4
Technology moves travelers to the bus
A Megabus on the move
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: It didn't come early enough to help this year's holiday travelers, but Boeing's new airplane finally got off the ground today. The 787 Dreamliner is years behind schedule in part because of the high-tech way it was designed and put together.
Cost-conscious travelers sometimes go for a decidedly more low-tech option, though -- the bus. But even those who can afford to fly are taking to the roads. Because new long-distance bus lines are using technology to their advantage. From WNYC in New York City, Andrea Bernstein reports.
ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Brandon Prust is not the kind of guy you might expect to take the bus. He's wearing a nice suit and overcoat, and has a laptop slung over his shoulder. The international finance worker might have taken the train...
BRANDON Prust: But there's no Wi-Fi. So if there were Wi-Fi, I'd probably take Amtrak but...
Bernstein: Do you ever think the bus is kinda low class? It's you know...
Prust: Not this one.
Prust is riding New York to Boston on Bolt, one of the new long-distance bus companies that have sprung up in recent years. Turns out both Bolt and a competitor, Megabus, are luring passengers by combining coolness and the cost factor. They offer free Wi-Fi from the moment you board.
Dale Moser is the CEO of Megabus. He says his customers do say to themselves: "I can save a lot."
DALE Moser: And I can flip up my laptop and surf the Web, catch up on Facebook or Twitter, or, you know, my corporate accounts. I can't do that in my car, I can't do that on an airplane.
A new study by DePaul University in Chicago, being released this month, says Moser has it about right. Ridership on these buses has seen double-digit increases in the past year. About four in 10 passengers are using technology.
Professor Joe Schweiterman's been studying the bus lines, which now take passengers from city to city in about 20 states. And he says Wi-Fi on the bus gives riders something they may not have on a plane or a train: control.
Joe Schweiterman: That serves a big psychological role, we're finding people who are suddenly in a dead spot find themselves a bit powerless and that's where I think the inter-city bus has a huge advantage.
Lots of passengers, especially the younger ones, don't much like turning off their technology on the plane. On the bus it's completely different.
Schweiterman: From the minute people sit down they pull that technology out and almost becomes an extension of their office, and so I think it's why a lot of passengers are willing to take these relatively slow buses.
Slow, but traveling at the speed of broadband.
In New York, I'm Andrea Bernstein for Marketplace.
No matter where I go I have Wifi available - via my cell phone. Excluding a plane, of course. If you are a business traveler on any type of train, use your cell phone. Either tether it directly or use a Wifi hotspot application like WMWifirouter (but be sure to secure the Wifi connection or everybody within 75 feet will be sharing it with you).
As someone who has spent countless hours taking Amtrak from DC to NYC for both business and pleasure and paying a near fortune on the Acela frustrated by the lack of wi-fi, I recently tried the Megabus and found it clean, easy and the best part-cheap! Plus I took my mac with me and caught up on emails, online news, and even finished that procrastinated strategy report for my boss. My company is thrilled with my discovery--productivity for an employeer goes up with internet access for my laptop and cost of travel goes down. My colleagues are begging me not to make too much noise about this or our COO will be relagating all employees to the buses. Andrea's report on Marketplace made me return to a question I've had lately--Why doesn't Amtrak provide wireless?(especially for the Acela which is nearly all business travelers and extremely pricey). Why doesn't a train when you can get it on Airtran thousands of miles up and on the buses? Clearly they could, but they chose not to--cost savings? They appear to have a monopoly on the market, continuing to charge exorbatent prices with hardly any innovation (e.g. malfunctioning website, broken down trains, mediocre passenger experience) and the government helps subsidize them? I'd like to hear Marketplace provide some investigative reporting on their business model and while you're at it, ask them about wi-fi. Thanks Kai. I love your broadcast and listen to it on my ipod every night on my way home from work. Erin Phillips
Do these buses have SEATBELTS? I bet not. The bus industry spend $$$$ a year to keep seat belts off buses. Hundreds and hundreds of people in the US are killed and maimed each each from bus accidents. Much more than necessary b/c no buses, not even chartered buses have seat belts. My friend was severely injuried and 9 other people died in a bus crash in Utah. The bus companies deal is to have no assets, only paid employees...so all those people got nada. The min insurance buses have to carry is 1 mil. That isn't much when you hurt or kill 35 people. Think about this before you get on a bus,
