On the road

By B.R.

GULLIVER has never ridden a Greyhound bus across America, but he wishes he had. From an early age I fell in love with those gritty American writers, from John Fante to James Ellroy, whose lonesome characters are always hopping onto buses, contemplating small-town America with a quart of rye, and having liaisons—dangerous and otherwise—with diner waitresses. I always imagined the journey would have the listless romance of a Charles Bukowski poem:

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow

The reality, I know, would be different. I may not have travelled on a Greyhound, but a seven-hour journey on the National Express from London to Liverpool was enough to convince me that there is no worse means of inter-city travel than a coach. The seats were just as cramped as a Ryanair flight, except you have to sit in them while stuck in a traffic jam on the M6. Compared with the train, plane or driving yourself, the only advantage to a bus is the price. (Which is part of the literary romance; if Sal in “On The Road” had been able to afford a plane ticket from Denver to LA, it would have been a very short book.)

Given the low cost of air travel nowadays, it is a surprise that there is still a market for long-range buses. But there clearly is. Deutsche Bahn (DB), better known as a train operator, is launching a coach service from London to Paris, a route that is already served by SNCF, another rail-turned-bus operator. DB buses also serve routes from Germany to several European countries such as Belgium and Croatia.

Greyhound Lines, meanwhile, turned 100 this year. It is now owned by First Group, a British conglomeration. It has been busy revamping buses and terminals in America and upgrading its booking system. Last year it had revenue of close to $1 billion. That is a little down on 2013, mostly, it says, due to the bad weather. According to the firm, the “US inter-city coach transportation industry has been growing every year since 2006—a reversal of the position in the preceding 25 years, when the industry declined by an average of 2.9% a year.”

Business Traveller poses a pertinent question here: “What is in it for the business traveller?”—to which I would have the thought the answer is “nothing”. True, many buses now have Wi-Fi. They might also be becoming more comfortable. But it would be a parsimonious manager indeed who forced you to swap a two hour flight from New York to Chicago, say, for a 20-hour coach journey.