Chinatown bus

I know there have been, let’s call it, some issues with the Chinatown bus service. I liked when it was called Sunshine Tours, or similar. Sure, there are more comfortable (and some, ahem!, safer) ways of going to NY. But my daughter, Teruha, and I used to like going to NY, with the styrofoam coolers of eels, scampi and fish heads in the aisles. Were those scampi? Were they what the Italians call aragostelle (whip lobsters)? For a picture of the February esoteric culinary reference, see below, for a great place to eat them see here, and for an unorthodox recipe see here).

Then there are the passengers, for example, the Chinese women of a “certain age”, as the French like to put it, who fall asleep, heads slumping onto your shoulder. I mean, what do you do? Do you wake them up? Do you give up on reading? Do you talk a little loud to see if, maybe, you can wake them without being rude? Be nice, the kid is watching…

Such problems. Such a thought-provoking ride. Good fun with a kid. Real life. Beyond the adventure, it’s as fast as the train, and cheap.

Then there are the policy lessons. See Bob Poole’s article on the trend in inter-city bus lines in his newsletter Surface Transportation Innovations. From the December issue:

One of the justifications offered for U.S. taxpayers to subsidize Amtrak is the idea that lower-income people (students, immigrants, the retired, etc.) need an affordable alternative to using the airlines for inter-city travel…

This decade has also witnessed a proliferation of new inter-city bus companies… They seem to be following in the footsteps of low-cost air carriers, by thinking outside the box to cut costs dramatically. The largest such company is Megabus, a subsidiary of the U.K.’s Stagecoach Group plc, which cut its teeth in Britain’s deregulated bus market. Megabus offers a few seats on every bus for a $1 fare, and uses pricing similar to that of the airlines…

All booking is done online, minimizing staff costs, and the company has no stations, picking up customers at known curbside locations. Thus far, the company is offering inter-city service in 10 states, three in the west and seven in the Midwest. There are 23 cities in the network…

In the northeast, several companies offer bus service between Chinatowns in various cities. The largest of these seems to be Chinatown Bus (Chinatown-bus.com), connecting Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Fares vary, with “typical” one-way fares ranging from $12 New York-Philadelphia to $20 New York-DC.

Another bus company, Vamoose, offers express service between Manhattan and two DC suburbs—Bethesda, MD and Arlington, VA for $25. Private companies are even moving into urban markets. Spanish Transportation Corporation of Paterson, NJ now runs 130 commuter buses into Manhattan each day, on three different routes. The company has grown from a van service with 14 vans in 1993 to a sizeable enterprise today…

As with low-cost airlines that sprang up after deregulation, their very existence debunks the idea that airlines or intercity surface transportation or local transit is some kind of natural monopoly that must be controlled by the government…

There’s lots of talk about the $1.4 billion (to start) rail line to New Bedford, another to Springfield. Why not pull private bus companies together and ask them what they need in order to make such a network of bus lines feasible? Would be cheaper and much more achievable given the recent announcement of the MBTA’s massive deficit.