Megabused

I rolled down to the Annex on the Megabus from New York. I would have prepared a longer review en route, but the Megabus I was on had neither outlets nor WiFi. (How easily I am spoiled.) It also didn’t have that nifty blue paint job that I’d witnessed (and that their Web site says graces all of their coaches). Instead, it was plain white with no identifying marks; perhaps it was placed in service before the billboard folks got to work on it. The interior seemed new and was very clean and perfectly comfortable, but seemed a bit more basic than the Bolt coaches. This one lacked the driver/passenger barrier that is standard on Bolt and its cousins the Hound and Peter Pan.

The bus departed from directly outside of Penn station, and the line was maintained by a Megabus official, who checked confirmation numbers against a passenger list. This expedited entry to the bus only slightly, the line (referred to by an official as the queue) became strangely un-line-like when the bus pulled up. More mob-like. Maybe that’s the difference between a line and a queue. (Or it’s Megabus’s old-world origins.) So there was no seating priorities or boarding order beyond how early one arrives to get in line, or how many people you sneak past while they stow their luggage in the hold.

The driver was friendly, but forgot her movies because she came straight from church or something like that (probably a good thing, right? There are worse places she could be coming straight from). So the Megabus shows movies. I have never seen a movie on the Bolt, at any hour, and on a recent trip the driver told an inquiring passenger that drivers had been told not to play them. I personally prefer not to have movies, and it seems that today’s passengers agreed. I watched an episode of the A-Team on my iPod instead, read and tried to ignore the canoodling couples and flirtatious Vampire Weekend followers passing CD players back and forth across the aisle.

The bus made one brief stop at a park and ride near White Marsh outside of Baltimore. Two travelers were sitting on the curb, waiting for the northbound bus. We offloaded three or four people and got back on the road. We arrived at 11th and G four and a quarter hours after our departure time.

On the whole, the Megabus isn’t really in the same category as Bolt. It’s a bit cheaper, but with fewer amenities for the (non-profit) business traveler, it’s much more akin to Vamoose* than it is to the so-called “luxury” lines. For my Wednesday return trip, I’ll be back on the Bolt.

*Speaking of the ‘moose, I’ve noticed recently that they’ve invested in their own branded coaches, as opposed to contracted tour buses.