The Antiplanner spent the last couple of days at the annual meeting of the California Bus Association, which left me unable to post as I was too cheap to pay the hotel $9.95 per day for Internet access even though the nice people at the Bus Association would probably have covered the cost. In any case, I learned a lot at the meeting that I’ll probably comment on in future posts.
I’ve never been to a bus association convention before, but my impression was of a thriving, growing industry. Hundreds of different companies offer scheduled and charter bus services; there are quite a few different manufacturers; and new buses feature intriguing technologies including adaptive cruise control, vehicle stability control, and on-board fire detection and suppression. Moreover, the market is rapidly shifting in an endless series of buy-outs and mergers. It felt more like Silicon Valley than a nearly-100-year-old industry that had been in decline from before 1980 to some time in the last decade.
