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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

What is the west coast bus situation? The premium bus market on the east coast seems to be booming. The NJ turnpike outside of New York which connects NYC/DC/Philly/etc is full of passenger buses.

There are now even "Business Class" buses. http://www.vamoosebus.com/pages/gold.aspx

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Recently (last year?) Megabus started offering rides among 6-8 destinations (the 4 bigger cities and a few convenient suburbs, plus Reno). I live across from one of the stops, and I always see the buses nearly full, and it's refreshing to see them cruising down the freeway. Otherwise, urban buses work fine in the bigger cities (LA as well, mind the convention), but most people live in suburbia, which is not conducive to good service. Luckily, the younger generations are moving downtown, hopefully a long lasting trend.

One of the Ridejoy founders here. I think the reason why rideshare was more popular on the West Coast is in part because there wasn't a bus system. In turn, the bus system was tough because the West Coast is spread out: even if you land in a station in LA, you still need to get a ride to your actual destination because LA is huge. I guess they are starting to find ways to make this work.

What is nice about buses is a set, affordable price and guaranteed ride that meets a minimum standard.

Yeah, do they have the same "Chinatown bus" setup as the East Coast? That seems like what spurred the whole new bus popularity, with very cheap buses between a very limited number of stops. Because if you only run the profitable routes, it's a lot easier to make a profit.

Vamoose bus is genius. They line up people on regular streets (where there are no restrictions on idling) and the bus pulls up and picks them up. There's no expensive terminal rent to maintain or coordinate, so the only costs are the driver, bus costs and maintenance and gas.

It's growing fast too. Every day the lines I see for it in NYC are more full.

Getting accross town and getting into a terminal also adds a sort of stealth time tax (like an airport, but sketchier). The Jitney benefits from this heading east also, it seems.

Vamoose seems kind of interesting but they don't do NYC/Philly which is what I would need. It would probably be cheeper then Amtrak which would be awesome.

Megabus and Boltbus both do NYC-Philly, and there are probably even more competitors now.

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