To leave the City, usually I take a ‘street bus’. These are bus lines with no overhead in waiting rooms, chairs of comfort or ticket offices. You make your reservation on line, print your ticket and show up on the designated street corner. For example, It is a great service between the City and Washington DC. The other weekend, wanted to arrive in Wilmington DE. Could take the train, but the cheapest one way ticket? $53 and if your schedule changes and you want to adjust your ticket, the charges can escalate to as high as $140. The train is not user friendly for the casual traveler. There was a time I caught the ‘Chinese Bus’ at the curb in front of Macy’s on 34th Street. That was always a ‘trip’ in the numerous definitions of the word. Ultimately it was unsafe. The New Yorker did an article on the existence of the Chinese buses for the transport of labors amongst the East Coast Chinese Restaurants. But they had one too many violations and on-the-road accidents that I deemed it too big a risk to continue to take them. Casting about for a bus to take the other weekend, suddenly remembered Greyhound/Peter Pan. 10 years ago I took them often between DC and the City but a concerned citizen asked that I give up hanging out – to board the bus – in the basement of the Port Authority at all hours of the night perhaps with ‘folks’ that didn’t have my best at heart. So I put it aside and found a more acceptable ‘street bus’.
But looking them up for this trip, the ticket price was $15 one way! So I once again joined the line in the basement of the Port Authority, this time in the daylight. Things have changed! Want to place your luggage in the hold of the bus? Get an officially issued luggage-tag that has each owners name, address and phone number printed on it. Upon boarding the bus, discover seat belts, full-over-the-shoulder-seat belts. The driver is protected behind a large sheet of plexiglass that cuts off the aisle traffic. There are cup holders, charging plugs and the best part of all? The bus won’t pull away from the terminal until every phone is on vibrate and the strict admonitions of what happens if your conversation is any longer than brief are clearly understood.
My kind of ride!