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Comments (10)
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Save/ShareIf you travel up and down the East Coast between Washington, D.C., and Boston, you may have taken one of the many buses that run between the big cities' Chinatowns. Or you may wonder how they are. I’ve been a fan of the buses for some time, but they are not without their flaws.
My wife and I took a New Today bus from New York to D.C. on July 4 without incident, but the trip back (on Sunday, July 6) was rough. We arrived half an hour early, as advised, only to find about six busloads of people already waiting. (Not all of them were waiting for New Today buses; another company picks up passengers at the same place.) Some had been there for several hours. Each time a bus would come, a mob of people would rush to the door. Then the people at the back would start to push forward. It was hard enough to unload the buses, let alone get on one.
This was all very amusing until it started to rain. Hard. I don’t blame the bus company for the fact that I didn’t have an umbrella, but because of the crowds and the pushing even the people with umbrellas were getting soaked.
Eventually, someone called the police, and several officers arrived to provide much-needed crowd control. But of course the police could not conjure more buses.
We got on a bus about two and a half hours after our scheduled time (with some people who said they had been waiting for five hours), but the adventure wasn’t over. When we got to New York, the driver headed north from Midtown. When I asked where we were going, he said that the destination was 88th Street and Broadway. I explained that we needed to go to 88 E. Broadway, in Chinatown—about 95 blocks south from 88th.
A woman named Annie at the New York office said that New Today’s buses was running behind on Sunday because of holiday weekend traffic, which the rain only exacerbated. She also said that New Today had chartered other bus companies for the D.C.-New York route to resolve the problem, and that the driver of my bus must have misunderstood where he was supposed to go.
I don’t think New Today is worse than the other Chinatown bus companies, and they’re all preferable to Greyhound. But this experience did give me pause, and my wife says the lesson is that we shouldn’t travel on a holiday weekend.
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The question really should be why the company did not account for holiday traffic and how they will plan for future holidays. No matter what if you drive or take the bus on a holiday weekend you are looking at a 4 hour drive turn to 8 hours. I wonder if Mega Bus or Bolt Bus has different schedules for the holidays? Unfortunately Thanksgiving is not yet up on either site so I can not see how they are accounting for Nov 29th.
Secondly "real" bus companies need some sort of crowd control. For example Bolt Bus has staff onsite once the bus arrives, but that person is not around before the bus arrives telling people how/where to line up. Just like Southwest they need to get people queued up by boarding order etc... Obviously this is even more important during peak ridership times. Unfortunately once you start doing things like that costs will increase.
Posted By Iolaire McFadden on July 11, 2008, 9:12 AM
Greyhound is about as real as a bus company can be, and I've seen a similar situation at one of its stations. But yes, I would like to see more order in the boarding process for the Chinatown bus companies. And I plan to try MegaBus on my next trip to Baltimore or DC. BoltBus doesn't stop in Baltimore, but maybe it will soon.
Posted By Thomas Berger on July 14, 2008, 10:40 AM
Back in March of this year, I took the "China Bus", which is what we call it here in Virginia, properly known as the Eastern Travel bus, from Richmond, VA, to New York (it makes stops in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD) and had a good experience.
At $60 round-trip, there is really no other comparison in price for travel between the Richmond area to New York. The bus was clean and departed on time. The departure point in Richmond was easy to find. The hardest part for me was knowing exactly where to stand in NY (near Penn Station) to get in line for boarding in New York for the return trip. Eastern Travel had employees there to make sure we were in line in the right place and that we got on our bus. There was no rude behavior in line. The only complaint I had was that on the return trip, the driver put in a dvd, and the movie had a lot of adult content that was kind of weird to watch with a bunch of strangers. Luckily there weren't a lot of kids on board.
I purchased our fares on www.gotobus.com, and the print-outs that we signed served as our tickets. The bus stopped for food and restroom breaks, and kept to a tight schedule. It picked up and dropped off passengers in several places, and filled up on both trips.
I am not sure if this is completely current information, but here it is.
New York:
Midtown - 7th Ave & 34th St
Midtown - 7th Ave & 42nd St
Downtown - 88 E Broadway
Washington DC:
Steps to Metro Station: 715 H St NW
Baltimore:
5501 O'Donnell St Cutoff
Richmond:
5215 W. Broad St.
910 N. Boulevard
Posted By Julie on July 14, 2008, 1:28 PM
These crowds sound like they were mostly Chinese. Am I right?
Posted By Loren Balazs on July 14, 2008, 1:44 PM
20 to 1, they most probably were. If you've ever tried to use public transportation during holidays in China, you know what I mean. It's much better in China now, and I don't mean just for pre-Olympic reasons. It's been more orderly in the past 10 years, let's say. Apparently the mobs probably immigrated here from more than 10 years ago or just simply reverted to that mob mentality if less.
Posted By ac on July 15, 2008, 9:18 AM
Actually, the crowd in DC was mostly white Americans. There were also some African-Americans, some Chinese people, and some Indians (and probably others, but those groups I can vouch for). The mob mentality arose because everyone could see that there were far more people than there were seats. I don't think there was any racial element to it at all.
Posted By Thomas Berger on July 15, 2008, 1:25 PM
Tonight we were supposed to take 9pm bus from DC to NYC (Eastern Travel). We were told the bus would be delayed for 1 hour because there was traffic. I just checked traffic sites and found out there was no traffic at all. I overheard some passengers saying that this is a common practice when the bus is not full so they will combine passengers from two buses into one. Unethical.
Posted By Chee on October 3, 2008, 8:56 PM
Hi there,
I’m sorry to hear about your lousy experiences on these buses. Thanks for getting the word out on the Internet. If other passengers/travelers hear about complaints like this, it’ll pressure companies to do a better job.
Kind regards,
Sean
Blog editor
Posted By Sean on October 4, 2008, 11:05 AM
How do these fares compare with Amtrak? They seem to usually run on time in the NE Corridor but their long-distance trains are chronically late which has posed major problems for me in the past (missed parties or events, connections, etc.). About all we have out here (Denver) besides Amtrak is Greyhound which I took to Steamboat Springs til they dropped the run. Pleasant enough but their stops are haphazard outside major cities. In Steamboat they stopped behind Wendy's and I missed it once because I didn't see it there.
Posted By Roger Williams on December 1, 2008, 5:51 PM
That sounds awful. You should check out BusJunction, it's a bus ticket search engine that includes only good quality buses.
Posted By Gerald on August 18, 2009, 4:55 PM