BoltBus is expanding to California

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rickycourtney

Conductor
Joined
Dec 21, 2012
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Fresno, CA
They made the announcement this morning.

Here's the tweet:

@BoltBus We’re coming for you West coast! On 10/31, we’re connecting Los Angeles, San Jose & Oakland. Get on board: http://prn.to/1ancROF!
Looks like buses will be running from Union Station in Los Angeles to Diridon Station in San Jose and then onto the West Oakland BART Station. Service starts on October 31st.

And to pre-answer the question... no I don't think that it will effect ridership on Amtrak's San Joaquin service. MegaBus has been running similar routes since December 2012... and in that time Amtrak posted its highest ridership numbers in the history of the San Joaquin.
 
What type of bus are they going to run? Greyhound got a huge order of both MCIs and Prevosts, so I don't know myself. Why no service to San Francisco?

I might ride it if they come to Reno. Really don't need it though, we just got so many new buses here that I'm fine with Greyhound's present service.

About the college students, I only saw one college student on my latest Greyhound trip, he was going from Oakland onto the Arcata bus, which was MCI D4505 #86370. BTW, that's the bus on my avatar. I might replace my avatar with a newer D4505. Great bus, they go really fast.
 
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Why no service to San Francisco?
I was kind of wondering that too. I guess they figure that a significant portion of their passengers are probably headed to the East Bay anyhow, so a BART station in Oakland probably offers as many connections as a BART station in SF proper. But for those going to central SF itself, this still requires a two-seat ride. But MegaBus does serve SF directly from LA, so BoltBus is really kind of punting on that market IYAM.
 
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What type of bus are they going to run? Greyhound got a huge order of both MCIs and Prevosts, so I don't know myself.
I was under the impression that BoltBus used the Prevost X3-45 coaches almost exclusively. I saw in pictures that they've been using the Prevost coaches on the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland service.

Why no service to San Francisco?
I agree that seems like a strange decision. Passengers will need to either transfer to Caltrain in San Jose or BART in West Oakland to make it into SF.
 
The thing is, Amtrak serves all those places Bolt is going to serve, Greyhound, Megabus, and other operators go straight to San Francisco. Even worse, Bolt would require a transfer onto the expensive Caltrain or BART to get to SF, while Amtrak's shuttle is free of charge. That transfer could be even more expensive then the Bolt ticket.

So I see no point in what Bolt is doing, the only possible explanation for them is that parking a bus in SF might be extremly expensive. For the passengers, virtually no one going to SF will ride Bolt, all the passengers are going to the Easy Bay.

OTOH, they might be targeting college students in Stanford and UC Berkeley, which is a market rarely tappen by Greyhound AFAIK. People say college student ride Greyhound, but I haven't seen much at all myself.
 
The thing is, Amtrak serves all those places Bolt is going to serve, Greyhound, Megabus, and other operators go straight to San Francisco. Even worse, Bolt would require a transfer onto the expensive Caltrain or BART to get to SF, while Amtrak's shuttle is free of charge. That transfer could be even more expensive then the Bolt ticket.

So I see no point in what Bolt is doing, the only possible explanation for them is that parking a bus in SF might be extremly expensive. For the passengers, virtually no one going to SF will ride Bolt, all the passengers are going to the Easy Bay.

OTOH, they might be targeting college students in Stanford and UC Berkeley, which is a market rarely tappen by Greyhound AFAIK. People say college student ride Greyhound, but I haven't seen much at all myself.
Do not forget, the Bay Area is an urban conglomerate of over 7 million population, and San Francisco proper is only about 900,000 out of those. In fact San Jose is a bigger city than SF by population. So it is silly to say there is no point in what BoltBus is doing. They know where the traveling population is. Oakland and San Jose are enough to capture the student base from Berkeley, Stanford, UCSC, SJSU, plus the large population that lives in the Silicon Valley.

Agreed Amtrak offers a free shuttle from Oakland/Emeryvilla to SF but what about the journey time? The whole jumping around from bus-train-bus between LA-SF makes the shortest LA-SF journey at 9 hours, some trips take 10 hours or more. MegaBus and BoltBus both have scheduled time of around 6 hr 35 min for LA-SJ, and Caltrain takes 1-1.5 hours (slowest service) to reach the city. The extra $10 or so for Caltrain ticket might be well worth the 2 hours saved.
 
The thing is, Amtrak serves all those places Bolt is going to serve, Greyhound, Megabus, and other operators go straight to San Francisco. Even worse, Bolt would require a transfer onto the expensive Caltrain or BART to get to SF, while Amtrak's shuttle is free of charge. That transfer could be even more expensive then the Bolt ticket.

So I see no point in what Bolt is doing, the only possible explanation for them is that parking a bus in SF might be extremly expensive. For the passengers, virtually no one going to SF will ride Bolt, all the passengers are going to the Easy Bay.

OTOH, they might be targeting college students in Stanford and UC Berkeley, which is a market rarely tappen by Greyhound AFAIK. People say college student ride Greyhound, but I haven't seen much at all myself.
Do not forget, the Bay Area is an urban conglomerate of over 7 million population, and San Francisco proper is only about 900,000 out of those. In fact San Jose is a bigger city than SF by population. So it is silly to say there is no point in what BoltBus is doing. They know where the traveling population is. Oakland and San Jose are enough to capture the student base from Berkeley, Stanford, UCSC, SJSU, plus the large population that lives in the Silicon Valley.

Agreed Amtrak offers a free shuttle from Oakland/Emeryvilla to SF but what about the journey time? The whole jumping around from bus-train-bus between LA-SF makes the shortest LA-SF journey at 9 hours, some trips take 10 hours or more. MegaBus and BoltBus both have scheduled time of around 6 hr 35 min for LA-SJ, and Caltrain takes 1-1.5 hours (slowest service) to reach the city. The extra $10 or so for Caltrain ticket might be well worth the 2 hours saved.
But Greyhound already offers $10 fares from SFD, SJC, and OAK to LAD with express service on I-5 through Avenal. That service is very fast and operated with brand-new D4505 equipment. Greyhound is basically copying the same service as a separate BoltBus division, it just dosen't go to SFD.

At this point, I see this as a Greyhound-led attack on Megabus, not on Amtrak or any of the other options on the route. BoltBus seems to be targeting Megabus first and foremost, though Megabus does not operate in the PNW. If they were targeting the other competitors, they would have run to SFD to gain a geographical advantage. Not much college students in SFD, and college students seem to like Megabus, so Bolt is targeting those same college students, which are in turn ignored by Greyhound proper.
 
Swadian--

Greyhound has a big problem with public perception. Most people see the company as having old, unreliable, stinky buses full of criminals.

I realize that Greyhound has made huge strides to improve the quality of their product...

But there's a portion of the population who'll NEVER ride a Greyhound bus because of the horror stories they've heard.

So a brand like BoltBus gives Greyhound the opportunity to reach an new audience it may not otherwise consider traveling by bus.
 
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Swadian--

Greyhound has a big problem with public perception. Most people see the company as having old, unreliable, stinky buses full of criminals.

I realize that Greyhound has made huge strides to improve the quality of their product...

But there's a portion of the population who'll NEVER ride a Greyhound bus because of the horror stories they've heard.

So a brand like BoltBus gives Greyhound the opportunity to reach an new audience it may not otherwise consider traveling by bus.
I know, but that just means it's even more important for Bolt to tap into the SFD market which Megabus and Greyhound are fighting over. Greyhound could gain a cheeky edge overMegabus by introducing a different bus brand into SFD, similar to what happened in the Northeast.

Also, it seems that Prevost has been very succesful lately, they're beating other manufacturers in a lot of markets. Greyhound., Trailways, Americanos, and even Coach USA has been usingmany Prevosts to replace MCIs, Van Hools, and Dinas. If Prevosts are coming in large numbers to California, this could be something important,
 
The Oakland and Los Angeles Greyhound stations are located in terrible locations with bad connections to public transit. As for not going into San Francisco, it would only be an added 20 minutes (during off peak) driving time from West Oakland BART to San Francisco Transbay Terminal, but I suspect the travel time uncertainties in the peak foreclose this option.

Looking at the schedule the one thing they are missing is late afternoon or evening departures. The overnight Megabus and red eye Greyhound have always been popular among night owls, college students, and late shift workers. The Night Coast bus often sells out - I was turned away one Friday and had to fly. Rather they are all during the day which makes it less convenient. LA's metro runs until midnight and so does BART so a 4 pm departure is very viable.
 
Something to consider...

For most tourists the trip from West Oakland BART to Union Square (and plenty of hotels, shopping and the famous cable cars) is 11 minutes. A bus/walk from the Transbay Terminal (Greyhound) or King Street Station (MegaBus/Caltrain) is about 14 minutes.

Also, BoltBus has a lot less service compared to MegaBus:

BoltBus operating 3/4 buses a day LA > SJ > OAK

MegaBus operates 3 buses a day LA > SJ > SF and another 3 buses a day LA > OAK > SF.
 
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BoltBus is new, so you don't really expect them to have lots of runs. Greyhound has 11-13 runs a day on the LAD-SFD. The overnights are sold out all the time, so Greyhound's buying more buses in 2013-2014 to try and help the capacity. I expect some of those Prevosts are going to BoltBus' new California service. The new MCIs will probably go anywhere demand is high.

Even though lots of people hate Greyhound, they are my preffered transport. Congestion might be a problem, but last I rode Greyhound, we got stuck in some bumper-to-bumper and still made it to Reno 20 minutes early. That D4505 might have something to do with it, they have a more powerful engine then the older G4500s.
 
Well, if the BART strike isn't resolved by Oct. 31, I'm thinking the West Oakland BART station isn't going to be

such a convenient place to be dropped off after all! :eek:
 
Bolt is also going to compete in the LA-San Diego market now. They have a potential of being much more competitive than Amtrak, since Amtrak fares are $37 for this pair and the bus is, at least scheduled to be, faster than the train. Depending on the route taken and how well the HOV lanes function this could actually be a major impact to the Surfliner. Six departures a day.
 
Bolt is also going to compete in the LA-San Diego market now. They have a potential of being much more competitive than Amtrak, since Amtrak fares are $37 for this pair and the bus is, at least scheduled to be, faster than the train. Depending on the route taken and how well the HOV lanes function this could actually be a major impact to the Surfliner. Six departures a day.
Greyhound bashed itself over the head when they gave up the Los Angeles-San Diego-Tijuana route to subsidiary Cruceros. Those buses were terrible and drove away a lot of passengers. Now I see that Greyhound has split up the route with a transfer at San Ysidro. North of San Ysidro, it's Greyhound proper, south it's Americanos, another Mexican subsidiary.

With Greyhound massive delivery of new buses to Los Angeles Garage, we could see some major improvements to bus service in the area.

I've ridden Greyhound through heavy congestion in the SF Bay Area, the buses just take the HOV lane and bypass everything. Delays rarely happen when HOV lanes are present.
 
Bolt is also going to compete in the LA-San Diego market now. They have a potential of being much more competitive than Amtrak, since Amtrak fares are $37 for this pair and the bus is, at least scheduled to be, faster than the train. Depending on the route taken and how well the HOV lanes function this could actually be a major impact to the Surfliner. Six departures a day.
I agree. This could mirror the situation with the Amtrak Cascades. If BoltBus is consistently faster, cheaper and still reasonably comfortable... the Pacific Surfliner could take a hit.

Also, BoltBus is going to be far more attractive than Greyhound Express would ever be on this route. The LA Greyhound station is a dump and frankly a scary place... whereas Union Station (where BoltBus stops) is a clean and comfortable place to wait.
 
Bolt is also going to compete in the LA-San Diego market now. They have a potential of being much more competitive than Amtrak, since Amtrak fares are $37 for this pair and the bus is, at least scheduled to be, faster than the train. Depending on the route taken and how well the HOV lanes function this could actually be a major impact to the Surfliner. Six departures a day.
I agree. This could mirror the situation with the Amtrak Cascades. If BoltBus is consistently faster, cheaper and still reasonably comfortable... the Pacific Surfliner could take a hit.

Also, BoltBus is going to be far more attractive than Greyhound Express would ever be on this route. The LA Greyhound station is a dump and frankly a scary place... whereas Union Station (where BoltBus stops) is a clean and comfortable place to wait.
Hmm, I didn't think that LAD station is that bad, at least it's not South Central. Besides, Greyhound could operate to Union Station anyway, there is a bus terminal at Union Station.

I don't know what happened with the Cascades, but Greyhound really needs to clean up their act in Seattle. All the buses based from Seattle Garage are G4500s, they need to rebuild those buses and introduce express service. The Greyhound terminals in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all in decent areas.
 
Hmm, I didn't think that LAD station is that bad, at least it's not South Central. Besides, Greyhound could operate to Union Station anyway, there is a bus terminal at Union Station.
It's better than South Central LA... but not by much.

The other big problem with Greyhound's LA station... is it's poorly connected to transit.

The bus terminal at Union Station (where the Amtrak buses and the Amtrak/Greyhound to Las Vegas stop) wouldn't be big enough to handle all the traffic Greyhound does in LA. They could maybe squeeze it into the Patsaouras Transit Plaza but I don't see it happening.

My hope is that if Metro builds the big new bus station at LAUS that they've proposed... Greyhound will move their operations there.

I don't know what happened with the Cascades, but Greyhound really needs to clean up their act in Seattle. All the buses based from Seattle Garage are G4500s, they need to rebuild those buses and introduce express service. The Greyhound terminals in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all in decent areas.
Greyhound already operates express service with brand new buses in the PNW... BoltBus! Plus it has the added benefit of not having any of the stigma attached to Greyhound name.

I walked by the Seattle station... it is in a nicer part of town.
 
I don't know what happened with the Cascades, but Greyhound really needs to clean up their act in Seattle. All the buses based from Seattle Garage are G4500s, they need to rebuild those buses and introduce express service. The Greyhound terminals in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all in decent areas.
Greyhound already operates express service with brand new buses in the PNW... BoltBus! Plus it has the added benefit of not having any of the stigma attached to Greyhound name.

I walked by the Seattle station... it is in a nicer part of town.
I know, but BoltBus is no true replacement for Greyhound. It's not gonna be nice to wait curbside in the constant Seattle rain. And if Greyhound rebuilt the G4500s under their own name, it would help fix their reputation.

Greyhound, if you can do it better, then do it better, instead of just using BoltBus to get around the Greyhound Haters.
 
Again, for many riders, if there was a minimal level of competence bar to clear to ride Greyhound, more people would ride it. Right now, for Amtrak, that bar is having valid identification. For Megabus/Bolt Bus, that bar is having access to a computer and/or someone with a credit card (or prepaid debit card). The perception of Greyhound riff raff is such that people don't like being with them. Even on the Sunset Limited a couple of weeks ago, when we stopped to kick off a (female!) passenger who started a fight with another woman, people in the sleeping car eating their free meal derisively called the "Greyhound crowd" as a reason why they won't ride coach.
 
Of course this bad publicity about Greyhound is mostly BS, Greyhound now requires ID for all passengers and their drivers are happy to kick off any disruptive passengers. Greyhound has also introduced a new yield-management system which is designed to drastically reduce overbookings. However, becuase some tickets are still handwritten in the absense of a computer, it's impossible to remove all chances of overbooking.

Greyhound's improvements are night and day compared to a mere few years ago. Thus I have taken them more and more and I'm proud to support Greyhound Lines.
 
Of course this bad publicity about Greyhound is mostly BS, Greyhound now requires ID for all passengers and their drivers are happy to kick off any disruptive passengers. Greyhound has also introduced a new yield-management system which is designed to drastically reduce overbookings. However, becuase some tickets are still handwritten in the absense of a computer, it's impossible to remove all chances of overbooking.

Greyhound's improvements are night and day compared to a mere few years ago. Thus I have taken them more and more and I'm proud to support Greyhound Lines.
It's not BS. It may be based on an older company which has changed its practices, but most of the complaints about Greyhound are very real, and it takes a LOT of time to recover from a tarnished name. That's what Greyhound Inc. is doing with the new names.

And if they're night and day there, can you pass some of that luck this way? I've had more trouble with Greyhound in 2013 than I did in 2011 or 2012, and I've taken (or attempted to take) relatively the same number of trips each year. (This year, my two attempted Greyhound trips had once cancellation because there wasn't a driver, and having to persist with their Facebook team before getting a refund instead of just future travel, and a spare bus that smelled like they forgot to drain the sewage until the last minute. The way home on that trip was decent, though.) 2012 had nothing more than about 20 minutes late into TFI, and my express bus trip was fine from Milwaukee to Chicago, and 2011 had no problems on my round trip Chicago to Milwaukee. Anecdotal evidence is not hard science, but it's going to take me quite a bit to choose Greyhound again after those experiences.
 
I rode Greyhound 15 times this year and all my drivers showed up, none of the buses broke down, and the most delay I have was 5 minutes. I don't know what's wrong with Greyhound's Chicago Garage but this sounds weird to me.

A lot of people complain about Greyhound "losing" their bags, but they actually just forgot it on the bus. Passnegers are responsible for transferring their own luggage when trnasferring buses. I guess most riders are too dumb to read the Baggage Policy.

If the smelly spare bus was a Van Hool, it's probably not owned by Greyhound. Greyhound has multiple state-owned or leased Van Hools which are maintained to very poor condition. I've have smelly buses too, namely G4500s, but I'm happy that Greyhound drove all the G4500s away for a major rebuild.
 
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