Thursday, September 8, 2022

Premium Buses

I spent a month riding buses up and down the east coast a few years back: Grayhound, BoltBus, the China-town buses, etc. Pretty minor price differences ($10?) but very different experiences. Boltbus was all students and professionals, with clean seats, laptop plugs, and wifi. The Chinatown bus was clearly unsafe--heat from the engine leaking into the passenger compartment, and all the windows were open to the snow to compensate. 

The world would be a better place if we had more premium bus services. ie, LandLine. Awkwardly, for mass transit, price differentiation is important. For buses, part of the image problem is that they lump everyone into one price, and one class of service. (IIRC, Grayhound actually owned BoltBus). 

I know the pandemic bankrupted a whole array of intercity bus companies--they were operating on a shoestring, and when your equipment is 'rented' (ie, requiring regular loan payments), you can't just pause operations. Not sure how many of them have been replaced, or if the disruption has simply destroyed markets. 












 

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