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| Re: Philly's Chinabus Info Needed. (148947) | |||
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Re: Philly's Chinabus Info Needed. |
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Posted by metrolinecoach111 on Thu May 7 23:21:13 2009, in response to Re: Philly's Chinabus Info Needed., posted by metrolinecoach111 on Thu May 7 23:19:15 2009. 1.Wait, 3 Pike Street? Where in the world is that? They don't board from Manhattan bridge anymore....?The stop location in Manhattan for Eastern is located off the intersection on Pike and Allen, a few steps away from East Broadway – probably the closest subway station would be the East Broadway (F) stop, here’s a map: http://www.easternshuttle.com/busstations.html 2. Let's switch this around. I took "Eastern" last Sunday. The old office on 11th Street was closed, with nothing really directing anyone to the new location. Fortunately, I knew where the buses were parking recently (for Apex/Cherry) and went by there, where I saw people waiting for a bus that just didn't show up. There were major problems with the Broad Street Marathon going on, and buses were stuck in it. Granted, I knew about the take-over...I guess Cherry/Today's Travel is gone now, along with that Neoplan I never got to ride. Coach USA is using it's ex-Suburban MCIs or the Eastern Branded J/D4500/05 coaches for "Chinabus" service, and also happened to eliminate the Sunday 9AM run I used to take to New York. The stop location is 1021 Arch Street, (located right behind the pull-in location of the Greyhound Bus Terminal), otherwise known as Arch btwn. 10th and 11th – if we are talking about the same location, then this is the first I am hearing about the station being closed down – I know that the facility itself is very much run down with just fold down seats, and I have been there on numerous occasions in the past month, but I didn’t know it closed – they may be renovating it…. 3. The 10 AM bus that I managed to board and ride out of town, which was Eastern branded, got into New York a different way than Today used to take it. Somehow, after coming out of the tunnel, we ended up at 36th and 8th Ave, and the driver (operator?) let us off at Penn Station, which I was more than happy about. That might have been a GO because some of those runs are interlined to go back as an M21 to Washington in terms of fleet utilization and operations – the line is supposed to use 3 Pike as the NY terminal. 4. Now that the schedule is different and dragonbus isn't online yet, where can I find the current schedule information? Is Eastern the "working name" for Today's Travel until Dragonbus comes into effect? Whatever happened to Apex? Is that also now an "Eastern" service until Coach USA runs it? I thought Coach USA wasn't inheriting equipment with this merger...are they apt to replace everything with the same damn MCIs? There are numerous ways to get the schedule, best way is probably to go the Megabus website, search “New York-Philadelphia” and click on the June 10th schedules – that is probably the way to go, as the schedule change is coming up – in the interim, check either the Today’s Bus or Eastern Shuttle websites (they both have the same info) – they list the departures per day – Apex is an umbrella company for numerous Chinatown operators, sort of like a cooperative and they are the platform selling the tickets and branding the services, they are still in business, however the service is a Coach USA/Eastern Shuttle operation – in terms of the Dragon Bus turnover, not sure when it is supposed to happen, they originally said February when I first heard of the brand turnover in November, but numerous delays with operating rights and interlining of schedules and ticket purchasing collection methods have pushed it back, in addition to the continued integration of the Eastern fleet, which right now is basically a collection of MCI’s from numerous operations such as Megabus (the D4505s that were formerly of the Philly and DC services), Eastern (the J4500s) and a few from the other Coach properties (Olympia, Suburban and Community have all contributed) – eventually, the DragonBus brand will feature all D4505’s – but when that will be is still to be determined… |
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