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Feeling the Vitality of Intercity Bus Travel across the U.S.
Intercity Bus E-News, November 2024
November 14, 2024 | Caption: A Greyhound at Champaign, IL, October 2024
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Editor’s Perspective
The famous saying “as busy as Grand Central Station” and the less well-known British phrase “as busy as Clapham Junction” have no equivalents for bus travel. This could be because major intercity bus terminals were smaller and less grandiose than the biggest train depots, even in their heyday. But don’t be surprised if a bus traveler uses one of these phrases, with a bit of hyperbole, on an upcoming trip.
| My stops at a half-dozen prominent bus stations in the past few months found intercity bus stations to be bustling. Waiting rooms were alive with activity and often had long queues before boarding. My observations mirrored comments from bus-travel insiders that the traffic recovery has been comparable to air and Amtrak travel, which have had relatively strong bounce-backs since the pandemic, while other sectors, such as commuter rail and downtown office use, lag. Some carriers, including Jefferson Lines, have reported passenger traffic at about 85% or more of pre-pandemic levels. It seems probable that some Hispanic and business-class operators and FlixBus (which is much larger than five years ago) are well above that mark. Not all the news is good: revenue per passenger mile has reportedly trailed inflation, and the recovery has been slower for legacy carriers and Northeast Corridor lines. Even so, the industry as a whole is enjoying a much-needed autumn boost. | |
Chicago Intercity Bus (Greyhound) Terminal and Milwaukee Intermodal Center were busy during my weekday visits. Around 50 people were waiting in Orlando’s Greyhound Station, and that was before a loaded FlixBus from Tampa arrived. RedCoach’s station in Orlando (see photo) was equally busy on the same Sunday afternoon. Fort Worth’s Transit Center was initially quiet, but the situation changed once a packed Greyhound arrived.
What does this indicate? The intercity bus industry—for all its problems—remains vital to transportation. I saw many smartly dressed urban professionals queue up alongside families with infants, older people with big duffle bags, and college students donning spirit wear. Bus passengers are a hearty lot, relying on this tried-and-true mode despite reduced schedule frequency, station closings, and heightened concerns about downtown crime.
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The post-pandemic rebound appears to have run its course, so the next phase of traffic growth will require tapping into the country's expanding domestic travel market. This is heavily comprised of people unfamiliar with taking the bus. More frequency, service improvements, and enhanced marketing will be needed to attract them. I’m optimistic this will happen. However, more public assistance is required to ensure quality bus stops and stations are available. Check out the insightful op-ed about the sector's needs by Flix North America CEO Kai Boysen, which I recap below.
| As this Intercity Bus E-News edition shows, things are picking up for bus lines as we approach a frenetic holiday season. Save travels! | |
Joseph Schwieterman, PhD
Intercity Bus E-News Editor | Professor and Director, Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
Caption (above): RedCoach at Orlando, November 2024, Chicago Intercity Bus Station, September 2024
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Salt Lake Express is offering a $30 one-way fare promotion on its heavily used St. George, UT – Las Vegas McCarran International Airport service through the end of 2024. This fare provides customers with a discount of more than 50%. Service has grown to ten trips each way on many days of the week. Salt Lake Express, which has an interline agreement with Greyhound, has put considerable emphasis on this route since it acquired the St. George Express airport shuttle operator several years ago.
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Greyhound, after almost 30 years of absence, has returned to St. Albans, VT, making it a stop on its New York – Montreal route. Separately, the legacy line has at least temporarily suspended service to storm-ravaged Asheville, NC, which had previously been served on a route from Knoxville, TN.
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RedCoach has boosted Miami Airport – Orlando service to eight daily trips in each direction on most days, with a mix of premium economy, business-class, and first-class buses. This is among the highest frequencies of any privately run service using full-size coaches on a long distance route (more than 200 miles) outside the California, Northeast, and New England regions--areas traditionally having more extensive bus schedules than other parts of the country. RedCoach's 260-mile Orlando – Tallahassee, via Gainesville, route isn’t far behind, with seven daily trips.
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FlixBus, a few months after entering the Lehigh Valley by launching New York – Allentown, PA, service, FlixBus has created a multi-stop service that directly links the Valley to the nation’s capital and beyond. The new service extends a New York – Allentown trip to Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Richmond, VA, creating innumerable connecting options with other Flix and Greyhound schedules. This service runs on the busiest days of the week.
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FlixBus is prioritizing the Southwest, expanding services on its busy Las Vegas Strip – L.A. Union Station (LAUS) route to 11 trips each way on many days, based on our schedule review. Several buses have identical departure times, indicating demand exceeding one bus’s capacity, with alternating intermediate stops. Some buses continue to Santa Monica (see photo) and other metro L.A. locations. In addition, sister company Greyhound generally has six additional trips from Las Vegas’s South Strip Transit Center to LAUS, giving them a combined 17 daily buses in each direction. That's more than 850 seats in each direction daily!
Greyhound and FlixBus now together have eight buses daily between Los Angeles and San Francisco on many days, most of which run via San Jose’s Diridon Central Station. Both lines heavily concentrate their downtown Los Angeles service at LAUS, which until recently had only a modest intercity bus role. As we noted earlier, FlixBus recently launched Phoenix – San Diego service, a route previously without direct service.
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National Rural Transportation Assistance Program has an easy-to-use interactive map of rural bus and transit providers participating in its Community Rides Grant Program. The program aims to improve access to employment, health care, education, healthy food, and social services and expand transit capacity. Michigan’s Benzie Transportation Authority and California’s Eastern Sierra Transit Authority are among the providers represented. Click here to view the website and interactive map.
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OurBus has made a move to Hudson Yards. Only a few months ago, we reported that this part of New York's Manhattan area had lost most of its intercity bus role due to Megabus discontinuances and the earlier BoltBus shutdown. This autumn, however, the booking website OurBus has consolidated several New York-area services at the former BoltBus stop on 11th Avenue between W. 35th and W. 36th Streets, across from Javits Convention Center in this West Side neighborhood. It now offers more schedule options from this booming area to various major cities in the Northeast, including Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
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BayRunner Shuttle has launched service between downtown Baltimore, Baltimore/Washington International Airport, and Annapolis, complementing its longstanding service between Maryland’s largest city and the eastern part of the state. Bayrunner’s new service expands schedule options between many U.S. destinations and Annapolis because of its participation in the national interline bus network with Greyhound and many other lines.
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The booking platform busbud.com has a new and novel program with Walmart+ to offer incentives for bus travel. Its promotional material notes that “Walmart+ members can get $10 Walmart Cash when booking bus, train, or ferry tickets through Busbud” starting this autumn and continuing until January 7th, 2025. Once a trip is completed, Walmart Cash will be credited to the Walmart+ member’s account. The program is an innovative way to remind people that intercity buses are ready to meet their travel needs.
| Another notable busbud.com move is the launch of its “Refund for Any Reason” feature, which allows travelers to cancel their bus or train reservations with ease. This add-on option provides flexibility, catering to those who may need to adapt their plans at the last minute or choose to travel another time. With this new option, Busbud aims to offer a worry-free booking experience, empowering users to explore and book with confidence. | |
The State of Colorado's Bustang more than tripled service on its West Line, between Denver, Vail, and Grand Junction. It went from four to 15 roundtrips daily. On the North Line, between Denver and Fort Collins, and South Line, between Denver and Colorado Springs, service doubled from six to 12 daily roundtrips. Weekend service on both these routes was tripled, from two to six roundtrips. Also, Bustang has begun using a new “Mobility Hub” on I-25 near Longmont and Loveland. The center-loading hub allows buses to make stops without time-consuming diversions from the expressway and is designed to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. It was installed as part of the I-25 North Express Lanes Project.
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Transcor Data Services, a firm widely known for its ground transportation technology, has announced a Latin American expansion, with operations launching in Mexico. Jose Luis Moreno has joined the company as its Senior Vice President of Business Development to spearhead this move. “Mexico's bus industry is a world leader with over 3.1 billion annual trips. It is a natural next step to extend our hand and support in cooperation with US partners to those in Latin America,” noted John Baranowski, TDS's Chief Commercial Officer, in a release. Moreno’s experience includes serving as Greyhound’s Vice President of Hispanic Operations.
| Flix North America's Kai Boysen: "Seize the Moment" | |
Flix North America CEO Kai Boysen has penned a widely circulated op-ed in Bus & Motorcoach News calling industry leaders and policymakers to “Seize the Moment” to revitalize the bus industry. “By making small but targeted legislative changes, the new Congress can make a substantial impact, benefiting the traveling public and strengthening the industry,” Boysen notes. He adds, “Congress should encourage more public-private partnerships between intercity bus companies and public transportation agencies.” We highly recommend this piece.
| Bus Station News from Around the Country | Bus station issues in Chicago, Cleveland, OH; Dallas, TX; Philadelphia, PA; and Richmond, VA, have generated headlines this autumn. A common theme is that municipal officials offer in-kind technical assistance to help bus lines deal with station problems. However, convincing them to make financial outlays for saving stations or creating replacements is proving difficult. Here’s a summary of the news: | |
· Chicago's situation remains fluid. FlixBus has announced a month-by-month lease extension on the downtown Intercity Bus (Greyhound) Station as it explores options. It has worked with the municipal government, which is grappling with a severe budget crisis, to explore possibilities. A previous expansion to Gary, IN, which was a possible replacement hub for certain services, has been scaled back.
· Cleveland’s Greyhound Station is still poised to close, with information about its replacement forthcoming. Barons Bus and Greyhound have substantial service at the historic downtown facility. The property is slated for residential redevelopment.
· Dallas Greyhound Station will likely close in 2025, with Greyhound and FlixBus moving to a new facility at the Bachman Lake Station of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System. This transit hub, near Dallas Love Field, eight miles northwest of the city center, has extensive light rail and bus service. A benevolent investor is allowing the bus lines to remain at their current location for the time being to allow for an orderly transition. Although we strongly prefer having intercity bus stations downtown, near major transit hubs and walkable amenities, we appreciate how the new location is familiar and transit-friendly and apparently will allow for off-street boarding and alighting. The amount of indoor waiting space available to bus passengers remains to be seen. Dallas sees around 65 daily bus movements.
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· Philadelphia is finding options for moving buses off-street, which resulted from the 2023 closing of the Greyhound Station at 10th & Filbert, to be highly challenging. A municipal evaluation of the possibility of using retrofitted parking garages and parking lots has not yet borne fruit. Opposition from Chinatown businesses has apparently dimmed hopes of returning to the old Greyhound station, which still stands. More favorably, Peter Pan is attracting many passengers by using the former Megabus curbside stop near Amtrak’s 30th Street Station.
· Richmond, VA, has breaking news: the City Council has approved expanding intercity bus service at a plaza next to Amtrak’s Main Street Station this week. This would allow the city’s more traditional Greyhound Station on Arthur Ashe Boulevard to be closed. The older station remains in use, with schedules showing a shift to the new location in early 2025. Bus lines already have some service on the plaza, which is designed to handle buses. An informative three-minute video clip by a local television station is here.
| According to a media report, Greyhound may need to find an alternative to the bus concourse in Denver Union Station for its Mile High City service. More favorably, improvements or planned improvements to downtown bus facilities continue apace in Boston and New York. Concerns that the Washington, DC bus terminal at Union Station, housed on a retrofitted floor of the station’s parking garage, will be downsized have abated, at least for the moment. | The "New Normal" after Megabus Cuts? | |
The noteworthy developments spurred by the discontinuance of Megabus service following Coach USA’s June bankruptcy filing appear to have run their course. The absence of news about replacements for Megabus’s annulled intra-Florida and intra-Texas service suggests that these services are gone for good. In the Northeast, Fullington Trailways and Peter Pan partially filled the void with new services sold on the megabus.com booking site, as we reported here. Fullington added service between New York and western Pennsylvania, while Peter Pan expanded from Midtown to Philadelphia and Washington, DC. The number of daily seats on these routes remains considerably lower than before, and the familiar Megabus double-deckers are now only a memory. However, the above moves lessened the bankruptcy’s impact and helped keep megabus.com’s prominent role in the Northeast.
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Most other former Coach USA services, such as routes through Upstate New York and Wisconsin, appear to be running with little change. Bus lines offering travel on megabus.com keep their identities as separate companies. Megabus’s cuts have resulted in two dominant carrier groupings on several major routes in Florida and Texas—FlixBus/Greyhound and RedCoach—although other competitors, particularly Hispanic lines, are also significant players. Tornado Bus and El Expreso, which have the same owner, have substantially boosted Dallas - Austin - San Antonio service. These lines together have 10 trips in each direction on certain days.
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Avoiding "Gotcha" Fares
Bus Travel's Critical Role for Last-Minute Buyers
By Joe Schwieterman
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I have been fascinated by the niches held by air, bus, and train travel since working in the United Airlines’ pricing department for several years in the mid-1980s, fresh out of college. Back then, leisure travelers who neglected to book at least a week in advance were often taken aback when confronted with buying “full coach” airfares intended for business travelers on expense accounts. Airlines vied for profitable “high yield” business traffic by striving to have the most frequent service, the closest in-airport gates, and the best frequent-flyer programs. The major legacy airlines, American, Delta, and United, still do so today. | |
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Much like back then, one of the intercity bus industry’s most critical contemporary roles is to provide practical transportation for those unable to obtain discounted airline and train fares by booking weeks in advance. Low-income households with unpredictable schedules, those forced to live from paycheck to paycheck, and families facing emergencies often don’t have the luxury of committing to trips weeks ahead. An affordable fare can be the difference between going to a job interview, family event, or the hospital to comfort a suffering relative and staying home. The European Union has built policy around this idea, calling it “mobility as a right.”
| A few examples illustrate why bus travel is so important. Flying from Cincinnati to Detroit (see airfare graphic below) or from Boise, ID, to Salt Lake City—routes where bus service is the only direct ground-travel option—on a few days’ notice generally costs you more than $350 each way. To make matters worse, airlines no longer offer discounted “bereavement fares” for those traveling due to the loss of a loved one. | |
Fares for late afternoon and early evening trains between New York and Philadelphia are often more than $120 when not making an advance purchase. Of course, high-speed Acela trains cost much more, but catching a bus often costs $30 or less. Brightline’s one-way economy fare between Orlando International Airport and Miami booked on the day of travel is often around $169, whereas bus fares are usually $35–$50. In each case, the bus trip is about an hour longer.
| At the same time, Amtrak fares are often $50 or less up until departure on specific state-supported routes. Chicago – St. Louis, MO; Charlotte – Raleigh, NC; and Portland, OR – Seattle, WA are good examples. Not surprisingly, bus service is less pervasive on these routes. Only four daily buses, for example, generally run each way on the Portland – Seattle corridor. However, few routes have such extensive train service, and airline options can be wildly unpredictable, even in major markets. You’ll sometimes find Frontier Airlines fares under $50 for same-day travel between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. However, rates can be three times higher during busy times, and if you need to check two bags, it will cost you $130+ in each direction, even if you are lucky enough to get a rock-bottom fare. That's well over a day's pay (before taxes) for a minimum-wage worker in Nevada. Bus trips are around $55, and you can usually stow a large bag for free and another for around $15. | |
These examples show why a deeper appreciation of bus travel's role in providing essential mobility is needed, a gap Intercity Bus E-News strives to fill. Watch for a more extensive review of trends in pricing in our February Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry report. | |
New York Buying Outbound Tickets for Migrants | The practice of municipal government paying for tickets for migrants for scheduled bus trips is back in the news. As we previously noted, the City of Denver has a program to buy tickets to bring migrants to their city. However, the City is reportedly increasingly purchasing tickets to allow some to continue their journey to join family in other states. Utah has resisted the arrival of such passengers. | |
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Now, Bloomberg News reports that the City of New York is buying bus and plane tickets to transport migrants out of town, often back to Lone Star State, in retaliation for the State of Texas’s practice of sending migrants to New York via charter bus. Around 4,500 tickets have reportedly been purchased for migrants to leave New York, in some cases to Chicago and Florida. Meanwhile, nonprofit agencies continue to support migrant travel by buying bus tickets for asylum seekers from points near the U.S.–Mexico border to other parts of the country. However, according to our recent analysis, many social service organizations that greeted bus passengers at bus stations to provide them with food and toiletries have cut back. Increasingly, air travel is part of the mix when organizations buy tickets for migrants in need.
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Photo: A Departure Nears in Milwaukee | |
This orderly scene on November 8, 2024, at Milwaukee Intermodal Station, shows several passengers on their way to a soon-to-depart Lamers coach. A bevy of departures a few minutes earlier has cleared the sizable assemblage of travelers waiting under the canopies with their baggage. Many passengers using Amtrak's Hiawatha Service trains transfer here to reach Green Bay, a popular Amtrak Thruway offering, with connecting times as short as 30 minutes. | |
Look for the Intercity Bus E-News team at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington and the American Bus Association's Marketplace 2025 in Philadelphia early next year. | |
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