Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Airlines stink, but so do AMTRAK and Greyhound

People gripe about the airlines for various reasons, and I think rightly so. But after having done some traveling on AMTRAK and via Greyhound bus, I'm surprised there aren't more gripes about these folks as well here.

Having taken Greyhound buses in various places east of the Mississippi over the past couple years, I was not surprised about the dirtiness of the buses (the one from St. Louis to Chicago was the grossest I've ever seen) and terminals as well as the scuzziness of the ridership for the most part. What did surprise me were two things:

-with the exception of the Boston to New York run, Greyhound is never, ever even remotely on time. It's standard procedure for their buses to be at least an hour and sometimes several hours late. The absolute worse was Atlanta to Savannah, which even though it originated there, left well over two hours late -- and from what I heard from the person in front of me, this always happens. Always. It's not like they're waiting for an en route bus to get there or anything (the Atlanta/Savannah drivers -- yes there were two on board -- also got lost and couldn't figure out how to shut off the freezing air blowing like a gale through the bus, plus got in an ugly shouting match with some riders when they wouldn't allow the brief scheduled break for a smoke or pee in Macon). Traffic is one thing, but the problem never seems to be this on delays. They're just slow loading people and slow covering ground, plus drivers seem to take long breaks at stops when they can do so -- nice if you're on time, maddening if you're already horribly late. Look, I say if you're going to be this late, why keep up the pretense? Be realistic in your schedule, and be fair to the passengers. I should add that when I've ridden Megabus, it is always on time, and when I've had the choice, I've chosen them.

-maybe this is to be expected given the clientele, but in various cities (most notably Lexington, KY and Chicago, less so in Cincinnati), the concept of a line to board the bus is a joke, and boarding instead becomes a rugby scrum or Filene's basement sale dash. No one working the terminals seems to care, either. And this is exacerbated in Chicago by the fact that for those traveling to Milwaukee, these folks travel aboard the same bus as those to Minneapolis, and all the Minnesota based people get on first -- then if there's any room, they let Milwaukee bound folks board -- and no extra buses either if there's no room, which at least they'll do out of Cincinnati.

Seriously, when you do a Google search under "I don't give a damn," it wouldn't surprise me to see Greyhound Bus come up first.

Is AMTRAK any better? Not much, except for the Northeast corridor area, which has been on time recently. As it was explained to me by a conductor when I was riding the Cardinal between Chicago and New York, they own the track in the Northeast and have options if there's a delay. But in most of the rest of the country, they share track with freight trains, and even though they're supposed to get passing priority, they never do. The result is frequent delays of 2 or more hours on everything. Only one of four AMTRAK trips I took outside the Northeast arrived on time -- the rest were anywhere from one and a half to three hours late. Admittedly, the train is cleaner and attracts a less grungy ridership, so there's a little improvement. But no one seems to care here, either.

It's enough to make you stay home, for heaven's sake.

OK, rant over. :P