|
|
| Re: America w/o Greyhound and no replacement (332897) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > BusChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: America w/o Greyhound and no replacement |
|
|
Posted by kcram3500 on Fri Feb 15 18:44:58 2019, in response to America w/o Greyhound and no replacement, posted by TransitChuckG on Fri Feb 15 05:26:06 2019. This is not a surprise. Americans wanted the travel without the time. In this market, it started with PeoplEXPRESS. When I was in college in Pittsburgh in the mid 80s, PE and GL were the same price, but it was 9-10 hours vs 1 hour. More recently, Southwest got aggressive with expansion and discount fares, and the larger airlines had to compete or lose customers. So now you have airlines offering dirt-cheap fares on the condition you don't bring much besides yourself. Then the larger airlines partnered with smaller regional carriers to get to the smaller cities with the smaller regional jets.The irony is, buses and Amtrak can be more comfortable. The seats are definitely larger on the bus and train... - Airline economy seats: 17-18" width - 102-inch motorcoach seats: 20.5" width - Amtrak seats: 23" width Legroom is similarly better in a bus and best on a train unless you are in sleeper-seat class on an airplane. Then came Megabus and all the regional ethnic carriers who greatly undercut GL's fares by picking up on the street and ticketing online, eliminating GL's overhead of using terminals. So Greyhound faces... - increased airline competition to small markets - increased bus competition from carriers who don't need a national route structure or the physical plant of terminals - if travel time is not a factor and they have the route, Amtrak is more comfortable, cost-competitive to a full-fare bus ticket, and offers more amenities NJ Transit owns more motorcoaches than Greyhound - 40 years ago, that would have been unthinkable. Even after NJT began buying MCIs as "suburbans" in 1982, Greyhound still dwarfed NJT's fleet. Now, GL owns about 1100 units, while NJT owns over 1500 (about a third of which are leased to private carriers in the state). Further cuts to the Dog could result in NJT actually owning -and- operating more coaches than GL. Greyhound will probably fragment to a multi-regional carrier in the markets they're strongest - northeast, California, and a couple of others. They may have a couple of transcon runs that are split in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Dallas, but New York-to-Los Angeles won't be back. |
|
|
|