Are there that many people afraid to fly?
I was checking out the cheapest way to get from Portland to Chicago and back, so I went to the Greyhound site…and was surprised to find out that it was actually more expensive to take the bus than it was to fly. The fare via bus was $430 bucks(plus meals for the five day venture) roundtrip, while Southwest Airlines fare was $361(plus perhaps the cost of a snack or two for the trip). Why would someone choose to pay more for a bus ride that takes so much longer?
Fear of flying or trepidations about the security process and ID required for flying.
But is there enough of that to keep the business afloat?
I’m sure federal & state subsidies help quite a bit.
Buses were one of the only ways to go from one small Ontario town to another.
Rail service (which I sometimes took) could stop at small towns along the way only so long as they were actually on the rail line. The closest rail stop where I lived was a bit over eight kilometers, so it was a respectable walk back home.
On the other hand, the bus would take me right home. However, since it had to service a number of other towns along the way, it wasn’t a very speedy or direct service, but it was affordably cheap.
Bus service was the only way to get around Saskatchewan if you didn’t have your own car, and that service enjoyed provincial subsidies there for some time from what I recall.
Portland to Chicago is a very long trip by bus.
To take another example, Baltimore to Pittsburgh is $47 by Greyhound, and in the $100 to $150 range by plane.
I actually took this route in Greyhound a couple of decades ago when I moved. We had two cars plus someone had to drive the moving truck, which meant three vehicles and two drivers (me and my wife). I drove the moving truck and took Greyhound back to get my car.
It was miserable. It took twice as long as driving since the bus stopped at several places along the way. But, Greyhound took me all the way to the little town where I needed to go, where a plane would have only taken me to Pittsburgh.
Also, the seats were uncomfortable and cramped. Planes aren’t much better these days but at least the flights take less time.
Baltimore to New York is $35 for Greyhound, $135 for plane tickets.
Planes aren’t always less expensive.
On some routes Greyhound has competition from companies like Megabus and Fung Wah, driving down prices. That might explain the Baltimore-New York price.
What keeps the business afloat is probably not the long-haul routes, but the shorter trips of up to a few hundred miles where the bus takes you directly to your destination, and is less expensive than the plane (as in the examples given). Although the travel time on the road may be longer than in the air, when you factor in the time it takes to get to the airport vs an inner city bus terminal, plus the fact you need to get there at least 60 minutes before the flight leaves. Also bus departures are likely to be more frequent.
The last time I traveled by bus was 2 years ago when I traveled from NY to Scranton to visit my nephew. The flight would have been much more expensive. The bus was surprisingly comfortable.
Yup. The vast majority of long-haul bus routes are made up of chains of shorter trips anyway, and most of the revenue will come from short-haul passengers.
As a non-car-owner, I find interstate buses cheaper and more convenient than either flying or car rental (or train travel, for that matter) for the vast majority of my non-local trips. When that’s not the case, I fly or rent a car or go by train.
Remember, something like 9% of US households don’t have a private vehicle. And for those without a car, even getting to a nearby airport can be a hassle. Buses, on the other hand, leave from and arrive at convenient downtown locations. Also, you don’t have to get there hours before departure, and you don’t have to go through security screening.
Moreover, as Colibri notes, many long-distance buses are quite clean and comfortable, with a decent onboard restroom and free wi-fi. And they’re often pleasantly un-crowded, thanks to all the middle-class snobs who assume that bus travel is just for smelly hoboes.
It’s hard to find a current number, but I’ve seen estimates of somewhere between 7% and 11% of U.S. adults don’t have a government-issued photo ID (which essentially would prevent them from being able to fly); the percentage is higher among poorer adults, and non-white adults.
This PDF has some info on where it stood in 2012: their study shows 7% with no ID, but it’s 5% among whites, 13% among blacks, and 12% among those whose income is under $25,000.
So I checked out a shorter trip via Greyhound…and the savings were incredible. Round trip from Portland to Seattle was only $34, while flights were in the low to mid hundreds.
Yeah, I would have assumed that, the longer the trip, the more likely flying is to be the best/cheapest alternative.
Yeah, I was going to say the regional routes are probably a lot more convenient and affordable than flights, but as distance increases, flights become the superior option. And as mentioned, not every location has an airport nearby.
Amtrak has a decent network of buses that can be combined with train trips, and a lot of these mirror Greyhound routes, but you must have a train leg in order to take the Amtrak bus (in most, but not all cases). The Amtrak coaches are comfortable and clean (in some instances, cleaner than their trains). I have taken this option from SLO to Sacramento CA and it works well.
For a similar drive as Seattle-Portland, it is:
$39 for Houston-Dallas today (3/31), and $21 on next Wednesday (4/7)
Southwest wants $212 for tomorrow, and $163 for next Wednesday.
So the price difference is pretty dramatic between Houston and Dallas, although I suppose in large part you’re trading money for time, as the bus trip probably takes around 4-5 hours, and the flight is a little under an hour.
It’s been a while, but short trips used to be good value. Also they used to offer a cheap way of delivering large packages. With service cutbacks, neither of the above may apply.
Adding emphasis to the point ‘directly to your destination’. Above and beyond the cost savings for the shorter trips, if either your start or end point (or both) are not close to an airport, it becomes an even bigger issue. During college, the closest airport to me would have been roughly 100 miles, and home was at least 70 miles. And as others posted, I didn’t have a car at the time (freshmen were expected to live on campus and no car for first year unless they were local). Still it was just shy of 500 miles - and about 16 hours. It was about the the maximum I would probably have been comfortable with.
Another short-hop bus ride, which I took a lot, was back and forth to college, from Green Bay to Madison. 130-ish miles, and my recollection is that a round trip, at that time (mid '80s) is that it was about $20. It’s now $34; considering what inflation has been since 1987, that’s now an impressive deal.
However, there was a brief period of time, when I was regularly taking that bus, in which flying was almost as cheap. For about six months, around 1985 or so, United offered tremendously cheap tickets on that route – the plane was going from Denver to Green Bay (and back again), with a stop in Madison, so they were just trying to sell seats to fill what would otherwise be a mostly-empty plane, and a round trip was around $35.
I’ve done Boston-NYC on a bus a few times. With reserved seats it’s something like $30. It would be fairly pleasant except that the part through NYC is interminable. The buses have to take commercial routes and getting in/out of the city can take hours.
I took the train from DC to New York. Would I have saved much time or money taking the bus?
And that bus service was eliminated 3 or 4 years ago and now, especially for those in more northern and remote communities, travel is a severe hardship if you don’t have your own car.