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The NYC-DC bus fare wars have a new player: Greyhound division BoltBus will be launching service on March 27 and has started to sell tickets for as low as $1 (plus a 50 cent booking fee).
DCist explains BoltBus "operates on the EasyJet principle, where tickets start out dirt cheap and get more expensive as the bus gets fuller. I just purchased a ticket for $7, and if I had been willing to leave on a Saturday afternoon the same weekend, it would have cost me only $1."
BoltBus will offer eight trips daily; there are two stops in Manhattan - Canal & 6th Avenue and 33rd Street and 11th Avenue - and the stop in DC is 11th and G. There's a frequent rider rewards program - take 8 trips, get a free round-trip ticket - and WiFi. (DC2NY, which charges $22-25 one-way, also has WiFi.)
This much is possible: The buses will be cleaner than Chinatown buses.
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Interesting Concept, but will they necessarily be cleaner? The cheaper the transportation, the dirtier the passengers = dirty bus.
BoltBus ...has started to sell tickets for as law a $1
maybe as low as $1?
we're getting there... it now reads "as low a $1"
I'd rather just deal with the $22 cost, have included wifi, and not have sticky shit all over the bottoms of my shoes- all the while dealing with some crying babies and someone's rancid armits.
armpits.
but...i don't want to go to dc and i don't want them to come here. this is terrible news.
but how good are the times when the welcome relief of the rancid smell on the bus comes in the form of cigarette smoke coming from the bathroom.
Are you guys kidding?
I doubt this will be any worse than any other bus in terms of cleanliness. This is Greyhound, not some bum who bought a bus. I'm assuming it's been started to put the ChinaTown and DCtoNY buses out of business so I'm sure they're going to put a lot of quality control into this.
If they wanted to continue to have a crappy overpriced bus service and make money, they could continue running their normal Greyhound service. If they don't impress people with this it's not going to do any good. I really doubt it's going to be as poorly maintained as you guys are expecting. But even if it is, I'd rather spend $1 to smell armpits for 4 hours than $35 to smell armpits for 4 hours.
This is publicity, and a way to steal the profits of companies who have been long stealing profits from them. That's it. It would ACTUALLY be a waste of money if it's worse than ChinaTown.
It will probably be safer than a Chinatown bus, since it is going to be a service of a known company compared to some fly by night.
Now if they could only do something like this with trains, which are much faster, but run by a crappy monopoly that has to subsidize foamer lines out west.
enjoy watching mothers beat their children on the way to the nations capital
its a way to put chinatown buses out of business. once they are out of business, they'll jack up all their prices again. only people who suffer at the end is the consumer.
will they be serving jolt?
DON'T TAKE BOLTBUS!!!THEY HAVE NO PHONE NUMBER TO CALL IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG AND THERE ARE PICKPOCKETS AT THE DC STOP which they don't tell you about until you are ALREADY ON THE BUS.
Have you ever had your driver tell you to check for your wallets after getting on any other form of transport? I think not!
Because they can't be contacted, I the police won't even allow me to REPORT that MY PHONE WAS STOLEN ON THE BUS because they insist I need to check there lost and found AND BOLTBUS DOESN'T HAVE ONE.
Yeah, $20 is cheap to travel, but NOT if you add the fact that PEOPLE STEAL PHONES AND IPODS AND WALLETS while waiting for the busses and there is NO ONE to report the problem to!
Bolt Bus is definitely one of the better quality bus lines. So is Megabus. A good place to find tickets on buses like those is BusJunction.