Free Bus to Atlanta
Megabus, which serves the Midwest and Northeast, is starting service in the South and to celebrate it is giving away 10,000 tickets to or from Atlanta and eleven other cities. Even if you don’t get a free ticket, when the Antiplanner checked there were still seats on many routes for $1 to $3. Megabus’ new […]
California Bus Association
The Antiplanner spent the last couple of days at the annual meeting of the California Bus Association, which left me unable to post as I was too cheap to pay the hotel $9.95 per day for Internet access even though the nice people at the Bus Association would probably have covered the cost. In any […]
Bolt, Megabus Taking Passengers from Amtrak
More than a third of Bolt and Megabus riders in the Boston-to-Washington corridor say they would have taken an Amtrak train if the “new model” of bus service were not available. (The new model relies on curbside stops instead of stations, mainly non-stop service between cities instead of multiple stops between major cities, internet ticket […]
America 2050: Forget about the Forgotten Mode
Half truths, innuendo, and pseudo-science form the basis of a recent response to the Antiplanner’s recent paper, Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode. The basic thesis of the response is that intercity buses have a role to play in a “balanced transportation system,” but they are “no replacement for high-speed rail.” Of course, the Antiplanner never […]
Questions about Intercity Buses
The Antiplanner rarely responds to comments in a post, but Andrew asked many good questions and requested a lot of background information last week. Most of his questions are answered by citations in the report, but since he did not seem to understand those citations, here are my responses. 1. “Intercity buses carry at least […]
Intercity Buses: The Fastest-Growing Mode
Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will release a new report on intercity buses that Antiplanner readers can preview here. This is an expansion and update from an Antiplanner article posted almost exactly two years ago. For that post, I reviewed schedules for about a dozen different bus companies in the Boston-to-Washington corridor and calculated that they […]
Dutch Superbus
Last fall, the Onion made fun of Obama’s high-speed rail plan with an alternative high-speed bus proposal. But Wubbo Ockels, a physicist and the first Dutch astronaut, wasn’t laughing. High-speed trains, Ockels says, are too slow and don’t go where people want to go. So he has designed and built a prototype electric-powered bus capable […]
Liveblogging the Megabus #5
It is bumper-to-bumper traffic in the tunnel under the Hudson River, but it appears the bus will arrive on-time — 10:35 am — at Penn Station, or even a few minutes early. Scheduled at 4 hours and 20 minutes, this trip is about 95 minutes longer, but $131 less expensive, than Amtrak’s Acela.
Liveblogging the Megabus #4
Still in Maryland, not yet halfway to New York, the bus gets off the freeway — for a weigh station? Yes, we pass through the station along with the trucks. It only adds a minute or two to the journey, but . . . why? I’ve never seen buses have to stop at weigh stations […]
Liveblogging the Megabus #3
The old model bus system (such as Greyhound) would run a bus from New York to Washington, stopping at perhaps Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, WIlmington, and Baltimore along the way. Most bus stations were downtown, so each stop required lengthy trips through traffic to and from the station. In contrast, the new model bus system (Megabus, […]
Liveblogging the Megabus #2
The I-95 corridor is supposed to be heavily congested, and it is no wonder. Here we have the most densely populated corridor in the U.S. and it is served by a freeway that is mostly just six lanes. Moreover, the lanes are distinctly narrower than freeway lanes that I am used to in the West […]
Live Blogging the Megabus
As has been widely reported, the Antiplanner is taking the Megabus to New York City today. I’ve been on the Megabus before from New York to Washington, but this is my first trip in the other direction. Taking Megabus at a cost of $8 cost the Antiplanner an extra hour of sleep but saved Fox […]
