\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI<\/span>t\u2019s a grueling experience,\u201d Greyhound bus enthusiast Miles Taylor explains. \u201cYou\u2019re not treated very well. Everyone is yelling at you the entire time. When the bus is late, they blame you for it, like somehow you\u2019ve done something wrong. You just get screamed at for wanting to know what\u2019s going on, because no one says anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor is obsessed with public transit. \u201cI never really grew out of my little boy train phase,\u201d the 26-year-old said. He works as a scheduler for Boston\u2019s MBTA and runs a popular YouTube account documenting the bus trips he takes for fun in his spare time. Taylor traveled across the country by Greyhound twice; a Boston to Seattle route took 104 hours. But even he admits that America\u2019s bus system is far from luxurious \u2013 or even comfortable.<\/p>\n But for many it remains the only option. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Greyhound owes at least some of this uptick to the recent shuttering of Spirit Airlines. The low-cost carrier was once famously known as \u201cthe Greyhound of the skies,\u201d shuttling passengers on the cheap, with absolutely no frills.<\/p>\n <\/span>A Greyhound bus in Canada.<\/span> Photograph: Lloyd Sutton\/Alamy<\/p>\n According to the outlet, after Spirit closed, search activity for Greyhound rose 20% from the previous year. Greyhound routes that overlap with former Spirit flights have seen a 30% increase in passengers. We could be on the verge of a boom in bus travel.<\/p>\n For most Americans, riding a Greyhound bus means abandoning many expectations of basic dignity. Passengers endure delays, and often have to wait for buses on the side of the road or at a dilapidated station. The onboard toilets rarely work and usually smell; the stranger sitting next to you may very well fall asleep on your shoulder.<\/p>\n But in the US, a country that lags behind most developed nations for public transit infrastructure, intercity bus travel is one of the only affordable ways to get around without a car. Taylor calls Greyhound \u201ckind of a last resort for folks\u201d.<\/p>\n Greyhound began as a seven-passenger car service shuttling Minnesota miners to and from work in 1914. The brand, and bus riding in general, was once a romanticised form of travel touted as an exciting way to view the American landscape. Frank Capra\u2019s 1934 screwball comedy It Happened One Night featured its leads Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert falling in love on a Greyhound from Florida to New York.<\/p>\n The shuttles were also a symbol of the civil rights movement, when activists rode buses into southern states to protest racial segregation. But as plane travel became cheaper, Greyhound service became neglected \u2013 with stations and buses falling into disrepair. In the early 2000s, Greyhound had filed for bankruptcy twice. After changing hands a couple of times, the buses are now owned by the German brand Flix, which operates in over 40 countries. After a storied history, the buses are now viewed by most Americans as a cheap, but incredibly unreliable, way to travel.<\/p>\n <\/span>A group of civil rights demonstrators during the March on Washington on 28 August 1963. <\/span> Photograph: Estate of Roosevelt H Carter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But could that be changing? Researchers predict that bus ridership could grow 4% this year, eclipsing forecasts for the airline industry. Is there a way to make it an experience to enjoy, rather than one to endure?<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest driver [of this increase] is the current economics of the US,\u201d said Kate Thompson, a vice-president at the travel search platform Wanderu. \u201cThe price of flights has increased year-to-date roughly 27%, whereas bus and train tickets have only increased around 4%. People are going to gravitate toward the average bus ticket price of $53 versus a $500 plane ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with that, a growing number of Americans do not have drivers\u2019 licenses. Data from the Department of Transportation shows that the number of licensed 16-year-olds has dropped 27% since 2000. \u201cWe get this question all of the time: how can we make buses cool again?\u201d Thompson said. \u201cIt comes down to comfortability. You need to be as comfortable as you would be on a flight.\u201d<\/p>\n There are bus lines that offer what Thompson calls \u201cwhite glove\u201d service, complete with onboard attendants and complimentary amenities. Greyhound, which was bought by FlixBus in 2021, is not one of those lines.<\/p>\n Taylor, the bus enthusiast, shouted out some smaller, regional options. He likes Peter Pan, which runs along the north-east, and has been owned by the same family for almost a century. On a recent 500-mile ride from Provincetown to Washington DC \u2013 the company\u2019s longest route \u2013 Taylor says that traffic delays kept him from making his connection in New York. \u201cWhat was really nice is that they anticipated that I\u2019d miss my second bus,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cWhen I got to the customer service desk, [the worker] handed me a new ticket on the next bus and said, \u2018You must be Miles.\u2019\u201d Greyhound would never.<\/p>\n A \u201cnew trend\u201d in coach design, according to Fred Ferguson, president of the American Bus Association, is called two-and-one, which means that one side of the bus has two seats, and the other has just one, so solo travellers don\u2019t have to rub thighs with a stranger. \u201cThat\u2019s been a hugely popular change,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cIt\u2019s given people more space and more room.\u201d<\/p>\n Greyhound is trying. In the past two years they have retired a lot of older vehicles, and brought new buses into the fleet \u2013 cutting the average age of their vehicles in half. \u201cIt\u2019s really about updating buses to accommodate for what people expect nowadays,\u201d said <\/strong>Thompson, the Wanderu VP. \u201cA bus needs to be updated to the current state of the world. That means free wifi, enough space for your knees, and seatback tray tables.\u201d<\/p>\n Kai Boysan, CEO of Flix North America, the parent company of Flixbus and Greyhound, wrote in a statement that \u201cThe perception of bus travel has been rapidly changing over recent years.\u201d He added that the company has \u201cinvested significantly in modernizing the bus travel experience\u201d, adding \u201chundreds\u201d of new buses across its fleet. \u201cPassengers have access to amenities travelers expect, including free wifi, power outlets, real-time trip tracking, free luggage allowance, and spacious, comfortable seating designed for longer journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n Online reviews of Greyhound\u2019s service suggest it\u2019s taking a while for these changes to be felt across the country. The company currently has a 1.3 out of five-star rating on both Trip Advisor and Yelp. \u201cOur bus broke down on the highway in nearly 90\u00b0F heat, and we were left sitting inside with little to no ventilation for hours,\u201d one Trip Advisor user commented. Another wrote of being \u201cleft in the middle of nowhere\u201d while attempting to travel from Virginia to Michigan. Yet another summed the experience up: \u201cGreyhound should be paying their<\/em> customers to ride.\u201d<\/p>\n There are also a number of high-profile incidents that have occurred on buses that dissuade some passengers from riding. Greyhound temporarily shut down operations in 2001, after a man slashed the throat of a driver, commandeered the bus, and drove into traffic, killing seven people (the driver survived). Seven years later, a man with schizophrenia attacked and killed another rider on a Canadian Greyhound route, beheading the 22-year-old victim in front of horrified passengers. More recently, a Greyhound worker at New York\u2019s Port Authority bus station was stabbed after an argument with a woman attempting to buy a ticket. These incidents are rare, but do not help with Greyhound\u2019s image problem.<\/p>\n Some companies have attempted to be the anti-Greyhound, offering luxurious services to riders. Those usually do not last. Napaway used to run a \u201cfirst class luxury and sleeper coach\u201d between Washington DC, and Nashville; the route has been \u201cpaused indefinitely\u201d while the company pivots to charter service. Ditto for The Jet, a high-end coach bus which offered passengers complimentary hot towel service, espresso martinis and an \u201camenity kit\u201d filled with freebies from Kiehl\u2019s and Maison Margiela.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if a luxury bus model really works in the US because folks who have the option to take something luxury just won\u2019t take a bus,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n But most Greyhound riders are not asking for swag. They just want simple improvements. \u201cMaking it better than this horrible, unbelievably terrible experience [bus riding currently is] would go such a long way toward making people\u2019s lives a little bit easier,\u201d Taylor said. He sees bus advocacy as a progressive issue, a sentiment in line with one of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s major promises in his campaign for New York City mayor: to make city buses fast and free of charge.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>Miles Taylor takes a 100-hour Greyhound trip.<\/span><\/p>\n Major bus stations used to be grand terminals, with stylish post-art deco interiors. Decades of neglect have degraded the travel hubs. But cities are attempting improvements. Chicago\u2019s city council is mulling a vote to purchase and restore its Greyhound station. Philadelphia\u2019s Parking Authority spent $4m renovating its terminal, which reopened in May.<\/p>\n Taylor calls the cities\u2019 efforts \u201cpositive stories\u201d. And he notes an additional, unintended perk that\u2019s completely unique to Greyhound: camaraderie between fellow travelers, always born out of some mini-disaster. He remembers one man in Baltimore who, while waiting on a major delay, pointed to Taylor and quipped that he should just steal a bus and drive it to their destination.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople just come up with their own jokes,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if you\u2019re never going to see the other people on the bus again, you just develop a kinship with each other over your mutual misery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIt\u2019s a grueling experience,\u201d Greyhound bus enthusiast Miles Taylor explains. \u201cYou\u2019re not treated very well. Everyone is yelling at you the entire time. When the bus is late, they blame you for it, like somehow you\u2019ve done something wrong. You just get screamed at for wanting to know what\u2019s going on, because no one says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1202,710,8954,108,1596,24867,150,10140,2460],"class_list":{"0":"post-50735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-airlines","9":"tag-boom","10":"tag-bus","11":"tag-cool","12":"tag-dead","13":"tag-greyhounds","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-spirit","16":"tag-travel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}