August 9, 200519 yr They've announced the elimination of at least a half-dozen stops in Indiana, too, including some sizable college towns. I think Muncie and Bloomington are on the list, and neither has any other kind of scheduled public intercity service.
August 9, 200519 yr And the Mississippi Delta (I wonder what Clarksdale will do with their soon-to-be abandoned Grayhound station) :cry:
August 10, 200519 yr Shitty! :( Here's the full list: CLOSINGS AUG. 17 • Bowling Green • Marietta CLOSINGS JUNE 21 • Apple Creek • Circleville • Cleveland Amtrak • Columbus OSU • Dalton • Defiance • Delaware • Lucasville • Mount Eaton • Napoleon • Orrville • Piketon • Sidney • Waverly • Wilmington • Wooster
August 10, 200519 yr OSU had Greyhound service?!? "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
August 10, 200519 yr OSU had Greyhound service?!? See. It's Greyhounds fault for not alerting the public to their service options. Thus bus attendance dwendled.
August 11, 200519 yr Hmm...the paper said "OSU" but all I can find is Greyhound at 111 E. Town St. Cleveland's lists 1465 Chester Ave.
August 11, 200519 yr Hmm...the paper said "OSU" but all I can find is Greyhound at 111 E. Town St. Cleveland's lists 1465 Chester Ave. yeah, that's the big art-deco-y station, i don't recall ever seeing a greyhound at the amtrak or any listing for it, oh well.........
August 11, 200519 yr I remember seeing Greyhound at Cleveland's Amtrak Station, probably in the mid-1980s. I had first seen the station when it was nearly new about 1979, and had been impressed with how clean, attractive and well-kept it was compared with a lot of Amtrak facilities. On a visit a few years later I went back and saw that Greyhound was sharing the facility. I'm not sure if all Greyhound trips stopped there, or if it was just the runs that functioned as part of Amtrak's train-bus "Thruway Service." I know that most of that service is being dropped as a result of the Greyhound cutbacks. At that time, the station had been dragged down to typical bus station standards -- dingy, littered, with smudged glass suraces and a generally grimy, neglected ambiance. The few passengers there looked like they were en route taking their indigent homelessness to some other town. I remember they had the bus-station chairs with the individual pay TVs attached to the arms. It was pretty depressing.
August 24, 200519 yr A farewell from the 8/19/05 PD: Goodbye to Greyhound Small towns bid a teary farewell to bus service Friday, August 19, 2005 Bill Lubinger Plain Dealer Reporter Bowling Green - They shared little, except the last Greyhound bus out of town. Rebecca Harper, having finally found a direction, spent Tuesday morning enrolling as a 32-year-old freshman at Bowling Green State University. She needed a ride back home to her 7-year-old daughter and mother in Cleveland. Faheem Yousef, a graduate biology student at the college in this northwestern Ohio town, was headed for Toledo to visit a friend. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: [email protected], 216-999-5531 http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/112444405578540.xml&coll=2
September 11, 200519 yr From the 9/10/05 Minneapolis Star-Tribune via the Cincinnati Post: Former airline exec works to turn around Greyhound By Neal St. Anthony Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune Steve Gorman, a onetime Northwest Airlines executive, is making some headway in his efforts to revive the Big Grey Dog. In 2003, Gorman was recruited as chief executive to turn around the intercity bus line that had become synonymous with musty terminals, poor service and red ink. http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050910/BIZ/509100322/1001/RSS04
October 8, 200519 yr >since when did they stop at cleveland amtrack in the first place? I was on a bus that stopped there in 2003. In fact if you scheduled an Amtrak trip from Cincinnati to New York City you first took Greyhound from Cincinnati to Cleveland's Amtrak station as part of your train ticket.
October 9, 200519 yr Or you could just take the train directly from Cincinnati to New York City, if you're traveling on the same day(s) that the thrice-weekly Cardinal is operating. KJP "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 23, 200619 yr CHICAGO (March 22, 2006) - Coach USA, today announced the unveiling of megabus.com, a non-stop intercity express bus company that will offer fares to travelers as low as $1 via the Internet. Passengers can begin booking today for travel on April 10, 2006 and beyond at www.megabus.com. megabus.com, a subsidiary of Coach USA, will offer daily non-stop, express bus services between Chicago and eight other Midwest cities, including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis. Service will also operate between Indianapolis and Cincinnati and between Indianapolis and Columbus. megabus.com operates similar bus services in the United Kingdom, and Chicago will be the first megabus.com hub in North America. This new transportation option will offer customers who act early a chance to purchase tickets for as low as $1. "Passengers who book travel far enough in advance will have the opportunity to receive low-cost tickets," said Brian Souter, Chief Executive Officer of Stagecoach Group. "Each megabus.com trip will provide tickets for $1 and other customers will pay competitive fares via the Internet." Booking for megabus.com travel is done solely via the Internet, at www.megabus.com.
March 23, 200619 yr Cleveland.com News Update New intercity bus service coming to Cleveland (4:18 p.m.) A company that provides bus service in Great Britain is coming to America, and Cleveland will be one of its stops. Offering fares as low as $1 for nonstop travel to and from Chicago from eight Midwest cities, Megabus.com will rely on Internet booking. The service is due to start running April 10. Besides a few $1 discount seats, regular bookings will cost up to $27.50 one-way. The other cities in the service: Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis. The company doesn't plan to use terminals. According to the Megabus Web site, Cleveland passengers will be picked up at the RTA stop at West Huron Road and West Third Street downtown, by Tower City. MORE: http://www.cleveland.com
March 24, 200619 yr Anything that makes it easier to get around without a car in the Midwest is a good thing. This will connect very well with Cleveland RTA buses and trains, as well as Akron Metro buses, Laketran and even the Portage Area RTA buses to Kent -- all of which converge on Public Square. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 24, 200619 yr Interesting idea on the fare structure, having fares increase the closer to the day of departure. I also like the fact that they seem to be starting with a limited market instead of getting too far ahead of themselves. Greyhound's given bus travel a bad name so it should be interesting to see if this thing takes off.
March 24, 200619 yr Yeah, I think this sounds great, but I can hardly believe it. You know I checked out the trip planner for a future date to see what the catch is. Sure enough, it was $1! and I think that includes your luggage fare, but not your reservation (but even that I think is only fifty cents). I mean to go all the way to Cleveland from Chicago for only $1.50! I pay that to go Shaker Square from Tower City. Oh, I wonder if your return trip costs a lot more. I bet it has to. This is all so strange, and it sounds too good to be true. For a bus it doesn't take that long either. It looks like the trip to Chicago on these buses is only 6 hours. Downtown Cleveland to downtown Chicago with a couple breaks here and there would take a little over five. This sounds much better than greyhound! If this is really a feasible business, then I'm sure they are looking to expand. Cleveland wold probably become a really good transit hub once again! Halfway between Detroit and Pittsburg, halfway between Cincinnati and Buffalo, and halfway between Chicago and New York. It sounds exciting to think about.
March 24, 200619 yr For a bus it doesn't take that long either. It looks like the trip to Chicago on these buses is only 6 hours. Downtown Cleveland to downtown Chicago with a couple breaks here and there would take a little over five. This sounds much better than greyhound! Buses just aren't as quick and nimble as cars, even if they operate nonstop. Plus, this is a new service, so they're probably just being conservative with the schedule. And sometimes they put some padding in the schedule to account for construction, weather, accidents, etc. Of course, some of Greyhound's buses take more than eight hours to travel between Cleveland and Chicago, while Amtrak takes between 6 and 7 hours (a lot of that is padding too). "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 24, 200619 yr How do these guys make a profit? It's a great bargain for a traveler, but $1.00 from Columbus to Chicago? If this really works, it could be a greater feeder into the Ohio Hub System, which actually does call for feeder buses that serve the high speed rail system.
March 24, 200619 yr The nice thing about this service as far as I can tell so far from the little bit of trip planning are the reasonable times the buses arrive and depart Cleveland. I have never used greyhound or Amtrak, but considered it several times, and was curious about it. The timings available for departure from Cleveland and arrival in other cities is almost pointless. It is in the 12:30 AM to 4 AM range. I think its unacceptable. If this really works, it could be a greater feeder into the Ohio Hub System, which actually does call for feeder buses that serve the high speed rail system. I don't know if this fortunate or not, but it seems like these bus routes wouldn't be appropriate for the feeder routes that the Ohio Hub Rail plan calls for. They seem to be strictly express buses. The line running from Cleveland to Chicago won't even stop in Toledo for instance to pick up new passengers.
March 24, 200619 yr How do these guys make a profit? It's a great bargain for a traveler, but $1.00 from Columbus to Chicago? Seems to me the bidding starts at $1! Early birds get the $1 fare. Late-comers get to pay the max. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 24, 200619 yr I've never taken Greyhound but from I understand, the worst part of it is that the bus will get off the highway in some podunk town that's on the route as a stop, and stop whether they need to do a pickup/drop-off or not. The idea of a non-stop express bus would have some appeal for me (though I always prefer to fly). clevelandskyscrapers.com Cleveland Skyscrapers on Instagram
March 24, 200619 yr It may take some pretty good marketing and some time to overcome the stigma that midwesterners assign to buses, whether intercity or local transit. They're generally regarded as a safety net for people who can't afford a car or a plane ticket. Although it's been several years since I traveled much by Greyhound, my experience supported some of that feeling; too often, I ended up sitting beside someone who smelled like a bar and/or like they hadn't had a bath in a long time, or listening to some know-it-all hillbilly kid run his smart-ass mouth. Oh. Let's not forget the fat lady who takes up her seat plus half of mine. I realize that long-distance express service, especially if people can't just walk into a terminal and buy a ticket, won't attract a lot of that demographic, but it might be difficult for the bus line to transcend that image. A local charter operator known for quality service tried an O'Hare Express service between a downtown Fort Wayne hotel and O'Hare in Chicago, with free parking and curbside baggage checking and a fare of $40, compared with an air fare of $110. Connection time was competitive if you considered travel to the local airport, check-in, and hiking from one end of the O'Hare terminal to the other to make your connection. They ran six round trips per day, gave it a year to build ridership, advertised it well and promoted it through the travel agents, and the day I rode it there were six passengers. The driver said that was the most he had ever had on one trip. Even business travelers staying downtown chose paying for a ten-mile cab ride plus almost triple the fare for a ride in a small, noisy, smelly turboprop with frayed upholstery and fuel-stained carpet and tiny seats and no restroom over a more convenient, more comfortable bus ride.
March 24, 200619 yr Although with such cheap fares, you may get some interesting people riding. All they have to do is go to their local library to get the cheap web fares. And I wonder if you can pay your fare on the bus. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
April 11, 200619 yr Whoops! Megabus' Titanic miscalculation Runs out of gas on maiden trip to Chicago Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Henry J. Gomez Plain Dealer Reporter Megabus.com's maiden voyage from Cleveland to Chicago seemed doomed from the start, at least in the eyes of passenger Jim O'Hare. MORE: http://www.cleveland.com
April 12, 200619 yr Wow. Bad omen. Shall we start a pool and pick dates when we think they'll announce their closure?
April 12, 200619 yr Cant believe that. hope they dont run out of gas again. What can you expect from a company with such a cheap price.
April 12, 200619 yr Hey, Amtrak charges an arm and a leg sometimes and they do stupid stuff like that all the time! Here's a favorite example of mine: A few years ago, Amtrak put only one locomotive on a double-deck, 10-car train operating through hilly territory, and lo and behold, the locomotive's engine fried up. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
April 12, 200619 yr Cant believe that. hope they dont run out of gas again. What can you expect from a company with such a cheap price. Maybe they can adopt an even more innovative fare structure; cheap on-line fares, but if the bus runs out of fuel, the passengers have to pony up to buy more. Or have each passenger bring his own fuel, and then pay the driver by taking up a collection.
April 12, 200619 yr Perhaps the passengers could all get out an push. Would that qualify the bus as a hybrid?
April 12, 200619 yr Youse guyz are just too much! :cool2: "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
April 13, 200619 yr Dude! I saw one of these buses today. It was weird seeing it after all of the publicity it has gotten. It was going down 4th St. in Downtown Cincy. It doesn't look like and average Greyhound. It looked more like a newer model RV.
April 13, 200619 yr I too saw one of these buses yesterday driving home on I-74. They even have the big $1 logo on the side. Looked way nicer than a Greyhound. I just may have to ride one of these things in the coming weekends.
May 18, 200619 yr Seems that a no-frills bus service linking Chinatowns has now started between Cleveland and New York. So now we have them operating east and west from Cleveland, in addition to Megabus. See the message below... http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3128.msg98206#msg98206 In other news, it looks like the infamous "Chinatown bus" has arrived in Cleveland! I was over in Chinatown today and noticed some flyers posted for bus service between Cleveland and New York. It looks like the buses leave from Asia Plaza (E 30th and Payne), departing for NYC at either noon or midnight (unclear from the sign, which was in Chinese), and from NYC to Cleveland at 5 p.m. It looks like the bus stops in Youngstown en route, and coming back from NYC it continues from Cleveland to Akron and Canton. The company is called "Five Stars Travel." I called the numbers listed and from what I could understand -- no one spoke fluent English -- the buses leave daily except Fridays, and the fare is $55. I have no idea if that's one way or round-trip. These buses are infamous in New York for their incredibly cheap, incredibly unreliable service. They have also been connected with Asian gang activity. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
May 18, 200619 yr Thanks for posting here, KJP. Next time I'm at Asia Plaza, I'll try to ask the merchants for more details about the NYC bus.
May 23, 200619 yr Just a few weeks into the Cincinnati market, Megabus is shifting a few gears. A trip to Chicago for $1 remains the company's chief selling point. But although the company has had 500,000 hits on its Web site, it's doing some tweaking to get noticed. Megabus is, in fact, Internet based. It has no ticket counter or bus barn. Travelers log on to the Web site, lay out an interary, pay by credit card and get a confirmation number. Booking starts 45 days in advance. That's the best bet at snagging one of the handful of $1 seats to Indianapolis and Chicago. But even if you book last-minute, there are huge savings compared to Megabus' competitors. For example, a roundtrip ticket to Chicago would be $97 on Greyhound, but the Megabus trip is just $20. One couple in town from Indianapolis for the Reds game paid more for a hot pretzel and large Coke than the ride here: Their roundtrip ticket was $5.25 each. It's a kind of no-frills bus ride, but passenger Larry Matthews said the savings are worth it. "Well, there's a TV set in there, and there's a restroom. I don't know, what do you need?" he said. Megabus' chief operating officer told News 5 that the company would be making adjustments to its schedule after June 5. Meanwhile, Greyhound said Megabus hasn't had an effect on its business yet. MORE: http://news.yahoo.com/s/wlwt/20060523/lo_wlwt/9262469
May 23, 200619 yr I looked into it. I am taking the family to Chicago for Memorial Day weekend. I found my hotel on Priceline.com for under $100 a day one block from Michigan Avenue, now the problem $30 a day for parking. With that being said I was interested in traveling by train or Megabus - would never travel on Greyhound ever again. Problem is it only leaves at 6:20 at night... grrr It would cost the three of us $20 each for $60 round trip. Sounds like a good deal but I need better departures. :( http://www.megabus.com/us/schedules/cincinnati_chicago.php
May 24, 200619 yr I see the overnight trips between Chicago and Cleveland are being eliminated starting June 5th. That won't make a friend of mine in Chicago happy. That was the only transportation between the two cities that offered a schedule which worked for him. He gets off work at 10 p.m. CT in downtown Chicago, boards the bus for Cleveland at 11:35 p.m., and arrives at 7:15 a.m. At Public Square, he has the choice of the PARTA bus for Kent (when KSU is in session) or the Akron Metro bus for Chapel Hill during the summer (each departs around 8 a.m. from Public Square). "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
May 24, 200619 yr I looked into it. I am taking the family to Chicago for Memorial Day weekend. I found my hotel on Priceline.com for under $100 a day one block from Michigan Avenue, now the problem $30 a day for parking. With that being said I was interested in traveling by train or Megabus - would never travel on Greyhound ever again. Problem is it only leaves at 6:20 at night... grrr It would cost the three of us $20 each for $60 round trip. Sounds like a good deal but I need better departures. :( http://www.megabus.com/us/schedules/cincinnati_chicago.php Have you considered driving to South Bend or Michigan City, parking the car there, and taking the South Shore trains to Chicago? Holiday/weekend service runs every 2 hours all day, fares are cheap, and the Van Buren and Randolph Street stops are right on Michigan Avenue in the loop. Parking is free at Michigan City (I prefer to use the stop at the railroad offices/shops at Carroll Avenue), and the long-term lot at South Bend airport, the easternmost stop for the trains, is fairly cheap. Schedule & fare info for South Shore trains is here.
May 24, 200619 yr Discount bus service fails to draw riders in Columbus U.K.-based megabus.com will stop service to Chicago June 5 Wednesday, May 24, 2006 Paul Wilson THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH A bus service between Columbus and Chicago with rates as low as $1 starts in April. How long does it take before the service is canceled? If you answered less than two months, you’d be right. megabus.com, which began carrying passengers between several Midwestern cities and Chicago on April 10, will end service in central Ohio on June 5. Service from Chicago to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis will continue amid growing interest. But only about a quarter as many passengers used megabus.com from Columbus than in the company’s next-smallest markets, said Dale Moser, president and chief operating officer of the Stagecoach Group, megabus.com’s United Kingdom-based parent. MORE: http://www.dispatch.com/business-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/24/20060524-D1-01.html
May 24, 200619 yr Have you considered driving to South Bend or Michigan City, parking the car there, and taking the South Shore trains to Chicago? Holiday/weekend service runs every 2 hours all day, fares are cheap, and the Van Buren and Randolph Street stops are right on Michigan Avenue in the loop. Parking is free at Michigan City (I prefer to use the stop at the railroad offices/shops at Carroll Avenue), and the long-term lot at South Bend airport, the easternmost stop for the trains, is fairly cheap. Schedule & fare info for South Shore trains is here. With all due respect, I would never do that. From Cincinnati I go through Indy to Chicago on I-74 to I-65 and I have no desire to backtrack just for the purpose of taking a bus. Even if the stop was in Indy I wouldn't bother. I would cater the thought of using a bus from Cincinnati but if that didn't work I would drive. I was also pricing Amtrak but I have to leave at 3AM to take the Chicago trip which is crazy!
May 24, 200619 yr COTA service in Columbus has been so terrible for so long that it would take an act of God to get your average Columbusite to believe in bus travel again.
May 24, 200619 yr From the Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0605200141may21,1,6813122.story?coll=chi-homepagetravel-hed A cheap bus ride and no chickens With fares as low as $1, Megabus delivers--in style By Phil Marty Tribune staff reporter Published May 21, 2006 [email protected] ----------
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