Pro's and Con's of Bus Travel

In this day of a shrinking economy more and more Americans are using alternate ways of travel. One of those ways is traveling by bus. Now you may of never thought about traveling that way or you may of done it a few times. Before you do plan on taking a bus trip there are some things you need to keep in mind.

Lets look at some of the positive reasons to travel by bus. First, buses go almost anywhere. Most cities and towns have a terminal where you can go to catch a bus. Terminals range in size from a full service terminal with a waiting area and ticket counter to just a small convenience store that has bus sign. No matter what size it is you usually don't have to go too far before you can find a city or town that provides this service.

Bus travel can be a lot less than taking a plane or train. You can buy your tickets on the Internet and save some money. Purchasing your ticket at least 7 days in advance can save you good amount of change.

For the most part taking a bus is not bad as far as being comfortable. The seats are normally padded and recline somewhat for when you want to take a nap. If you have long legs than take the aisle seat so you can stretch out your leg from time to time. When a bus is pretty full of passengers it can tend to be somewhat uncomfortable cause passengers can only check one bag before they have to pay for the 2^nd.

This causes way too many carry ons. The downside to that is passengers tend to put bags in the seats instead of overhead.

Baggage is the passengers responsibility. If you change buses you must get your bags and see that they get loaded on the next bus. Never assume your bags are being moved always watch them load your bag into the baggage compartment. Many people have lost bags cause they didn't follow through.

Every bus has a bathroom in the back of the bus. I suggest every time the bus stops for more than 5 minutes you get off to stretch your legs and use the facilities. Trying to use the bathroom on moving bus can be an experience to say the least. If the door did not automatically lock when in use it could be pretty embarrassing.

Bus personnel can be rude in some of the terminals around the country. New York city bus terminal was an experience in itself. Asking questions to make sure you have the right gate and things like that you may have to ask several times. I found I was given different answers by some of the Greyhound personnel.

Be prepared some bus terminals have security check points just like the airlines and it takes time to get through them. They can search through your bags if they want to. If you have something valuable or possible of getting broken ship ahead of time don't try and take it on the bus. Your just opening the door for misery.

Last but not least schedules can vary from what they say on the Internet to what they actually are. Try to be an hour early for any bus trip. This will allow for any change in schedule you did not anticipate.