Passenger Trains > California Zephyr and Greyhound

We road the California Zephyr from Chhicago on Monday, the 6th.  As we werre approachng Reno the conductor came on the PA to announce that the Greyound passengers riding from Salt Lake City on the CZ - due to Greyhound discontinuing service from Salt Lake City to Rreno - would have to detrain at Reno and board a Greyhound bus if they were going beyond Reno. He said that there would be a bus waiting for them outside the statioin.  Apparenty AMTRAK is honorng Greyhound tickets betweenn SLC and Reno.  First I had heard of it.

While on the subject of the Zephyr, several of us missed the Sephyr of 5 August due to the very late Captol Limited.  We were put up in a hotel and receivd our new e-ticket by email that evening in the hotel.  Seems they added a 534 sleeper to the train of the 6th to accomodate those missing the train of the 5th.

Very interesting. Just keyed in SF to Chicago on the Hound and note bus changes in LA and Denver. Denver east by Burlington Trailways.

The SLC RNO run shows Amtrak as a footnote. My how the mighty Hound has fallen!

Posted from Android

Here we've had the discussion about Train-Bus-Train from LA to Chicago, now it appears that there really is a Bus-Train-Bus along the old Overland Route.  Back in 1977, I did the "Dog Tired Tour" from El Monte (east of Los Angeles) to Boston and had lots of runs and routes to choose from.  When I was planning the trip, I sent off to the Great Kennel in Phoenix, requesting timetables.  They sent me the whole system schedule book, the first third of the Russell's Guide.  Apparently, them days is gone forever.  I haven't seen a Russell's Guide in years, and I would guess that it's rather skimpy now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/18 23:58 by DNRY122.

---

Greyhound continued the paper system scheds on its extranet site for agents...alas it seems to have been taken offline this month.=12pthttp://extranet.greyhound.com/revsup/
 you can still view the Canada section there...but lots of changes and discontuances are looming.

You may like this history of Greyhound and Trailways
http://www.bluehoundsandredhounds.info/
 

Greyhound can, and does, drop routes that are money losers. As fir any competition, MegaBus pops up now and then, and has a press release announcing CHEAP SEATS to wherever. I haven't seen any of their buses of late - anybody know what they are doing?

Interesting to notw that Greyhound had a corporate fit when the California Corridor trains (Capitols, San Joaquins, Surfliners) started up, and mandated that any ticket sold on these trains MUST have a rail portion. No "bus only" trips (Redding - Sacramento or Bakersfield - LA, for example).

 

Wow, I wonder how many passengers per day this adds to the CZ?  I guess without Amtrak those passengers bound for towns like Winnemucca and Elko would be out of luck completely......just like most of the country.  I wonder if Amtrak will add a few stops formerly served by Greyhound like Wendover and Wells.  I always thought that Wendover had potential for an Amtrak stop to serve those heathens looking to leave Utah and get to Nevada for a day.  America sure is a unique oddity among developed countries......  Unless you have a running car, bearing with it all the burden that it entails (paying the driver's license tax, smog tax, insurance tax, registration tax, sales tax, gas tax and speed tax, dare you violate arbitrary local statutes) you apparently don't deserve to go anywhere outside of a large city and you're just screwed.  I sure am glad that I pay half my income to the government for a functional "infrastructure!"   Oh wait...........

Greyhound is in a death spiral and it started in the early 1980's

• First they dropped many non-Interstate highway "Locals".
• The Interstate highway routes lose feeder business
• Frequencies cut on Interstate highway routes.
• Such routes are truncated, or eliminated like Amtrak wants to do to the SW Chief, and the amputations grows closer and closer to the west coast and Chicago.

In the summer, GL ran 2 frequencies per day between SLC and West Yellowstone. I was on them in 1979 and 1980 and they usually ran in 2 sections. By 1983, down to 1 per day, but extended to Bozeman. Eventually they killed that. Did people stop taking buses to Yellowstone ? No, because Salt Lake Express is doing fine. Greyhound, like Amtrak, hasn't a clue what is profitable and what is not,

Chicago - Seattle once had 4 frequencies per day. Then GL get rid of Fargo - Missoula, hands it to Jefferson Lines and Rimrock. The residual stubs goes down to 2 frequencies. Rimrock falls apart, Jefferson partially fills in, but less feeder business to Greyhound. Now Fargo gets cut back to Minneapolis, Missoula get cut back to Spokane,

Nebraska, both Dakotas, and Montana are now off the map.

Anderson is taking note on how it is done. He's trying to turn Amtrak into Megabus with steel wheels, but their routes come and go, and focus on high density, populated areas. They also use cheap drivers, non-existent terminals or freeloads on other carriers, and has a poor safety record. It is a gimmick outfit, run off the internet, targeting Millenials.
 

Greyhound of Canada has eliminated, or is in the process of eliminating, all service in western Canada, with the exception of Seattle-Vancouver.


Greyhound Canada is ending its passenger bus and freight services in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and cancelling all but one route in B.C. — a U.S.-run service between Vancouver and Seattle.

The changes take effect the end of October, which will make Ontario and Quebec the only regions where the familiar running-dog logo will continue to grace Canadian highways.

"This decision is regretful and we sympathize with the fact that many small towns are going to lose service," Greyhound Canada senior vice-president Stuart Kendrick said in an interview with The Canadian Press.


Warning: for Amtrak this may be the "canary in the coal mine". Surface transportation is under siege.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/18 10:38 by reindeerflame.

Seattle - Vancouver belongs to Greyhound Lines, not Greyhound Canada. GLC is killing all service west of Sudbury, ONT.
The only way to get to Sault Ste Marie will be to take Indian Trails and the Bridge Bus from Sault Ste Marie, MI. For Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, etc, forget it.
From what I read, the buses between Calgary and Vancouver are well used. But in 10 years, Vancouver - Toronto service has gone from 4 buses a day to 1. What did they do to drive off all that business ? 

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Seattle - Vancouver belongs to Greyhound Lines,
> not Greyhound Canada. GLC is killing all service
> west of Sudbury, ONT.
> The only way to get to Sault Ste Marie will be to
> take Indian Trails and the Bridge Bus from Sault
> Ste Marie, MI. For Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, etc,
> forget it.
> From what I read, the buses between Calgary and
> Vancouver are well used. But in 10 years,
> Vancouver - Toronto service has gone from 4 buses
> a day to 1. What did they do to drive off all that
> business ? 

Well for one thing, this https://globalnews.ca/news/4331224/greyhound-bus-beheading-ridership/

Another article says the lost 41% of their business since 2010. We know that 75% of the Transcon buses came off. Seems they cut frequency more than they should have, which instigated a death spiral.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Another article says the lost 41% of their
> business since 2010. We know that 75% of the
> Transcon buses came off. Seems they cut frequency
> more than they should have, which instigated a
> death spiral.


That's what you do, when you can't make any money. It's what the private railroads did before Amtrak.

Amtrak would be in the same boat, if it didn't have a subsidy.

Same with public transit, which is endangered particularly in smaller markets by transportation network companies.

Greyhound appears to be largely supported by immigrant ridership these days: everybody else is on the plane or in the car.

Even rental car companies are facing a threat of sorts -- the rise of Turo and similar ventures -- the Airbnbs of cars.

Greayhound had a really big fit along with SP (their owner) when Santa Fe wanted to start their Golden Gate streamliners between LA & SF via the San Joaquin Valley.
Classic example of "free market" corporations trying to use government to screw their competition. After hearings Cal PUC gave SF the go-ahead.
Trains were much better and more modern tha SP's steam-powered Daylights, going over 100 mph between Bakersfield and Hanford - I know, I rode them!!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Sad state of affairs, also how many people who rode these routes are here pissed because of that!

Posted from Android

Deregulation and a bus company owned by foreign interests!  Our government looked the other way!
The poor, the elderly, & young adults are the losers. 
The charter bus companies made out like bandits, without the financial burden of maintaining intercity bus routes.
After the Greyhound drivers strike, there was no will left by management to make it work.  No second sections,
no back up buses, and no interest in local feeder routes, just expressway trips.  They dug their own grave!

mp51w Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Deregulation and a bus company owned by foreign
> interests!  Our government looked the other way!
> The poor, the elderly, & young adults are the
> losers. 
> The charter bus companies made out like bandits,
> without the financial burden of maintaining
> intercity bus routes.
> After the Greyhound drivers strike, there was no
> will left by management to make it work.  No
> second sections,
> no back up buses, and no interest in local feeder
> routes, just expressway trips.  They dug their
> own grave!

While all of this is true, do not discount cultural bias against Greyhound buses, terminals and patrons.  This includes many who post on Trainorders.
 

mp51w Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Deregulation and a bus company owned by foreign
> interests!  Our government looked the other way!
> The poor, the elderly, & young adults are the
> losers. 
> The charter bus companies made out like bandits,
> without the financial burden of maintaining
> intercity bus routes.
> After the Greyhound drivers strike, there was no
> will left by management to make it work.  No
> second sections,
> no back up buses, and no interest in local feeder
> routes, just expressway trips.  They dug their
> own grave!

The Greyhound strike in the mid 1980's was their point of no return.

Amtrak's Tom Downs-izing was their point, which started their addiction to Fully Allocated Cost Accounting and failure to comprehend Incremental Accounting any longer.

Now to top it off, it's now run by a stupid hatchet man, Anderson, who has no grasp of long distance surface transportation markets, operating metrics, revenue, or bottom-line. 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/18 06:49 by joemvcnj.

RuleG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> While all of this is true, do not discount
> cultural bias against Greyhound buses, terminals
> and patrons.  This includes many who post on
> Trainorders.

Just rode Greyhound the other day. As usual, I don't put up social barriers, so I conversed with some people why waiting.

One patron asked why I didn't ride the train (Pacific Surfliner) as if I didn't fit the "blue collar" image of a typical Greyhound patron, so the cultural bias is "two way" and more deeply ingrained than people are willing to admit. I told him I was going to miss the last train (which I did by about 15 minutes), so that's why I was at the Greyhound terminal

Another patron mentioned how the intercity buses in Mexico are more modern, cleaner, and more comfortable than Greyhound's. So I guess our transportation mediocrity is not limited to trains? 

 The ride itself? Safe driving, relatively quiet, and obviously less roomy than the train, but no need to deal with the overcrowding from the Del Mar races on the Surfliner. The passenger next to me spoke very little English, but he was charging his Smartphone on the seat power outlet, and using WiFi.

Funny how the bus haters on TO are automatically sabotaging their own travel options. :-)