I remember when taking the bus was a quiet experience where a young Marine could sleep off a hangover on the way back to Camp Lejeune from Chapel Hill. Carolina college girls used to love Marines figuratively and literally; maybe they still do.
I have ridden a few gray dogs in my life for various reasons with mixed results some I don’t want o talk about. But, as airplane travel became more affordable, I and most other folks switched to the friendly skies and thus travel by bus dropped in quality of service and the social status of the majority of its passengers.
Used to be you rode the bus because it was a safe and affordable option; today you ride the bus if you can’t afford anything else. It is now the travel medium on the working poor and the dregs of society.
That’s too bad because with the rise in resistance to ridiculous TSA screening methods in airports (coming soon to a train depot near you), Bus travel is at a Y in the road that could mean resurgence in bus travel or the final death blow to an American industry.
I recently had an adult daughter take a trip on Greyhound, and to be honest, it wasn’t the best experience in her young life. While nothing terrible happened to her the company did leave her stranded in Columbus SC with less than an hours ride left on her trip, telling she would have to wait six hours for another bus.
It did not matter that she was late and missed her connection due to their incompetence and it did not matter that she was young and traveling alone. In fact nothing much mattered to them, as they told my wife, “Nothing is guaranteed.”
Ahh, service after the sale, an American tradition.
No, these knuckle-heads know that the people riding the dog are only doing it out of necessity and so they can treat them like crap and get away with it.
What they could do, if they had any business sense is to go about an entire rebranding of their services. Make it safe again, make it clean and reliable; just doing this, they would see an increase in travel by people who don’t want to deal with the hassles of air travel anymore, but don’t want to drive.
Short trips to see family, vacations, not to mention business communing could all be part of the return to financial stability in a harsh competitive economy.
Right now every politician and celebrity with a cause is doing a “bus tour.” While they think it makes them look in touch with the people it only makes them look like they are stooping to touch the unwashed masses. And I guarantee that neither Barack Obama nor Sarah Palin would plop their gold plated asses down on your average Greyhound bus if you had a gun pointed at them; less chance of succumbing to the gunshot than of catching something nasty you know.
Myself I will not fly again until the TSA ceases to exist, but I can’t get on another bus either. That leaves passenger trains until the TSA is dug in there too, and then I guess I’ll just have to hop freight trains and start singing Woody Guthrie songs.
After all, this land was made for you and me.
