Greyhound Publishes New (Inaccurate) Route Map

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Everywhere :)

Arriving in Miami, going across the south from east to west, going up the west coast and then heading west to east! I think there are a dozen train journeys planned and about 30 bus trips (greyhound, megabus, bolt, Salt Lake Express) as well as a couple of internal flights.

I drew a preliminary map a while ago, it's actually not very accurate anymore as the route has been changed but you get the jist from it

http://imgur.com/aJEzUd9
 
Oh, I see that now. Sorry!

"Tour" seems like the same color as "Flight" though. Can't understand what the grey lines are.

Please don't fly from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, that's a good bus ride! You get to go through this: http://www.arizonaroads.com/pics/i15canyon1.jpg.

Really wish you could have gone through more of the Northwest, lots of good scenery over there. Greyhound's Sacramento-Portland completely daytime ride (Sked 1446) is worth the day. Just got upgraded, too. I'm a big fan of whole-day rides when you get on the morning and get off in the evening. Good rides take time, daytime.

Can't ride a train from Montgomery to New Orleans, by the way.
 
Sorry, yeah the legend isn't very clear on that but you can ignore that anyway because i found a more up to date version!

http://i.imgur.com/HOoweuc.jpg (starting point is miami)

Red is bus (although i havent done anything to distinguish which carrier), blue is flight and green is train.

I actually have a spreadsheet with the complete schedule, including actual places to visit, carriers and costs that i have figured out by searching all of the relevant booking systems, i just need to make sure i have raised enough money by january and then i will start booking it all for next year.

The north east isnt filled in for any of these maps due to lack of space, i have all the options and route down in my spreadsheet though
 
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I heard Atlanta-Savannah has some of the worst equipment. The equipment in that route is state-owned (D4505) and apparently stuck in the dreaded "turn-and-burn" cycle, which means they arrive one end and immediately turn around to go back without a thorough cleaning. They just dump the toilet tank, the trash, and the refuel the motorcoach.

Instead, I suggest you ride up the coast from Miami up to Wilmington by Greyhound and Southeastern, then go from Wilmington straight to Atlanta by Southeastern. Their website: http://www.southeasternstages.com/Home.html.

I don't see the point of going from New Orleans to Mobile and doubling back. Why not just go from Atlanta to Mobile to New Orleans?

From Oakland to Portland, I suggest using Greyhound because they run an all-daytime schedule from Sacramento. However, you will need to start from Sacramento. That way you can see the scenic segment between Redding and Weed (including Lake Shasta), and guarantee seeing Mount Shasta. I would rather not travel at night if I didn't have to.

You're also missing out on some of the most scenic routes by flying from Denver to Idaho Falls and from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. I strongly suggest you switch to train or bus for those segments.

I suggest you reduce short-distance bus segments because many short-distance buses are stuck in turn-and-burn, this applies for many operators, not just Greyhound.
 
Swadian Hardcore said:
I heard Atlanta-Savannah has some of the worst equipment. The equipment in that route is state-owned (D4505) and apparently stuck in the dreaded "turn-and-burn" cycle, which means they arrive one end and immediately turn around to go back without a thorough cleaning. They just dump the toilet tank, the trash, and the refuel the motorcoach.

Instead, I suggest you ride up the coast from Miami up to Wilmington by Greyhound and Southeastern, then go from Wilmington straight to Atlanta by Southeastern. Their website: http://www.southeasternstages.com/Home.html.

I don't see the point of going from New Orleans to Mobile and doubling back. Why not just go from Atlanta to Mobile to New Orleans?

From Oakland to Portland, I suggest using Greyhound because they run an all-daytime schedule from Sacramento. However, you will need to start from Sacramento. That way you can see the scenic segment between Redding and Weed (including Lake Shasta), and guarantee seeing Mount Shasta. I would rather not travel at night if I didn't have to.

You're also missing out on some of the most scenic routes by flying from Denver to Idaho Falls and from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. I strongly suggest you switch to train or bus for those segments.

I suggest you reduce short-distance bus segments because many short-distance buses are stuck in turn-and-burn, this applies for many operators, not just Greyhound.
Click to expand...
Thanks.

That south east section is definitely up for tweaking, we are trying to find the route that works best time wise. In fact the lastest plan we have includes what you said, working our way up to wilmington (i like how you can tell what my destinations are by some poorly placed X's on that map!) by train and bus to then fly to New Orleans from there. The flight saves a lot of time in the long run and it means we get to travel up that east coast. This also facilitates the idea of doing Mobile as a day trip from New Orleans where we will be for a few days.

I think our reasoning for the oakland - Portland section was that we really wanted to experience being in a cabin overnight on amtrak, we are also probably doing this between Austin and El Paso but the latter is still susceptible of being shelved in favour of yet another time saving flight so we nailed the former down so that we would definitely experience it at least once.

Denver to Idaho Falls is a shame i know, again the problem there is the time it takes to get between them both, there is also the fact that if we get the salt lake express from SLC to West Yellowstone the only real stop where i can say i've been to Idaho is a 2 hour stopover on the outskirts of Rexburg which isn't great. I am likely to change the SLC - Vegas flight to a bus though anyway.

And i completely understand what you are saying about the short distance buses, again the issue there is the price difference. I can get seats for a couple of dollars by booking 2 months in advance whereas the equivalent route on the train could be 10 or 20 times that much, it's just all about trade-offs at this point until i definitely know how much money I have to do this trip!

I keep mentioning time, but honestly it is really hard to try and cram in 50 states in 90 days. 90 days is all we get standard from the Visa Waiver Program, going into canada or mexico annoyingly won't reset that so the whole trip has to be carefully planned. Some places are going to get burned because of this, i think i'll only end up being in North Dakota for 90 minutes! We can always try and apply for a different visa but that costs money, and i don't fancy trying to convince border control that a couple that has given up their jobs and flat isn't trying to stay permanently in america (we're not) and jeopardise the whole thing!
 
My view of travel is that if you are in the state on ground transportation, then you're still there. So you'll probably end up being in North Dakota for a bit longer.

Fun fact: the big MCI buses are made in North Dakota and Manitoba. I guess that's why Jefferson uses lots of MCIs.

Why don't you reduce the trip a bit? You're really trying to doing everything all at once, but maybe save Alaska and Hawaii for some other time. How about even tackling North America in multiple smaller trips?

Mentioning MCI again, they once attempted to satisfy every bus operator by introducing a myriad of models but ended up satisfying no one. If time and money are issues for you, breaking it up into smaller pieces is definitely an option that I recommend.

Like for the Northeast, you could do New York City-Ashbury Park-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington-Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Buffalo-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City-Rimouski-Gaspe-Rimouski-Montreal-Boston-New York City.

All the Northeast except Maine.
 
Any news on Greyhound maps? I guess where I am what would be even more useful would be Trailways maps; they're just as bad or worse!
 
To refer to the mini discussion about live bus tracking as mentioned a few posts ago. I am sitting in Jackson MS greyhound station and they have a poster on the wall advertising a bus tracker at bustracker.greyhound.com now the link doesn't work for me. Is this something that's been known about for a while or do we think that they are advertising it too soon. Judging by the authentication request I'm guessing they haven't turned it on for the public yet!
 
It doesn't work. I say just forget about it. Anything electronic about Greyhound is just terrible, with the exception of CADEC. Even the DriveCam is often taped over. Whenever I ride Greyhound, I just completely "disconnect", then again, I don't have a smartphone anyway.
 
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If they're working on a bustracker system... that's incredibly good news. I'm hoping that the system is almost ready, but the poster was put up too soon. Was it a slick, well made poster or something made by the station workers?

The lack of tracking is honestly one of my biggest gripes with Greyhound/BoltBus and I know I'm not the only one. In this day and age you should be able to get real time arrival information for your bus. Period.
 
Even if you had a smartphone nearly every website on their on bus WiFi is blocked anyway. Even this forum!

And the poster was an official slick greyhound branded poster, should have got a picture!
 
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I think you can get in to most websites with a laptop (I've tried), but it's very, very slow. And the Wi-Fi only works in populated areas. I must say that lack of tracking isn't really a gripe for me because I don't have a smartphone anyway, but I can see how lack of tracking can be a problem for some people. For a "disconnected" guy like me, my biggest concern is with those Painful Premiers.
 
Swad... even if you don't have a smartphone and stay disconnected from technology while travelling... you'll benefit from real-time bus tracking.

With that data, station agents will be able to better keep passengers informed of en route delays and Greyhound will likely be able to deploy departures/arrivals boards at larger stations, similar to what you're used to seeing at the airport.

Overall it would be a fantastic change for every passenger.
 
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Yes, it would be, but I believe the Painful Premiers are a bigger problem, though that one will take a long time to fix. The inaccurate route map needs to be fixed before real-time bus tracking can be implemented. All Greyhound buses already have CADEC, which tracks their location by GPS. But Greyhound fails to communicate that information to passengers. They need an accurate map of their own routes first, which is nowhere to be found. Even their financial report has a grossly inaccurate map.

And the inaccurate route map on Greyhound's official website still hasn't been fixed. The map on the System Timetable is also inaccurate. How do you track buses without route maps?
 
Swadian Hardcore said:
Yes, it would be, but I believe the Painful Premiers are a bigger problem, though that one will take a long time to fix. The inaccurate route map needs to be fixed before real-time bus tracking can be implemented. All Greyhound buses already have CADEC, which tracks their location by GPS. But Greyhound fails to communicate that information to passengers. They need an accurate map of their own routes first, which is nowhere to be found. Even their financial report has a grossly inaccurate map.

And the inaccurate route map on Greyhound's official website still hasn't been fixed. The map on the System Timetable is also inaccurate. How do you track buses without route maps?
Click to expand...
What's to say Greyhound isn't fixing the maps alongside with introducing a tracking feature?

If it operates anything like Amtrak's track a train system, the position of buses will could appear on a online map (like google maps). I imagine the position of the bus will be updated by the CADEC system.

At the moment Greyhound's dispatchers may have access to that GPS data, but they fail to communicate that in any meaningful way to customers, even though the station agents.

I can't say this enough... live bus tracking is HUGE. It's one of the biggest missing pieces for Greyhound.

Look, I'm no fan of Greyhound's seats, but I actually think the lack of real-time arrival information is a bigger problem. People can plan their lives with that data, instead of having to show up to the stop early and wait and wonder if the bus will arrive.
 
Well, I think most people will simply expect the bus to arrive on schedule. Greyhound claims to have 89% OTP to a 15-minute standard. They could use Google Maps for bus tracking, but they don't have their own route map, which is a serious problem. It takes only one hour to fix the route map. I'm shocked that my e-mails to Greyhound about the route map went unheeded.
 
Apparently, the powers at Greyhound don't think that their customer's are capable of reading a map, just as they don't think they are capable of reading a timetable....so they don't give much priority to correcting the erroneous map....

The maps they have must be produced by the same wizard that programs their TRIPS computer's insane routings, but that is another can of worms..... :rolleyes:
 

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