This is a product endorsement. I wanted to go down to NYC from Boston for a few days, quite spontaneously. So I grabbed a hotel room via priceline at 2:30 in the afternoon; and then I had to find a way to get to down there.
For the past few years there has been an bloom of extremely cheap bus rides to NYC; these run from chinatown to chinatown. The press reports are totally wild-west. Fires, sleeping drivers, gun battles between competitors! But yeah, it’s cheap!
Recently the more established bus companies have decided they need to compete and two new lines have entered the competition. Boltbus and Megabus they both sell a few tickets for a few bucks, i.e. as a teaser rate; but their full fares are cheap too.
So I went downtown and into the bus station and found BoltBus guy sitting in his bus, they leave every hour on the hour. He took my $20 and I climbed in. It would have cheaper if I’d bought the ticket online but it wasn’t clear which one I was going to catch.
Very nice bus, nice drivers, very comfortable smooth fast ride. The trip back was even smoother, taking a little under 4 hours. For both trips the bus was about 30% or less full; so plenty of room to stretch out.
But most importantly free WIFI and a plug! On the trip down a guy behind me drew a crowd as they all watched the Celtics live in the basketball playoffs; via the WIFI.
Obligatory local joke: “No, the most important thing was it didn’t catch on fire!” Glad you had an enjoyable trip – the free wifi, and potential to not be on a crowded bus means the nicer bus lines may be real competitors to the train someday. The cost savings is significant, and if the niceness of the experience – being able to work – starts to approach the space you can get on the train, it will become interesting.
How was the wifi reliability and bandwidth?
Why is the title Boltbus when you say you ended up taking Megabus. Also, did you post this from the bus? Curious minds want to know.
Jon – opps; fixed.
Shane – the bandwidth was fine, certainly better than the hotel’s. My ssh/emacs session was slightly less than perfectly smooth but I was pleased. Browsing Google maps about 15% of the tiles failed to load; but I think that wasn’t the WIFI.
I found it a perfect substitute for the train, much to my surprise.