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Overheard in D.C.: Careful What You Wish For
Before 2 p.m. on Monday, I stood at Todays Bus’s New York stop at 3 Pike Street in New York City's Chinatown, waiting to return to Washington. But my bus was nowhere to be seen. At 2, Eastern Travel came and went. New Century sat around the corner filling up. Hawkers for both stood by slinging tickets. BoltBus and Megabus, which I wish I had booked instead, were miles uptown and probably sold out anyway. And after nearly an hour and not even a representative for my carrier in sight, I put my return ticket in my wallet, pulled out another $20, and grabbed the next New Century coach back to D.C.
It turns out that Todays Bus wouldn't come that day, didn't come the day before, and won't be there tomorrow. Todays Bus, as a separate entity anyway, is no more. The leader of DC-NY Chinatown travel when the phenomenon was in its infancy merged with Eastern Travel, a subsidiary of Coach USA, over the weekend. Passengers looking for one of their dirty, plain white buses (Todays was perhaps the only carrier left that regularly ran buses sans any logo) were supposed to get on an Eastern coach yesterday. But good luck figuring that out. In the chaos of yesterday's Chinatown bus scene, no one from Coach USA or Todays Bus was on hand to fully explain the situation to the confused and growing masses. Eastern Coach ticket slingers were on hand, but had little to offer in the way of information. As 3 p.m. neared and I pulled away on my bus, nearly 100 people, presumably a mix of Eastern and former Todays riders, were on the sidewalk waiting. It turns out that Todays tickets were and will be valid on the Eastern buses. However, it is unclear whether Eastern added service over the weekend to accommodate holiday weekend passengers.
Eastern Travel, which had grown to rival Todays Bus in recent years when both were independently operated, was acquired by Coach USA in September. It is still run as Eastern through D.C.'s Chinatown, with an office and pickups at 715 H Street NW. The acquisition was made with little fanfare or publicity. But Eastern tickets are now sold on handheld credit card machines printing Coach USA receipts, and the WiFi runs on the Megabus network. Megabus is also owned by Coach USA.
Todays's website makes no explicit mention of the latest acquisition. However, their times and locations now match completely with those of Eastern. They will no longer run from their long held 610 I Street location or share an office and alley way with newcomer MVP Bus there. On the intercity bus clearinghouse website GoToBus.com, entries are now listed as Eastern/Todays.
In other weekend intercity bus news, newcomer Tripper Bus kicked off Rosslyn/Bethesda - NYC service on Friday. The independent carrier touts “deluxe coach services” with amenities including free wireless (a requirement to compete these days), electrical outlets (a relative rarity aside from BoltBus), and professional, friendly drivers and staff (hit or miss with pretty much every bus company). Standard fares are $25 each way, though $1, $5, and $10 tickets can be had for the first three advance purchasers on each departure, respectively.
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Actually, New Century, at least, also runs a lot of unmarked buses. It's just hard to notice them because, well... you know.
I can read Chinese, and on the side of that bus, it says "This bus runs on clean natural baby bones."
....and that's why i rode bolt bus yesterday. i like knowing that the bus company will still be there in the time between when i purchase my ticket and when the bus rolls out. at least if bolt went under, they'd probably have a press person getting the word out.
(and yeah, josh, the bus was sold out, so good thing you didn't try to trek uptown.)
i only ride bolt bus now unless its sold out. the chinatown bus people are nice but they are disorganized all the time.
So what your saying is that it was a good thing that I missed my 10:30 bus and just grabbed a 11 pm New Century Bus instead?
As for the other fancy pants buses -- Bolt etc. -- have horrible travel times. I want to leave in the middle of the night or early in the morning and come back at the same. Who wants to spend the middle of the day on a bus? Chinatown buses are still the best. And if you miss your bus? There's always like 20 other buses around that would gladly take you. Unlike the one time I didn't make the Greyhound first-come-first serve bus (by 1 friggin person) and was told that all 20 of us left could gladly wait 6 hours until the next bus! Thanks Greyhound! Of course all this would be mute if I could just find a job in NY -- ha, ha good luck with that, me! A chinatown bus between me and the boyfriend is starting to wear thin.
well, i don't know what bus line you're thinking of, dc1974, but bolt bus leaves every half hour. no 6-hour waits between buses.
yeah, if you're looking for overnight travel, you might be out of luck, but the express that i took (no stops at all) made it in less than advertised time from NYC to DC.
During the week the last BoltBus leaves for DC at 5:30 PM, on the weekends it's 8 PM- If they had one that left NYC after 10 PM It'd would probably be a fulltime sellout.
Don't forget to take this opportunity to let us know that the Chinatown buses in San Francisco were sooooooo much better than the ones running between New York and DC.
Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/user/PikeStreetChinaTown - A little perspective from our side of the fence. BTW - it is against their permit to sell tickets on the sidewalk and wave next time when you're in town