Megabus Business Booming

Ridership on Megabus is “well up from last year,” and starting in about two weeks the company plans to expand service to several new cities. Megabus will then serve nearly 50 major cities, all with virtually no subsidies.

Megabus near Chicago Union Station.
Flickr photo by compujeramey .

Meanwhile, high-speed rail nuts want to spend tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of public money on trains that, for the most part, won’t run faster than Megabus and for many years won’t be running at all. In contrast, Megabus has low start-up costs and can tailor services to local demand.

Pricing is also an important factor as services which are overpriced don’t mean that they will never learn how to fly them because they look somewhat complicated and there is a way you must fly them, but the thing you need to note is that just like the normal helicopters, you have to learn how to drive from them, if they fail to offer this then what is viagra france pharmacy the. Diabetic patients and people with diminished liver and malfunctioning kidneys should be closely scrutinized by the doctor while getting prescription for the treatment by this drug. viagra without prescriptions usa A lot of men do not want generic viagra from canada to request for medication at the pharmacy, simply order it online. The tablets help achieve multiple orgasms and are a world class solution of finding relief from male disorder. viagra discount prices Yes, Megabus has the benefit of government-built highways. But nearly all of those highways were paid for with fuel taxes that Megabus contributes to. (Most road subsidies are to local roads and streets, not state or federal highways.) The main subsidy received by private bus operators is that they only have to pay 7.3 cents per gallon in federal fuel taxes instead of the 18.3 cents paid for gasoline by auto drivers or the 24.3 cents paid by other users of Diesel fuel.

Megabus interior.
Flickr photo by nic221.

Naturally, the bus companies would like to keep that subsidy. But if the average bus gets 6 miles per gallon and carries 30 passengers (both of which are conservative), a fare increase of a tenth of a penny per passenger mile would more than cover the cost of the full fuel tax. Since Amtrak fares are about four times as much as typical Megabus fares, that extra tenth of a penny won’t reduce the buses’ competitive position. (A better solution might be to just eliminate the federal gas tax to all users and let the states take over transportation funding.)

Megabus is only one company, of course, and there are dozens of bus companies around the country that are doing similar business. But you won’t hear much about them from the people who want to spend your dollars bringing you 39-mph to 59-mph trains.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

27 Responses to Megabus Business Booming

  1. the highwayman says:

    http://uk.megabus.com/megatrain.aspx

    Though they have passenger rail operations too.

  2. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    Meanwhile, high-speed rail nuts want to spend tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of public money on trains that, for the most part, won’t run faster than Megabus and for many years won’t be running at all. In contrast, Megabus has low start-up costs and can tailor services to local demand.

    And even in the East, between Boston, Mass., Providence, R.I., New Haven, Conn., New York, N.Y., Philadelphia, Penna., Wilmington, Del., Baltimore, Md. and Washington, D.C. where taxpayers have spent billions to improve the N.E. Corridor Amtrak line and purchase its rolling stock, Megabus seems to compete very well with the Amtrak trains that run between those points.

    The Antiplanner also wrote:

    Yes, Megabus has the benefit of government-built highways. But nearly all of those highways were paid for with fuel taxes that Megabus contributes to. (Most road subsidies are to local roads and streets, not state or federal highways.)

    Also remember that much of the route that the Megabuses (and Greyhound, Bolt Bus and others) and compete with Amtrak’s N.E. Corridor trains is tolled (in particular, much of the route from Baltimore, Md. to New York, N.Y. consists of user-funded toll roads and toll crossings).

    This is also the case with travel between New York, N.Y. and Chicago, Ill. Much of the route consists of toll roads (yes, it is possible to cross most of New Jersey and all of Pennsylvania on “free” I-80 (though a toll is charged to cross the Delaware River)), but crossing nearly all of Ohio and Indiana, and continuing to Chicago is mostly toll road.

  3. Frank says:

    OT–but bus-related:

    The virtues of buses are extolled here. Have you seen this viral vid? One case where trains out performed buses. ‘Course, we don’t hear much about this here.

  4. Jardinero1 says:

    Meanwhile, high-speed car nuts want to spend tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of public money on super highways that, for the most part, won’t run faster than trains.

  5. Jardinero1 says:

    A fully loaded bus weighs 44000 pounds on three axles. That’s about 15000 pounds per axle. A fully laden bus creates 1354 times the wear and tear on the road of a fully laden Honda Accord. They actually create 50 percent more wear and tear on the road than a 60,000 pound tractor trailer because the weight is distributed to only three axles on a bus.

    Unless the buses are paying 1354 times the taxes and “user fees” of the Honda Accord then the bus is being subsidized by the driver of the Honday Accord and even by the tractor trailer owner.

  6. bennett says:

    Megabus is a great model for privately run public transit.

    As for “Meanwhile, high-speed rail nuts…” Need I remind you of your own disclaimer?

  7. bennett says:

    “Megabus is only one company, of course, and there are dozens of bus companies around the country that are doing similar business. But you won’t hear much about them from the people who want to spend your dollars bringing you 39-mph to 59-mph trains.”

    Nor will you hear much about them from those who demonize trains. How about doing an analysis of the Megabus model and its successes? Today’s post read more like “Here’s a great example of what we advocate for every day. But lets not talk about that, because trains suck.” Come on fellas!

  8. FrancisKing says:

    From Antiplanner’s first quotation.

    “He noted, however, that while the company does what it can to keep customers comfortable and pad the schedules, Megabuses have no secret solution to getting stuck in the massive traffic typical of the day before Thanksgiving.”

    Bus priority?

    Incidentally, what are the video screens on the bus doing?

  9. Andrew says:

    Antiplanner:

    “(Most road subsidies are to local roads and streets, not state or federal highways.)”

    I think that is quite backwards, isn’t it?

    Local roads are paid by property taxes. (Megabus obviously pays no property taxes since it insists on the right of having a portion of local streets in each town it serves dedicated to being its “terminal”)

    Interstates and US Highways are paid for by gas taxes. If as is often quoted, something like 25-30% of all vehicle miles are on the national highway system, which suck up 100% of the gas taxes, then obviously 70%+ of vehicle miles (and thus fuel burned up and taxed) is on roads which do not benefit from the gas tax. That means that the supposed gas tax “user fee” is over three times too low to actually pay for the roads it purports to fund. This is why limited access highways are such a losing financial proposition when built. The fuel taxes generated by movement upon them is nowhere near supporting the cost of building, financing, and maintaining those roads. No surprise that when we hear of some catastrophe on the roadways like the I-35 bridge collapse, it is on a road “funded” by the gas tax.

  10. Jardinero1 says:

    Andrew,

    It will be a cold, cold day in hell before the highway planner owns up to the fact that gas taxes are simply another sales tax paid mostly by city auto drivers for the benefit of the long haul trucking industry and the highway planner’s preferred transit mode of “megabus”.

    But soldier on I say.

  11. MJ says:

    If as is often quoted, something like 25-30% of all vehicle miles are on the national highway system, which suck up 100% of the gas taxes, then obviously 70%+ of vehicle miles (and thus fuel burned up and taxed) is on roads which do not benefit from the gas tax.

    And that is where you are wrong. First of all, federal gas tax revenues are not restricted to the national highway system. States use them to maintain their own highways and in some cases, local roads. Second, roads that are not on the NHS do not rely exclusively on federal gas taxes for funding. These are not the only source of user charges for roads. They are coupled with state gas taxes and various other charges (tolls, vehicle ownership and registration taxes, fines and other revenues).

    No surprise that when we hear of some catastrophe on the roadways like the I-35 bridge collapse, it is on a road “funded” by the gas tax.

    Please. Once again, if this were really a systematic “crisis” of finance, we would see bridges falling into the water everywhere. They weren’t before the I-35W bridge collapse and they haven’t since. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  12. MJ says:

    It will be a cold, cold day in hell before the highway planner owns up to the fact that gas taxes are simply another sales tax paid mostly by city auto drivers for the benefit of the long haul trucking industry

    For the 23rd time, gas taxes are not a sales tax. They are an excise tax (tax on quantity consumed). As for the underpayment/overpayment issue, the evidence is here. The only ones systematically overpaying are light single-unit and combination trucks.

  13. the highwayman says:

    Jardinero1 said:
    Andrew,

    It will be a cold, cold day in hell before the highway planner owns up to the fact that gas taxes are simply another sales tax paid mostly by city auto drivers for the benefit of the long haul trucking industry and the highway planner’s preferred transit mode of “megabus”.

    But soldier on I say.

    THWM: We all know by now the Autoplanner won’t admit that.

    Cross subsidization is part of every day life for every thing!

  14. Jardinero1 says:

    MJ,

    An excise tax is a sales tax. It is a sales tax on a unique good or service. It is still a sales tax.

    Did you read the report in your link?

    I did and it supports what I have been saying which is that the taxes subsidize the trucking industry. They say that in their methodology “Base facility costs are allocated to vehicles on the basis to each vehicle’s VMT weighted by its passenger car equivalents (PCEs), a measure used by traffic engineers to compare the influence of different types of vehicles on highway capacity.”

    Based on that methodology, Table ES-3 shows the specific underpayment by the trucking industry. Except for a minority of sizes, it looks like they are getting much benefit from other users.

    Table ES-6 is the most incriminating. Tandem vehicles are responsible for 95 percent of all additional marginal costs to highways. This, in spite of being responsible for only three percent of all vehicle miles travelled.

    The report states in the conclusion, Table ES-8: “the lightest vehicles pay more than their share of highway and the heaviest vehicles pay considerably less than their share of costs” The way I read it, by their own methodology, the heaviest vehicles are paying less by a factor of twenty.

    To be fair, I think tandem vehicles serve a useful economic purpose. But I don’t believe they would be able to deliver cargo over the long haul, cost effectively without the massive subsidy which is the interstate highway system. Railroads are much more cost effective at moving heavy loads between distant points.

  15. metrosucks says:

    The idiot Jardinero1 has really got the bit between his teeth. You wouldn’t be enjoying the standard of living you do, or even the ability to sit in your basement and criticize highways and truckers, without the aforementioned services. And don’t be a flaming hypocrite; subsidies don’t bother you one little bit. The only thing that bothers you is that the subsidy to your favorite black-hole, rail, is not even more titanic than it already is. Be a man and admit that you’re nothing but a high speed rail troll.

  16. Andrew says:

    MJ said:

    “The only ones systematically overpaying are light single-unit and combination trucks.”

    There are plenty of other people overpaying.

    During the course of the year, most of the miles my wife and I drive are on local roads around Philadelphia and its northern suburbs. Six times per year I drive the PA Turnpike to Pittsburgh. Once per year I drive I95 and pay my tolls in Delaware and Maryland to get to Auto Train. Then I drive on the local roads and Beeline Tollway in Florida once I arrive going between Cocoa Beach and Orlando. Once per year I drive the PA Turnpike NE Extension to Scranton, and then have the brief pleasure of using gas tax supported I81 and I88 to get to Otsego County, NY. When I drive to the King of Prussia Mall, or the box stores in Conshohocken, I go up to the PA Turnpike and drive it over to those places. Every so often, lightning strikes and I somehow end up on a free interstate expressway on some random trip. All of this totals up to 20,000 miles per year @ 20 mpg = 1000 gallons = $400+ gas tax. The miles on gas tax supported expressways is less than 5% of that total.

    I quite honestly think I am getting screwed, because aside from the $400 or more in gas tax I pay around $500 per year in tolls on the unsubsidized expressways that dominate my area of the country. I’m most certainly subsidizing some car-loving commuter on a Le Corbusier inspired 40 mile super-commute.

    People often comment on how New Jersey has the lowest gas tax in the nation. That is because over 75% of New Jersey’s expressways are tolled (New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, Atlantic City Expressway, almost every bridge and tunnel leading out of the state), and so they are only paid for by the users.

    Its funny how the supposedly liberal and rail oriented parts of the country are condemned by those supposedly self-reliant and conservative rural areas for wanting rail service, while at the same time, those rural areas HOWL like there is no tomorrow when it is proposed that they pay a toll to support their expressways too. See the I80 controversy in Pennsylvania.

  17. metrosucks says:

    All I want is for highway/road tax money to stop being used to subsidize the utterly wasteful high speed rail boondoggles.

  18. Andrew says:

    metrosucks:

    “You wouldn’t be enjoying the standard of living you do, or even the ability to sit in your basement and criticize highways and truckers, without the aforementioned services.”

    You do know that people used to have all those modern conveniences delivered by rail, interurban, and even streetcar before 1950’s, don’t you, and that teamsters first with horse carts, and then with light trucks were only used to make local delivery from the nearest rail station to your house or business if offline and didn’t make the pick-up yourself? And the whole system didn’t cost taxpayers a single dime.

  19. Andrew says:

    metrosucks:

    “All I want is for highway/road tax money to stop being used to subsidize the utterly wasteful high speed rail boondoggles.”

    Don’t worry. All your fuel tax money is safely being spent on expressways and mass transit.

    I’d love to know where it is being spent on high speed rail, because US Code does not permit it, and most state constitutions forbid it.

  20. Jardinero1 says:

    metrosucks,

    Don’t read more into what I wrote than what I wrote. I am opposed to all transportation subsidies. If I had my way I would privatize all the roads and eliminate all rail subsidies and eliminate all public transit agencies.

  21. the highwayman says:

    Jardinero1 said:
    metrosucks,

    Don’t read more into what I wrote than what I wrote. I am opposed to all transportation subsidies. If I had my way I would privatize all the roads and eliminate all rail subsidies and eliminate all public transit agencies.

    THWM: Though not every one is a libertarian and wants to live under the rule of warlords.

  22. the highwayman says:

    Andrew said:
    metrosucks:

    “You wouldn’t be enjoying the standard of living you do, or even the ability to sit in your basement and criticize highways and truckers, without the aforementioned services.”

    You do know that people used to have all those modern conveniences delivered by rail, interurban, and even streetcar before 1950?s, don’t you, and that teamsters first with horse carts, and then with light trucks were only used to make local delivery from the nearest rail station to your house or business if offline and didn’t make the pick-up yourself? And the whole system didn’t cost taxpayers a single dime.

    THWM: Roads are mostly paid for by property taxes, so there was cost to taxpayers, but it was much less than today.

  23. the highwayman says:

    metrosucks said:
    The idiot Jardinero1 has really got the bit between his teeth. You wouldn’t be enjoying the standard of living you do, or even the ability to sit in your basement and criticize highways and truckers, without the aforementioned services. And don’t be a flaming hypocrite; subsidies don’t bother you one little bit. The only thing that bothers you is that the subsidy to your favorite black-hole, rail, is not even more titanic than it already is. Be a man and admit that you’re nothing but a high speed rail troll.

    THWM: Pardon the pun, but it’s a two way street.

    Trucking wouldn’t be where it is today with out big government.

  24. Jardinero1 says:

    I don’t quite follow you highwayman. Libertarians and warlords?

  25. Borealis says:

    Actually how the US manages its cargo shipping has little to do with government subsidies or lack of subsidies. Read “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger” if you want some insight into how the world moves cargo.

  26. ausaou says:

    I am glad to see Megabus and other long-term players domesticate the industry. Some private bus transit seems liable to situations like this: http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/discount-bus-company-racks-up-136-000-in-traffic-fines-1.1365785

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