East Coat Bus Travel Alternatives to Greyhound

For those looking to save money or afraid of flying, bus travel seems to be the most logical alternative. After all, you get to see parts of the country on the open road you wouldn¡¦t see from an airplane's altitude or a train's acceleration. Greyhound, driving along America¡¦s highways since 1914, has become the largest inter-city bus service. In terms of competition there is Megabus, a U.K. bus line that was introduced in this country in 2006, but its routes are limited; accommodating those in places between Chicago and Pittsburgh and Kansas City/St. Louis in the Midwest and from central California southward towards Phoenix in the West. There used to be a number of bus lines under the National Trailways Bus System that provided travelers with a selection of schedules, but after Greyhound acquired Continental Trailways, the largest member of the system, in 1987, many of them went out of business. Today you can find some of the surviving lines such as Carolina Trailways operating under Greyhound, which is where my traveling experience went awry. It was only afterwards where I learned from seasoned Greyhound passengers that an alternative existed.

My trip down to Charlotte, North Carolina was pretty uneventful, save for the fact that our driver refused to make his scheduled stops in Baltimore and DC because he was supposed to catch a flight. As a result, we arrived in Richmond, Virginia two hours early for our connection. However, it was on our way back that making so many stops caused such a problem. My friend and I were two passengers too many for an earlier Greyhound bus that was going directly to DC from Charlotte with a brief layover in Richmond. We were asked to wait for the next bus, which turned out to be a Carolina Trailways "local" bus, making stops in Winston-Salem, High Point, Greensboro, Burlington, Durham, Durham-Raleigh Airport and Raleigh. Understanding that we would have to make another connection at Raleigh was not a big deal, as long as we arrived in Richmond in time for the 3:45pm bus to New York.

The Carolina Trailways made its first two stops smoothly on schedule and without incident (unless you want to count the woman and her young daughter confusing Greensboro with Raleigh and having to reboard.) At Burlington I found it unusual that the bus was spending more than ten minutes at the station, which was nothing more than small country store with an old Greyhound logo out front. After coming back from the station¡¦s bathroom I noticed one of the rear tires was flat. I reboarded to find the female driver talking on her cell phone, hopefully calling in the incident and averting a problem such as a long delay and missing our buses. It took almost thirty minutes for a mechanic to show up and after assessing the situation for another twenty minutes he replaced the tire. When we finally started moving again the driver apologized for the delay and promised us that our bus connections would be waiting for us in Raleigh. Not only did the buses leave at their scheduled time, but the next bus leaving Raleigh was at 2pm! We were supposed to arrive at New York's Port Authority at 10:30 that night, but that would no longer be possible given the inept handling of the flat tire in Burlington.

The aforementioned seasoned passengers were vexed, but offered no advice except that "You can complain to them all you like but all you'll get back is a letter of apology." I was mostly angry with the first bus driver, who gave her word that our connections would wait. Wouldn't honesty help us out in the long run? One man traveling alone back to New York kept nodding his head and gave his reason for using alternative bus services. I¡¦ve heard of companies such as Fung-Wah https://www.fungwahbus.com/ that travel from New York to Boston¡¦s Chinatown, but never realized these smaller companies have expanded to other regions. Here are a few I found information on:

New Century Travel: http://www.2000coach.com/index.html Boasting the lowest fare for riding the most comfortable deluxe coach, New Century has been in business since 2000. From New York one can go to Philadelphia, D.C. or Richmond, Virginia. It's also more affordable than Greyound; while a Roundtrip ticket on Greyhound costs $113.00 it's only $60.00 on New Century.

ApexBus:http://www.apexbus.com/Default.aspx>The largest East Coast Chinatown Bus has more routes than New Century, and from New York one can go to a popular Upstate NY Outlet Mall, Albany, Rockville or Baltimore MD, Philadelphia, Richmond or Norfolk VA and Atlanta. The service also mentions special deals, such as the $60.00 Roundtrip ticket to and from Richmond.

Another alternative is GotoBus www.GotoBus.com a search engine that finds buses depending on the departure and city of arrival. While it covers the East and West coasts, most of the Midwest with the exception of Chicago is left out. Some of the cities that are covered: Phoenix, Anaheim, Los Angelos, Oakland, Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, Vancouver, Boston, Atlanta. Like the other two companies it is also less costly. A Roundtrip ticket to Chicago costs $140.00 whereas on Greyhound the fare is $173.00. The Chinatown buses also make stops to allow passengers time to stretch their legs and purchase food, which cannot be said for Greyhound. The food at several of the bus stations leaves a lot to be desired, providing those waiting for hours on a layover with just vending machines. The Richmond station is the exception because it is considered one of the main connection points, and has an eatery with American staples like hot dogs and hamburgers.

Greyhound has nothing to worry about. Since they brag on their brochures for new faster service there will always be passengers to believe them.