The Future of Bus Travel Has Arrived?
I saw this advertisement for Greyhound yesterday and it sounded like traveling on a bus might be better than it used to be.
It reads:
The future of bus travel has arrived. Well ahead of schedule.
Introducing the brand-new, redesigned Greyhound bus. Learn more about the specific amenities our newly redesigned motorcoach has to offer.
New Amenities: Wi-Fi, outlets, legroom, safety and eco-friendly.
Being able to be online while traveling might make riding the bus better than flying or driving it myself, so I thought I would check the prices.
To ride from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, it would cost me $107 and take me 8 hours (which is three hours longer than driving it myself). For comparison, I checked Expedia to see how much it would cost me to fly from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas and it was $133 and take me only an hour and a half.
Why would anyone take the bus when flying costs only thirty bucks more?
I thought that maybe there would be better savings if I tried comparing a bus ride and flight from Salt Lake City to New York. There IS a better savings ($100 VS. $278), but the difference in travel time is 53 hours VS. 8 hours. Is it worth $178 to save 2 DAYS of travel time? To me, it is, so I wonder how Greyhound stays in business. They can barely compete on pricing and lose EVERY time when they compete on travel time.
The future of bus travel? Sorry, Greyhound. Wi-fi and electrical outlets just can’t compete with saving TWO DAYS of travel time. In fact, the future of bus travel looks a lot like the past…
Ad via: vintage_ads: Greyhound 1948
I know. The greyhound is more expensive than driving, which makes no sense because the only reason people would want to take a bus in the first place is to save money. A trip from the city I live in to the city i grew up in costs $25 (one way) and on the greyhound it costs over $50.
Comment by laura — May 2, 2011 @ 4:15 pm
The $25 trip is by car, just to clarify
Comment by laura — May 2, 2011 @ 4:16 pm