service providers. They supplement the train services with short to long distance buses - what Amtrak calls "Thruway Service". It might be something really short, like to/from San Francisco to Emeryville or Oakland since Amtrak doesn't have a train station in San Francisco or to other places. They contract with coach bus operators, where some are marked as Amtrak, but others (where it gets confusing sometimes) are unmarked or carry the name of the bus company. And this service is subsidized by the state so for years the law that allowed state financing said that they couldn't be booked alone, other than a few specific routes (like South Lake Tahoe) where no other bus services had regularly scheduled routes. There were some tricks to book a bus ride that involved a short train ticket that didn't need to be used. That law was changed, but currently Amtrak doesn't allow direct booking of just bus trips, although a station agent at a ticket window can book some of these routes.

Some of these Amtrak bus routes are pretty substantial, such as Sacramento to Reno or Santa Barbara to Emeryville. It's going to be interesting once it becomes easier to book these routes without having to buy a train ticket.

Greyhound got bought by flixbus. We have open routes to Canada. Megabus pull out a lot areas now. Yep thats do living drive Greyhound should.

 

[a1tinkfans]

The last bus I took ( and only buses I’ve been on in eons are at Disney)
Years ago, We decided on a day outside of Disney to a nearby park.. and took a public bus. Let’s just say, never again and it Definitely was Not Disney like At All!
would never consider bus travel over air.
I’d rather skip a trip if that were the Only option.

 

[LuvOrlando]

My kids just finished with college and as far as I could tell the big state schools in the middle of a state have, literally, the worst connectivity imaginable. The only way I could get my kids to anywhere away from their college towns or to get them back was to get them on a bus, it was Peter Pan in Ma & Greyhound in Pa & even then it wasn't easy to get to an airport. Such an ordeal but grateful there were busses, not sure I would do it now but it was useful up until present circumstances.

 

[bcla]

My kids just finished with college and as far as I could tell the big state schools in the middle of a state have, literally, the worst connectivity imaginable. The only way I could get my kids to anywhere away from their college towns or to get them back was to get them on a bus, it was Peter Pan in Ma & Greyhound in Pa & even then it wasn't easy to get to an airport. Such an ordeal but grateful there were busses, not sure I would do it now but it was useful up until present circumstances.

I used to take Amtrak a fair bit and saw what looked like quite a few college students being sent off by parents at the station. I think of all the major colleges in California, and even the ones in the middle of nowhere are served by Amtrak through at least a connecting bus service. Maybe not a few places though, but in a major metro area they may be served by public transit that connects to a train service.

 

[JimMIA]

The last bus I took ( and only buses I’ve been on in eons are at Disney)
Years ago, We decided on a day outside of Disney to a nearby park.. and took a public bus. Let’s just say, never again and it Definitely was Not Disney like At All!
would never consider bus travel over air.
I’d rather skip a trip if that were the Only option.

We're not talking about local city buses, LOL.

 

[fla4fun]

We are also eagerly awaiting the opening of the Miami-MCO Brightline high speed train. That is supposed to happen by the end of 2022 and will cut the travel time from 4 hours to 3.

We'll see when that actually happens and what the fares are, but it will be a fun trip if nothing else.

I am planning on doing the new Brightline train round trip just for the fun of it, once it opens. I wish we had better train options in the US. I would travel by train a lot more, since I hate to fly.

I haven’t taken a bus trip since I was a toddler, but I have looked into it. There are some great YouTube videos of traveling on the various lines.

 

[EACarlson]

My mother used to take Megabus quite a bit from Minneapolis to Chicago. $10 and all told only took two hours longer than flying. I just heard on a podcast that most of the long distance bus services are now as expensive as flying.

 

[NotUrsula]

DS several times tried to take RedCoach from USF to Orlando when he was a student there (graduated Spr 2019), but the service was very unreliable at the time; they frequently canceled buses at the last minute. I got the impression their bread and butter is the Miami to Tallahassee run, with stops in Orlando and Gainesville in-between; Tampa seemed like it was too far out of the way to be profitable for them. Now that I check their website again, it looks like they have now added FGCU to the routing to make serving USF from Miami more profitable, and no longer attempt to serve the I-4 corridor at all. I guess that adding Florida Polytechnic and Florida Southern are not on the radar at the moment; probably not big enough. (I doubt it's really possible to get around the Lakeland area efficiently without a car.)

DS did use MegaBus several times from Tampa to Orlando, but the Orlando stop was in a rather odd location, a couple of miles north of MCO on Semoran, where Colonial crosses it; the only campus nearby was Valencia Community college. (He did it primarily to save me the drive when he wanted to join us on Disney trips, but that stop was so far from WDW that Tampa wasn't a much longer trip to pick him up.) MegaBus has since moved the stop to Florida Mall, but they no longer have a route from Tampa to Orlando; again, you can only take the bus north or south from Orlando, not directly to either of the coasts.

 

[bcla]

My mother used to take Megabus quite a bit from Minneapolis to Chicago. $10 and all told only took two hours longer than flying. I just heard on a podcast that most of the long distance bus services are now as expensive as flying.

When Megabus first entered the US market, there were allegations that some of the stops they used weren't authorized. At the very least they shifted them around a bit. These days they use a lot of transportation terminals but back then they seemed to save money with random locations.

I've only taken Megabus once - from San Francisco to Sacramento, and I think it only cost $7. I didn't get the $1 fare but the fare was still super cheap. The locations were kind of odd and I'm not sure about how they chose them. Pickup was in San Francisco across from the 4th and King Caltrain station, which was also an Amtrak bus stop at the time. There were others waiting there for a trip to Los Angeles. I suspect they didn't ask for permission to be there. In Sacramento they dropped us off at Old Sacramento, which I heard they arranged after being kicked out from another location.

 

[JimMIA]

DS several times tried to take RedCoach from USF to Orlando when he was a student there (graduated Spr 2019), but the service was very unreliable at the time; they frequently canceled buses at the last minute.

DD's bestie was going to bus over from USF to UCF last semester, but school stuff got in her way. If I'm not mistaken, RedCoach's only stop in Tampa is on-campus at USF. The bestie was also going to RedCoach home to Miami, but she has some crazy lizard and it's not allowed on the bus -- so her Dad had to drive Miami-USF-Miami because of the darn critter.

I don't know how the USF-Orlando buses are, but the UCF and Orlando to Miami buses are usually punctual. DD did have a problem on her last trip, but they had two problems. One, there was an accident at one point early in the ride that slowed them down about 40 minutes. That delay caused them to arrive in Ft. Lauderdale (the intermediate stop is at FLL) just at the start of rush hour, and it went downhill from there. She ended up being 90 minutes late to MIA.

That said, that is the first time any of her RedCoach buses have been more than 15-20 minutes late.

 

[NotUrsula]

DD's bestie was going to bus over from USF to UCF last semester, but school stuff got in her way. If I'm not mistaken, RedCoach's only stop in Tampa is on-campus at USF. The bestie was also going to RedCoach home to Miami, but she has some crazy lizard and it's not allowed on the bus -- so her Dad had to drive Miami-USF-Miami because of the darn critter.

I don't know how the USF-Orlando buses are, but the UCF and Orlando to Miami buses are usually punctual. DD did have a problem on her last trip, but they had two problems. One, there was an accident at one point early in the ride that slowed them down about 40 minutes. That delay caused them to arrive in Ft. Lauderdale (the intermediate stop is at FLL) just at the start of rush hour, and it went downhill from there. She ended up being 90 minutes late to MIA.

That said, that is the first time any of her RedCoach buses have been more than 15-20 minutes late.

RedCoach doesn't offer USF to/from UCF service any more; they also dropped I-4 corridor service entirely. The best option now is Amtrak, but you have to deal with Uber or Lyft or local buses to/from the downtown stations. DS tried Greyhound once; that was just awful.

 

[JimMIA]

RedCoach doesn't offer USF to/from UCF service any more; they also dropped I-4 corridor service entirely. The best option now is Amtrak, but you have to deal with Uber or Lyft or local buses to/from the downtown stations. DS tried Greyhound once; that was just awful.

Yeah, I'm not sure they ever had direct connections between the two campuses. They had USF to MCO, but then that's still a $30 Uber ride to UCF. And the UCF on-campus route was always only UCF-MIA with stops at FLL and sometimes at the West Palm Beach service plaza on the Turnpike.

I think if RedCoach could create a TPA-MCO route they would have a real winner. On the Transportation Board, there are frequent inquiries about how to get from TPA (often lower flight fares) to WDW.