Curbsides: The Salvation of Intercity Buses

In order to better compete with Megabus and Flixbus, Greyhound (which is owned by Flixbus) is selling or moving out of many of its downtown bus stations and loading and unloading passengers at curbsides. This is being derided as “taking mobility away from low-income people” and that moving stations from downtowns to suburban locations was a major hardship for passengers. But the alternative would probably be worse.

A modern Greyhound bus near Toronto. Photo by Secondarywaltz.

In 2007, FirstGroup, a British transit company, bought Greyhound for $2.8 billion plus $800 million in assumed debt for a total of $3.6 billion. Admittedly, this price included Laidlaw school buses, but Greyhound — the largest bus company in America — was the plum. Greyhound lost so much money over the next 14 years that, in 2021, FirstGroup sold Greyhound to Flix for a mere $172 million. This didn’t include the school buses or the real estate under many Greyhound bus stations, but FirstGroup remained responsible for $320 million in pension and other liabilities. Clearly, FirstGroup lost a lot of money on Greyhound. Continue reading

Bus Companies Recovering

The nation’s private bus industry is recovering from the pandemic, reports the Chaddick Institute, which has followed the bus industry for nearly two decades. Examples of this recovery include:

One sign of recovery is the introduction of the Jet bus, a first-class service between New York and DC which has just 14 motion-cancelling seats aboard each coach.

  • Fifteen different carriers are once again operating buses in the New York-Washington corridor;
  • New, first-class bus services are being offered by Texas’ Red Coach in October and the NY-DC Jet (which promises the smoothest possible rides thanks to”motion cancelling technology”) in November;
  • A variety of bus companies, including Adirondack, Burlington, Martz, and New York Trailways, Jefferson, and Peter Pan have increased their bus frequencies and services since July 2021;
  • FlixMobility’s purchase of Greyhound, showing that it is optimistic about the future of intercity bus services.

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FlixBus Buys Greyhound

In a move that is sure to shake up America’s fluid, intercity-bus market, one of the newest entries into that market, FlixBus, is buying one of the oldest, Greyhound. Greyhound was previously owned by FirstGroup, one of the two main British companies that emerged from Britain’s bus privatization in the 1990s.

The other British company was Stagecoach, which started Megabus, which revolutionized American intercity bus operations in 2006 by offering curbside bus service (saving the cost of bus stations) and internet ticket sales (saving the cost of ticket agents). FirstGroup responded by buying Greyhound in 2007. Continue reading

The Future of Intercity Buses

Like other forms of mass transportation, the intercity bus industry is imperiled by the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike Amtrak and transit numbers, bus data are hard to come by, but the latest report from the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University estimates that intercity bus ridership in December 2020 was down by more than 75 percent from December 2019.

Click image to download this 2.5-megabyte, 26-page report.

Intercity bus travel grew rapidly after 2006 thanks to the introduction of the Megabus model, which was infrastructure-light. Instead of maintaining expensive bus stations and ticket sales offices, Megabus sold tickets over the internet and loaded and unloaded passengers at curbsides. Megabus sometimes contracted out its operations to other companies but also owned a large fleet of its own buses. All of these savings allowed it to sell tickets for much lower prices than Greyhound, which still depended on maintaining its own bus stations. Continue reading

Private Buses: The Forgotten Mode

A couple of weeks ago, more than 600 motorcoaches — that special breed of buses with extra-comfortable seats and large luggage bays beneath the passenger area — held a rally in Washington DC to complain that their government-subsidized competitors received a bailout but they did not. Yesterday, California motorcoach operators held a similar rally in Sacramento asking the governor to re-open the state, but it was overshadowed by George Floyd protests.

A few years ago, the Antiplanner wrote a paper called Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode, but I guess it is still forgotten. When we think of intercity travel, we think of planes, cars, and Amtrak, but rarely think about buses. Congress seems to be the same way.

The American Bus Association‘s most recent motorcoach census estimates that buses carried 64 billion passenger miles in 2017. That’s 10 times as many as Amtrak. In fact, it’s more than Amtrak and urban transit combined. Continue reading

Shakeout in the Intercity Bus Industry

As an apparent result of low fuel prices, the intercity bus industry is going through some turmoil, with major carriers cancelling some routes and other routes popping up. Perhaps the biggest shock is that Stagecoach, which revolutionized the bus industry with the introduction of Megabus in 2006, sold Megabus to a California investment firm after reporting a 3.2 percent decline in revenues.

Luxury carrier Vonlane offers Texas Triangle passengers a choice between legrest seats. . .

Yet the industry isn’t fading away. New carriers are introducing new models, with more dynamic schedules and more first-class services. All of these changes are reported in the Chaddick Institute’s 2019 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry. Co-author Joseph Schwieterman has been watching the industry more closely than anyone else since Megabus began shaking it up in 2006, and the more recent shake ups are just about as revolutionary as the first Megabus routes. Continue reading

Greyhound Departs Western Canada

If you’ve ever desired to take a bus trip across Canada, this summer may be your last chance. Greyhound announced Monday that, due to a 41 percent decline in ridership since 2010, after October 31 it will terminating all bus service in western Canada except buses between Vancouver and Seattle. Service in Quebec and Ontario will remain unchanged, for now, except for the routes west of Sudbury.

Some local companies offer bus services in western Canada, mostly within individual provinces. Unless some of these companies step in to fill the gap left by Greyhound, it won’t be possible to go from, say, Vancouver to Calgary or Calgary to Winnipeg by bus.

Where passenger train service is offered by the government-subsidized Via Rail, prices are roughly twice Greyhound’s fares. Currently, a Greyhound bus trip from Vancouver to Toronto is about US$217, compared with US$564 by train. Vancouver to Edmonton is around US$89 by Greyhound and US$230 by train. Continue reading

FLiXBUS: A New Alternative Way to Vegas

A new competitor is entering the American intercity transportation market: Flixbus, a German company that is just five years old, is offering rides from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for as little as $2.99. While the company adds a $2 service fee per reservation, that means a round-trip ticket is less than $8. The lowest one-way fare on Greyhound is $13.

A Flixbus in France. Flickr photo by Semvatac.

Germany deregulated its bus market in 2013, and Flixbus quickly emerged as the dominant player, with around 80 percent of the German bus market and a growing share in other European countries as well. The company works by contracting out its operations to local bus companies. Flixbus does the marketing, sells the tickets, and coordinate schedules, while the local operators provide the buses, drivers, and maintenance. Continue reading

So-Called “Gaps” Not a Problem

The Antiplanner much appreciates the work done by Dr. Joseph Schwieterman of the Chaddick Institute at DePaul University in studying and raising public awareness about the Megabus-pioneered revival of the intercity bus industry. But the institute’s latest study is both misleading and has been misreported.

According to one news article, “eight of the 50 most heavily-traveled routes between cities 120 to 400 miles apart in America have lost either express bus or Amtrak service since 2014.” Low gas prices are supposed to be responsible for the loss in service; “As long as gas remains cheap,” says the article, “public transportation seems bound to suffer.” Supposedly, according to another article, these changes are “forcing more to drive.”

In fact, all of the declines in Amtrak service documented by the Chaddick study took place prior to 2006, well before today’s low fuel prices. While Megabus did drop some services since 2014, Megabus will go anywhere people want to go, so if it dropped service between some cities, that probably means there weren’t many potential riders for it to carry. Continue reading

Highway Trains from LA to San Francisco

A company called Cabin is offering overnight bus service with “private sleeping cabins” between San Francisco and Los Angeles for $115. The service currently operates about three times a week but in September will begin operating daily. Buses leave at 11 pm and arrive at 7 am from near the Embarcadero in San Francisco and next to the beach in Santa Monica.

Photo courtesy Cabin.

The double-decker buses have 24 sleeping compartments with 25-inch-by-75-inch memory foam beds and bedding, 25 inches of head room, a privacy curtain, a small window with a shade, a reading lamp, power ports, wifi, earplugs, and melatonin to help people sleep. The buses also have a small lounge where people who are not ready to sleep or who wake up early can talk and get espresso, tea, and water from an on-board attendant. The one-way fare is $115. Continue reading