David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

I frequently travel between Boston and New York city to see friends, go to events and simply escape Boston. I rarely have much money to travel, so getting there relatively inexpensively matters a lot. Amtrak is outrageously expensive, and even moreso if you book last minute. Flying is expensive and impractical due to security screening, plus East Boston nor Queens/Brooklyn are close to where I’m going or coming from. Oh, and I have no car (plus parking in NYC is expensive). So I take the bus.

The four bus lines that I’ve had experience with recently are the MegaBus, Bolt Bus, Greyhound/Peter Pan and the Fung Wah/Chinatown bus. I can’t speak from personal experience on Limoliner, but I have hear good things about it and I intend to give it a shot sometime soon.

MegaBus

MegaBus is a relatively new option, with its closest competitor being Bolt Bus. They are owned and operated by Greyhound/Peter Pan. It offers tickets that vary in price depending on booking demand, but mostly being around $15 realistically. They have $5 ticket-change fees, and are now charging $5 extra for luggage over 50lbs (but I saw no scale for direct measurement, so I can assume it is just anything they seem as ‘heavy’). They advertise wifi access, but no power onboard. I have seen coaches of theirs that are very modern looking double-deck buses, but believe that those mainly run between NYC and Washington DC so I haven’t had the experience of taking them.

I have taken MegaBus twice. Once was a ‘MegaBus’ and once on a ‘Dattco‘ bus that they sub-contract out to run routes when they need. On the Megabus, the wifi worked ok but imposed content filters on bandwidth heavy or filesharing sites. That made sense in a lot of ways, but I was bummed that I couldn’t connect to Newzbin to queue up my server at home to start downloading some things, which wouldn’t have been bandwidth intensive at all. When it was a Dattco bus, there was no wifi at all. No apology was made for there being a change of bus, nor did they text/email/call me to notify me of this change. Certainly a bummer. The temperatures on the Megabus seem to be poorly controlled and its either blazingly hot, or freezing on the bus.

The drivers and staff are only mildly friendly, but they are all Americans and speak english well. In Boston the buses leave and arrive from South Station’s terminal which is nice. In New York however it is a totally different ballgame. You have to wait outside Penn Station in a line on the sidewalk. This isn’t that big of a deal 9 months of the year, but in the winter this outright sucks. The buses have a no food/drink policy, but they don’t pay all that close attention and you can probably sneak something small by them. The seats themselves are a bit cramped, and there is no arm between passenger seats so I found myself bumping into the person beside me too often. One other odd (or good) thing, is that they make a quick stop in Hartford, CT each way. Its annoying because generally no one boards, but if you’re going to/from Hartford then I suppose its useful. They also stop out in Newton at the end of the D-line. Between the two of these, it seems a bit much.

Overall, Megabus does an ok job. I’m honestly not sure why Greyhound now owns Greyhound buses, Peter Pan AND Megabus. The differences between them are minimal, except for the pickup locations, branding and occasional wifi on the Megabus. I’ll give them a C+ rating for bus travel. It gets you there.

Bolt Bus

Bolt Bus is also a relative newcomer to the Boston/NYC route. They advertise inexpensive fares, wifi, and power outlets. The buses seem newer, and the seats are a bit more spread apart. On a Megabus I took, my 17″ Macbook Pro did not have space to open, but there is certainly space for your desktop replacement laptops on the Bolt Bus. The drivers and staff seem very friendly, if not outright funny at times. They offered everyone the option of having the bus go directly express to NYC, or stopping for a break. We voted express.

There are power outlets on the back of the seats, which work ok. My Macbook Pro’s square power adaptor initially kept falling out with the bus’s movement. If I had someone sitting beside me I could see the cable being a bit annoying and placement of it wasn’t great. The internet was excessively sporadic. The driver allowed us to reset the modem and wifi router once or twice, but it seemed to be a signal issue more than anything. I had ping times ranging from 200ms to 20000ms, with dropped packets galore. I was able to check my email, but found it less frustrating to just use my iPhone to do the same. Whatever technology they are using is considerably less stable than tethering a 3G, or even older phone like a Treo 650. I’ve spoken to others and this seems to be a common problem.

A friend told me recently that the 3G reception with all wireless cards between NYC and Boston is kinda screwy, even with personal/consumer devices. This is shocking to me, since it’s an incredibly dense population area that in my mind would have relatively few deadspots. So maybe this isn’t all Bolt’s fault.

Bolt Bus departs from South Station in Boston and drops off (and picks up) on 34th Street near Penn Station. I do wish too that they would invest on some type of cover at least for patrons to wait under for the bus.

One other really cool thing about Bolt Bus is that you can simply flash them your ticket confirmation number on your iPhone or other smart device. No printing required. Apparently about 30% of people getting on the bus do this and they don’t think its odd at all. I can only imagine that other bus services might not take so kindly in the same way just based on their overall customer service attitude. I could be wrong.

Overall, Bolt is my preferred option. Their ticket prices also operating on a sliding scale, but generally book up quickly. I was shocked that the trip I took was only about 10% full (although tickets were full price), but generally this isn’t the bus line that you’ll take if its a last minute trip. I’ll give it a solid B+. If the seats were nicer and the wifi worked all the time, I’d push it up even more.

Greyhound/Peter Pan

Greyhound/Peter Pan is like the Dominos Pizza of bus travel. It is utter crap, but you know exactly how the crap will taste and have done it before. The standard fares are the most expensive of the four services discussed here. If you log on their website and just look up the ticket, it will be $35/direction. If you buy it online, it goes down to $20. If you buy it at the counter, it is $35. If you step away from the counter and buy it using your laptop/phone, and then pick it up at the counter it is $20. The people working at the ticket counter are almost always slow, rude and rarely helpful or sympathetic. They profit from people not knowing how to get the ticket cheaper and disclose no information about how to get a ticket at the discounted online rate.

Also they really care about seeing your ID and getting your info off of it as well. Why I can’t anonymously take a bus is beyond me. Greyhound travels between South Station and Port Authority. While its location can be nice, and it is indoor to indoor travel, Port Authority is one of the sketchiest places in Midtown and harkens back to the feel of Times Square in the early 80′s. Homeless, vagrants, drug users and weirdos abound in addition to a funny smell that you can never place your finger on. Greyhound recently implemented a ‘skip the line’ option for $5 more, which is nice because otherwise there are often long and winding lines that I have stood in for 2-3 hours waiting for a bus during busy traveled holidays.

There is no wifi, there is no power. The seats are cramped. The drivers are annoying and the buses are nearly always full. Occasionally the driver will feel the need to put on a movie that no one wants to watch, and crank the volume. They make stops halfway through the trip, and occasionally stop in Newton. Beware, because there are Boston/NYC routes that are up to seven hours long due to making 5-10 stops along the way. Do not book that route! Most of the buses are older and it just really isn’t a fun experience.

Between having more pricing options than Windows Vista, unfriendly employes, no amenities, and old buses I’m going to give them a C-. It could be worse, but it sure could be a lot better too. The only upsides are traveling between indoors locations (although I’d rather be outside than in Port Authority late at night) and that they run buses until very late at night and almost hourly.

Fung Wah/Chinatown

The Fung Wah now operates out of South Station, and drops off in Chinatown near the Brooklyn Bridge. The bus’s line has a history of being unsafe, potentially operating outside the boundaries of fully legal and is rumored to be poorly insured. The main rumor I’ve heard is that they used to operate as a “tour bus” to keep insurance and other requirements lower with less restrictions. Either way, taking the Fung Wah is an experience. The pricing used to be the lowest out there, but now with Mega and Bolt offering as low as $1 tickets, this is no longer the case.

The bus used to run from Chinatown Boston to Chinatown NYC, both being outdoor locations. The people working for the bus line speak English very poorly and don’t attempt to understand you or make themselves understandable. I’m sure it is incredibly insensitive of me, but I’m still shocked how long people can live in a country and not pick up the language.

I haven’t taken it in a few years, but I remember it being cramped, with an odd smell, poor seats, horrid customer service, and them driving faster than every other car on the road. I like going fast, but not that fast in a bus. Sure enough, there are plenty of Chinese who take the Chinatown bus (which I don’t mind of course) but it certainly is a different group of people than the 20 and 30-somethings that take the other bus lines. There are no amenities on the bus.

The worst time I had on the Fung Wah was when I went down to NYC for the day, and I bought a cello from a friend. It was an entry level instrument in a soft case. When I tried to board the Chinatown bus they told me to throw it under the bus in the luggage bin. This would have certainly resulted in the instrument being destroyed completely, but they just kept saying, “Put under bus, put under bus”. I asked if I could buy a second ticket for the seat beside me, and they said no since the bus was full. No refunds on my ticket either of course. I was luckily able to fit the cello behind the back seat on the bus, near the bathroom and out of harm’s way.

If you’re thinking of taking the Chinatown bus, ask yourself why? I give it a D-. It could be worse, but I’d have to get creative with ideas for how they could. Maybe its gotten better since they are now a bit more legit and operating out of South Station (perhaps authorities have pushed them a bit). But unless your final destination is Chinatown NYC, then I see little reason to take this bus line. There are a few other ‘Chinatown’ lines, but I don’t think any of them are any better, if not a bit worse.

Final Thoughts

No one expects bus travel to be a joyride. I have no idea what a bus costs, or what its licensing and operating costs are so I can’t say exactly what I expect out of each of these lines. Certainly some could improve on customer service (smiles are free!), as there are literally millions of people out there that need jobs and could work at ticket counters and could put forward a more customer friendly attitude. I can’t imagine that wifi setups are all that expensive for these buses, nor would putting power outlets in every bus. I would absolutely love to find a bus line that had seats as nice as coach on an airline even, but I might be asking for a bit much. I’ll give Limoliner a shot. Tickets are about $70 each way, but I’ve heard great things. Maybe in the seat, some of the bus lines can put in cupholders?

Happy travels.