Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will release a new report on intercity buses that Antiplanner readers can preview here. This is an expansion and update from an Antiplanner article posted almost exactly two years ago.
For that post, I reviewed schedules for about a dozen different bus companies in the Boston-to-Washington corridor and calculated that they collectively operated about 3.4 billion seat miles of travel in the corridor in 2009. This is about the same as Amtrak, but the bus companies reported that they filled a higher percentage of seats than Amtrak, so I concluded that buses move more people than Amtrak in the corridor.
For tomorrow’s paper, I updated this calculation and found that, in 2011, some 16 different bus companies move about 4.0 billion seat miles in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak claims about 6 percent of the travel market in the corridor, so buses have about 8 to 9 percent. (Airlines have about 5, with the other 80 percent being automobiles.)
The current pinnacle of bus service: LimoLiner, with meeting tables, on-board meals, and movies. Flickr photo by Chris Lambert.
Bus companies also offer classes of service in particularly busy corridors. An ordinary motorcoach (a bus with a large luggage compartment below the seating area) has about 56 seats. Bolt Bus has removed a few seats to give people a little more legroom. Vamoose bus offers a Gold service from New York to Washington that has only 36 seats.
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Floor plan of a LimoLiner bus.
The current pinnacle seems to be LimoLiner, whose Boston-to-New York buses have only 28 seats, on-board meals, and movies. This is reminiscent of the old Trailways Golden Eagle service that had hostesses serving coffee and snacks. (I remember getting donuts aboard one of these buses between Portland and Seattle in the 1960s.)
Intercity bus service has been the nation’s fastest-growing mode of travel, says Joseph Schwieterman of DePaul University. Since 2006, bus ridership has grown almost twice as fast as Amtrak’s.
This growth has been stimulated by what bus industry insiders call the “new model” of bus service, which includes internet ticket sales, curbside pick up and drop off, and non-stop service between major city pairs. Many new model bus companies also offer on-board amenities such as free wifi, and some use “yield management” to price tickets, meaning the first seats sell for as low as $1, with prices going up as more seats sell.
The new report finds that various bus companies offer faster, more frequent service at far lower fares than Amtrak in numerous corridors, including New York– Buffalo, New York–Toronto, New York–Raleigh, Washington– Richmond, Raleigh–Charlotte, Chicago–Minneapolis, and Chicago–Indianapolis to name a few. Nationally, buses carry at least three times as many passengers and passenger miles as Amtrak. Yet subsidies to the bus companies are roughly 1 percent of subsidies to Amtrak.
Megabus, which has very successful operations in the Midwest and Northeast, attempted to start a California service in 2007, but shut it down after less than a year. That service might have been more successful if Amtrak and the state of California weren’t spending $40 to $60 million a year subsidizing trains in that corridor. Similarly, Amtrak and the states of Oregon and Washington spend $14 million a year subsidizing trains in the Seattle-Eugene corridor, which is no doubt limiting bus service in that market.
Buses are safer, more energy-efficient, and far less expensive to maintain and operate than passenger trains. As much as I personally love passenger trains, the rapid growth of the new model of bus service is just one more reason why Congress should end all subsidies to Amtrak.
Of course, all the government transit loving leftists will not see this as a reason to stop the wasteful Amtrak subsidies and allow these companies to take up the slack:
1) They love the idea that government is running it.
2) They have a fanatical fixation on steel wheels on rails, instead of using what works best.
3) They want to use government to translate their preference for steel wheels & rails into a wasteful, nationwide policy of underused rail transit. They have a quaint, nationalistic idea of rail as the “end all” of people moving and a symbol of “exceptional-ism”.
Buses – slow, smelly, dirty, filled with lowlifes, and stuck in traffic – they are the way to go!
That service might have been more successful if Amtrak and the state of California weren’t spending $40 to $60 million a year subsidizing trains in that corridor.
And I “might” win the lottery tonight.
Or maybe people just didn’t want to be stuck in traffic with your typical California bus patron, even if the fare was only $1. Amtrak charges $36 LA-San Diego and $47 Oakland to Bakersfield. There is no direct service Frisco to LA. Hard to see how Megabus couldn’t figure out a market here.
While I don’t agree with the dichotomy that Mr. O’Toole sets up between intercity buses and rail transit, I do agree that intercity bus service is often a good and viable solution to inter-regional transit needs. It is also the one transit model that seems to work relatively well in obtaining operating revenues through the fare box. I’m all for it!
I can also agree with Andrew in certain contexts. In regions and corridors where traffic congestion is high, buses don’t offer much benefits to the traveler compared to other modes (auto or train).
All in all, I would like to see more posts from the Antiplanner like the recent ones advocating for intercity bus transit and driver-less cars (and less planner bashing).
Randall:
I’d be very interested in seeing facts behind several of your assertions in your article.
Pg. 1 – “Intercity buses carry at least 50% more PM than Amtrak in Amtrak’s showcase Northeast Corridor”
How is this computed and what are the data sources? What trains are you including in the Amtrak total vs. what buses?
Pg. 1 – “60% less energy per PM than Amtrak”
Again, sources for fuel consumption by the buses and Amtrak? Is this all of Amtrak vs. “all” buses? What is “all” buses? Source of PM for buses?
Pg. 2 – “Intercity buses had been declining since at least 1980.”
Or maybe much earlier? Wikipedia article on Greyhound notes a delcine beginning in the 1950’s. Its hard to see how Amtrak “exacerabtes” the decline when both modes were declining in tandem, and Amtrak and greyhound were trying to cooperate to promote intermodalism.
Pg. 2 – “Motorcoach companies paw a lower federal fuel tax of just 7.3 cents per gallon”
This is a huge subsidy, considering the axle load of buses (and thus their damage to pavements and bridges) is equivalent to heavy trucks. Trucks are taxed at 24.4 cents per gallon. 17.1 cents per gallon difference @ annual consumption of 1 billion gallons claimed by BTS is $170 million.
Pg. 3 “Many carriers provide more buses Friday through Sunday than Monday through Thursday”
Showing empirically what we all know anecdotally that buses are used by cheapskates out for a weekend and not by regular business and leisure travellers, and that their appeal is mainly on ticket price because they cannot compete on speed.
Pg. 3 “ABA repor that they fill an average of 60% of their seats”
What is this statistic? Do they sell 60% of seats on a trip with multiple stops, or do they fill 60% of seat miles with a passenger riding a mile? Any bus with multiple stops will have a different load factor than a ticket/seat ratio, because seats will not be used the entire length of the journey.
Pg. 3 “By comparison, Amtrak reports that it offered”
These numbers only include trains on the NEC trunk and do not include additional service provided by trains continuing to Springfield, Harrisburg and Richmond.
Pg. 3 “Amtrak … carries little more than two-thirds as many passengers as intercity buses.”
How certain are we of that statistic? Greyhound’s nationwide ridership is around 22 million, and Megabus is just 4 million per year each for all routes, per their annual report. Wikipedia notes Peter Pan as about 4 million per year also for all routes (and its not clear how BoltBus fits in those numbers). Amtrak Northeast Corridor ridership alone including branches is 13 million, while stem ridership is over 10 million. I would love to see sources for actual ridership figures for the other bus companies you are reporting on. Its hard to believe companies like LimoLiner, Vamoose, Apex Bus, Lucky Star, and Washington Deluxe are carrying more than 50-250K people per year each with their limited schedules. I could see Fung Wah at 350-400K with its schedule. If those are your other 14 companies, its hard to see how they combine for more ridership than Amtrak. Its also quite telling that so few of the companies will report their ridership publicly and that those who do do not paint a picture of market dominance of ridership or revenue or vehicle usage. If buses have 15-20 million annual riders in the NEC, what companies have them? Are you including gambling oriented buses to Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, and Atlantic City? These are hardly providing common carrier intercity transportaiton as we would normally think of it.
Pg. 5 “Because the new model of bus service is mostly based on nonstop buses …”
In other words, it is not directly comparable to Amtrak because the buses only offer service to major cities and skip over intermediate points and intermediate markets.
Pg. 5 “Amtrak requires 5 hours and 30 minutes to carry passengers from Chicago to Detroit”
The Amtrak schedule clearly shows 5 hours 30-38 minutes to downtown Detroit. You are deliberately distorting that by using suburban Pontiac times as the Detroit time.
Pg. 5 “reduce this travel time by 12 minutes”
We went over this when you posted the article on Michigan HSR. The stated intention of MIDOT is to reduce running times by 50-60 minutes to 4 hours 39 minutes on this corridor, and almost all aspects of the plan have been fully funded. Its clearly shown on Page 10 of their Corridor Service Development Plan in the proposed schedules.
Pg. 5 “both regional trains and buses take from 4 hours …”
The buses run nonstop, the trains make 12 stops and have the same running time and thus serve many more markets and obviously can get you closer to your destination.
Pg. 5 “new model fares average about 7 to 10 cents per PM”
Except when they don’t on the luxury type services where they are up to 40 cents per PM, as on LimoLiner.
Pg. 5 “Amtrak fares … per PM”
Which is distorted by including high fare Amtrak routes like Acela, most NEC Regional, and Auto Train with the general run of the mill Amtrak routes. Most Amtrak routes are 13 to 17 cents per PM in revenue.
Pg. 5 “average cost of 15 cents per PM”
I.e., the same as the typical Amtrak fare noted above except specialty/first class/high speed type services able to charge more money.
Pg. 5 “It probably would offer more non-stops”
What is stopping them? Next to no cost of entry, cheaper fares than Amtrak, faster running times. Shoudln’t they just eat the market up? Or maybe there is very little demand for buses?
Pg. 5 “Similarly, the withdrawal of Megabus from the California market after less than a year … is partly due to … subsidies to short-distance corridor trains …”
Except that Megabus was focused on routes like LA-Phoenix, LA-Las Vegas, LA-San Diego, and LA-Bay Area. Amtrak only offers service on one of those routes – LA-San Diego. How could subsidies for the San Joaquins or the Santa Barbara service cause a problem for Megabus routes to Las Vegas and San Francisco? Your assertion lacks any basis in reality.
Pg. 5 “Offer little more convenience than a relatively unsubsidized bus system”
You mean, relatively little more convenience aside from serving intermediate points and providing travel times half those of the bus and providing food and a nicer on-board environment? Nothing major there, right?
Pg. 6 “The average Amtrak intercity train … emitted 3.2 times as much CO2”
The average Amtrak intercity train runs off electric power, because most of its trains are in the NEC. The electric supply of the NEC is mainly Susquehanna River hydropower and Exelon Nuclear plants. So no CO2 emissions.
But why bother with such facts?
Pg. 6 “passenger rail lines require so much infrastructure, while highways – the basic infrastructe for buses – are shared with cars and trucks”
Other than a handful of commuter lines, every passenger rail line in the US is shared with freight trains, including the northeast corridor. The infrastructre requirements of most passenger rail lines are marginal because the tracks would be there anyway for freight.
Pg. 6 “Amtrak … fills … only about half its sets”
Because Amtrak makes intermediate stops which non-stop bus companies ignore, so the peak loading point is not the end points, so seats inevitably are empty more of the time because they are being made available for non-endpoint trips. By serving markets other than only the biggest cities, Amtrak has to run more equipment. Like Greyhound too.
Pg. 7 “Allowing companies to use any curbside …”
In a normal city downtown, the value of curbside is established in part by parking meters which charge $1-3 per hour per spot. The new model bus companies claim the curbside as their own for free for no payments. A 500 foot block should have 20+ parking spots and a theoretical value of over $500 per day. A single bus company with 10 curbside blocks at 10 destinations dedicated to them is getting a $2 million annual subsidy.
Pg. 7 “cities to lease curb rights”
Will parking companies also get to bid for these spots? How about nearby retail businesses or restaurants? The market rate for the curb will be different depending on who is allowed to bid for access.
Pg. 8 “Enforcement of existing safety rules”
When is that going to happen? How about a speeding and operating rules fine regime similar to what FRA imposes on Amtrak engineers, including heavy personal liabilities for infractions, week long annual rules reviews, etc.? Has anyone every seen a bus pulled over for a speeding ticket?
Pg. 8 “between 1999 and 2008 … Amtrak passengers suffered 81 passenger fatalities”
Or maybe not? Where were all of these wrecks and dead passengers? Amtrak’s total fatality count for its entire 40 year existence is barely over 100. Most of those were at Bayou Canot in 1993, and much of the remainder at Chase in 1987 and Salem in 1971.
There were only 17 deaths including crew in 4 wrecks from 1999 to 2008.
I already brought these erroneous statistics to your attention before and carefully listed the actual wrecks here:
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=5134
17 deaths in 60B PM is a rate of 0.28. In the past 15 years including the recent wreck in Nevada, the rate is 0.27.
Pg. 8 “seat belts … might more effectively be applied to … intercity trains”
Well, that could be the case if the death rates were what you state, which they aren’t, and it could be shown that the deaths on trains resulted from being thrown from your seat, and not from crushing or burning or smoke inhalation, which appear to be the actual causes in most train wrecks.
Pg. 8 “alternatives for low-income people”
How about alternatives for the middle class and upper income people? Most people are not low-income.
Pg. 8-9 Conclusion
With essentially no cost of entry to start service and supposed great efficiencies everywhere, there is very little standing in the way of your buses taking over the world vision except for the aversion of most people to actually riding them due to slow speeds, tiny seats, and the existing socio-economic background of the clientele.
There is always a downside, isn’t there?
The quote should be 6 hours 30 minutes to Detroit. Whoops!
Buses – slow, smelly, dirty, filled with lowlifes, and stuck in traffic – they are the way to go!
When you run out of serious, substantiated arguments, why not try a good old ad hominem attack.
When you run out of serious, substantiated arguments, why not try a good old ad hominem attack.
No, that’s pretty much what people say when asked why they don’t ride the bus. Or prefer LR over bus. Over and over and over again, across scales, in most locations, for years and years and years.
DS
Andrew, Andrew! Asking about pesky facts and substantiation thereof! You’re cruel, sir!
Andrew, you seem very knowledgeable about various transit issues. Do you work in the industry? I’d like to converse more with you. Please send me an email at msetty@publictransit.us
mj:
When you run out of serious, substantiated arguments, why not try a good old ad hominem attack.
Have you ever ridden …
a non-school/non-airport shuttle bus?
a transit company bus?
a Greyhound bus?
a Trailways affiliate/traditional small company independent bus?
a “new model” company bus?
a Chinatown bus?
If yes, why? If no, why not when it is clearly an option for many trips?
My own answers – I have ridden intercity buses run by Greyhound, Van Galder, Trailways, and Peter Pan. As I am no longer a starving college student, I would never voluntarily ride a Greyhound bus again. My longest bus trip was 7 hours Pittsburgh to Philadelphia on greyhound, which is way too long with the cramped seats and sketchy riders. I hate being in Greyhound terminals surrounded by lowlifes and vagrants. I value my life and limbs and would never take a Chinatown bus. I have ridden transit company buses off and on my whole life in multiple cities (Boston, NYC, Philly, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Madison, San Francisco, Seattle). I would rather not ride them if I have a rail alternative and certainly do not want them operating on the street where I live because of their erratic behavior in the street, their tendency to run red lights, and the exhaust fumes. I would voluntarily use a company like Van Galder again if needed and I knew I wouldn’t be caught in traffic if making a connection. I have no experience with Megabus as I earn enough money to not need to resort to such means of transportation now, but it sounds nice enough provided traffic is reasonable and the trip is only a few hours.
Andrew,
I’ve ridden many of the types of buses you describe. Not all of them were wonderful experiences. But I understood what I was getting when I chose them. I made an explicit tradeoff between price and quality based on what was available.
The evidence that Randal offers here suggests that this market is growing (or, more specifically, certain segments are growing) because entrepreneurs are offering services that provide different combinations of price and quality. These aren’t the Greyhound services of 40 years ago. Previous posts have indicated that they seek to offer higher quality, either through faster or more frequent service, or through better on-board amenities (more leg room, air conditioning, en-route movies, etc.). Customers have shown a willingness to pay for these amenities. I don’t know why you would complain about that.
No, that’s pretty much what people say when asked why they don’t ride the bus. Or prefer LR over bus.
That’s an astounding argument, considering most of the LRT lines that have been built in the US have merely replaced heavily-used bus routes. As a user, I should know. I have seen the same crowd of people on the light rail trains as on the buses they replaced.
That’s an astounding argument,
Nonetheless, there it is. I already commented on this some time back, citing several studies of user perceptions. That’s where I got it from – user perceptions.
DS
There is a very interesting story/issue in this discussion. If people choose to ride inter-city rail instead of inter-city buses because of the clientele, and if people choose to ride intra-city rail instead of intra-city buses because of the clientele, then there that is an interesting perspective with big dollar implications.
Does anybody (who is not a troll) have data and further perspectives on the matter?
The situation is well known and basic in the transportation community – it might not be as deep as a ‘stigma’ but the user perceptions are there. That’s how it works.
DS
But does Dan feel a “stigma” when he drives his jeep from his completely suburban home to his suburban job, where he shills for urban, Manhattan-type solve-it-all-by-densifying polices? Nah, probably not. The shameless are incapable of stigma.
Sandy Teal:
Perception of clientele drives a lot of decisions in our society, especially with regard to schooling, shopping, house buying, and entertainment choices.
Your typical middle class/suburban type person does not want to associate with your typical urban/ghetto type person. This is sometimes taken as a race issue, but I think it is really a class/socioeconomic issue that you also see driving obviously non-racial decisions such as shopping at Walmart/Kmart (perceived as a low class) vs. Target (perceived as middle class).
With respect to buses and rail, rail modes are generally pereceived as amenable to suburban/middle class sensibilities and use in the way transit buses and Greyhound and Chinatown buses are not. Megabus and the like is succeeding because they have branded themselves as a middle class mode and have been successful in excluding downscale clientele by using internet ticketing and credit card payments. If you want to appeal to the middle class, you generally need to answer the question, would a middle class father feel comfortable sending his daughter or wife alone to some place or on some mode of transportation? If the answer is yes, you have a success. If no, you need to resign yourself to a clientele of the poor, cheapskates, drifters, and sketchy characters.
I rode the subway and bus home on Wednesday just for the hell of it. While waiting to transfer in the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia to the bus, I had two beggars come by panhandling for bus money (meaning drug money, of course), had 6 guys on dirtbikes without mufflers race through the area with their engines blasting unbearable noise, and got to watch a footchase by the police trying to capture two lowlife thugs without shooting them. What normal person wants to be in that sort of environment day after day? Obviously too, none of these sort of things are ever present at the commuter rail stations.
I often wonder if urban bus champions ever actually ride the mode they say we should all be using in any major city if we aren’t going to drive? I honestly think they haven’t, and that they have no idea what day-to-day life is like on it.
Bingo. Andrew, FTW.
DS
Thanks Andrew, that was a thoughtful reply. It would be interesting to explore the implications of that in an intellectual way sometime. It seems like that consideration has enormous impact on transit, yet it is never really discussed openly because it would violate many rules of politically correct discourse.
“Your typical middle class/suburban type person does not want to associate with your typical urban/ghetto type person.”
Huh?
Guess it’s backwards in Seattle. I live in the city with middle and upper class (mostly upper class) who do not want to associate with the suburban “ghetto type person”. Wait. This also holds true for Portland. It’s again, the rich, white urban elites against the poor, non-white suburbanites. Racism and elitism to the core.
What Frank said. Whenever I ride the MAX, I notice that affluent local New Urbanists and Smart Growth proponents are conspicuous by their absence. The train is typically filled with pregnant teens, meth heads and the occasional knife-fight enthusiast.
In other words, the local light-rail system has so much of a livability factor that it makes me want to kill myself. Ironically.
Iced, planners don’t give a shit about “livability”. They are obsessed with their anti-car jihad. If fighting cars means completely destroying civilization, I think planners can “live” with that.
Though there are plenty more “planners” that are anti-transit & railroads.