As Dale Bozzio used to sing, “Nobody walks in LA.” Nobody (in the middle class) takes a bus or train either. On the east coast, things are a bit different. Anyway, Greyhound is now facing competition from buslines that go from one Chinatown to another. From On the East Coast, Chinese Buses Give Greyhound a Run:
A bus pulled out of South Station terminal on a Friday morning and headed for New York City. Its windshield was cracked, its speedometer motionless. Orange peel graced its seat trays, and its safety warnings consisted of a single sign: “Watch your step.”The driver said not a word until he stopped the bus outside Cheng’s Driving School in New York City’s Chinatown. Then, as passengers gathered their bags, he stood up and screamed, “No parking here! You get out!”
The bus, according to the lettering near its luggage compartment, was owned by “Kristine Travel” and operated by “Lucky River,” though the sign on its side said “Travel Pack” and its ticket agents called the company “Lucky Star.” Its price for the trip from Boston to New York — 187 miles in 4 1/2 hours — was $15.
That may seem an impossibly low fare, yet another carrier on the Boston to New York run has lately started charging $15, too. The name on the side of its buses is Greyhound.
Greyhound Lines Inc. is a $1 billion company owned by Laidlaw International Inc., a $4.6 billion company. The only national bus network, “big dog” was racing along America’s highways even before Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert hopped on a Greyhound in 1934′s “It Happened One Night.” But today, a dozen or so Chinese-owned bus lines are giving the dog a run for its money.
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“If Greyhound wasn’t a giant, maybe they could beat us,” Shui Ming Zheng says through an interpreter. “But because they are a giant, they cannot.”
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“Common sense tells me that if JetBlue profits on a $79 fare to Buffalo, we can profit on a $15 fare to D.C.,” says Mr. Wong, who handles management. “We copied the airline concept to a bus line.” Greyhound, he adds, “really feels the pain.”