coach travel in the U.S.?
Apr 22nd, 2002, 04:43 AM
#5
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Don't know when or where you are planning to travel or where you call home, but bus travel in this country is generally not great. It is not as inexpensive as it used to be. In many cities, the bus terminals (stations) are in really gross areas. People who ride buses are often young adults or those who can not afford to travel another way. Buses usually travel the Interstate highways, which do not offer much for window viewing. Still, it would be an opportunity to actually see the countryside rather than flying over it and you would get to meet some Americans. Greyhound used to have passes that allowed you unlimited travel within a region or the whole country - I have no idea if they still do.
Apr 22nd, 2002, 05:17 AM
#6
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Yes, Mel, Greyhound still offer passes with unlimited travel to various regions (including Canada) for anything up to 30 (or maybe even 45) days. Their website (www.greyhound.com) has all the details and prices. The "minor" bus companies often accept these passes also (sometimes only after you have talked the Greyhound people into writing you a special ticket). I have used this pass on two occasions, in 1991 and 2001, and it is certainly a good way (as Gail suggests) to see the country, even though it is not as cheap as it once was. Gail is right again when she says that the system has deteriorated... apparently the company has changed hands and this has involved a lot of cost-cutting... many of the expresses are now multi-stop "locals" (involving many changes of bus, sometimes at 3 or 4 a.m., and often there won't be a bus for you to change to for a couple of hours), some destinations have been relinquished to companies that don't take the pass, and actually joining a bus can be a traumatic experience, as the stations frequently are overcrowded, under-patrolled, have minimal or confusing directions, and you sometimes have to queue for hours without even being sure that (a) you are in the correct line (b) the scheduled bus will ever arrive and (c) you will manage to get a seat when it finally does (don't get too confident about being up-front in the queue, as there is a lot of queue-jumpimg when loading is imminent.) The harried staff often respond to queries with rudeness that would not be tolerated in most places... but, in fairness, some of the people they have to deal with give them a hard time. The terminal toilets are uniformly dreadful, but that was true in 1991 also. My advice is, regardless of what time your bus departs, get to the station an hour and a half early. If you travel light so that you can take your bags into the cabin with you, that is an advantage, as security loading the bags is not all that great (at one crowded station intending passengers were told to pass their bags over the heads of the twelve-deep crowd in front so that someone out in the bus bay could load them on a trolley and take them to be loaded..... the trusting souls who did this had no way of assuring themselves that the bus their luggage was loaded onto and the bus they would eventually be boarding were one and the same. At just about every station there was someone in the inevitable information queue looking for luggage that had not turned up.)
I have made it all sound pretty terrible, but in Greyhound's defence I must say that my family did this for five weeks in December last year, and we always arrived safely and reasonably happily, even if we missed a few connections because of their collapsing schedules. We learned to sleep on the bus every third night or so, thus saving on accommodation. We learned also to ensure we knew exactly WHERE the bus was going to deposit us when we arrived: in San Francisco you're right in town, in Los Angeles you wouldn't want to know (we asked which way to wlak to get into town, and were told, "Whatever you do, don't walk.") And in Lake Havasu City you are unceremoniously dumped at a roadside service station that must be four miles out of town, and then they won't let you back on with your Ameripass! So it's a mixed bag, this Greyhound experience... but you are unlikely to forget it!
I have made it all sound pretty terrible, but in Greyhound's defence I must say that my family did this for five weeks in December last year, and we always arrived safely and reasonably happily, even if we missed a few connections because of their collapsing schedules. We learned to sleep on the bus every third night or so, thus saving on accommodation. We learned also to ensure we knew exactly WHERE the bus was going to deposit us when we arrived: in San Francisco you're right in town, in Los Angeles you wouldn't want to know (we asked which way to wlak to get into town, and were told, "Whatever you do, don't walk.") And in Lake Havasu City you are unceremoniously dumped at a roadside service station that must be four miles out of town, and then they won't let you back on with your Ameripass! So it's a mixed bag, this Greyhound experience... but you are unlikely to forget it!
Apr 23rd, 2002, 04:12 AM
#8
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A partial answer - the train is certainly an option Boston-NY-Orlando (don't hink it goes as far south as Miami or if route includes Charleston). The train is called Amtrak (they have a website)and is not up to European standards (we Americans are surgically attached to our cars and few will take long-distance ground transportation.) From there I might fly out west (it is 2500-3000 miles - a long time on a train or bus). Sorry - don't know about Western trains, but I have heard there is one that does coast of California that is scenic.
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chrisj
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Jun 7th, 2003 04:52 PM
