Trains like this one just aren't as competitive as they should be in the U.S.

I can't believe it's that time of year again. Despite the recession, roughly 12 percent of Americans will be traveling somewhere for the Thanksgiving holiday. That statistic hits few cities harder than Boston, an urban area with more than 250,000 college students, many (if not most) of whom will have to travel home for the holiday.

Today, like many of my young counter-parts, I will be hitting the road, going back to New York City for a five day break from the rigors and pressures of life at Tufts University. Unfortunately however, I won't be going by rail. Instead, I will be taking Greyhound's new shiny express servic to New York. I'll be surfing back to NYC in style, with free wireless Internet and wide legroom, in a brand new Greyhound coach. Like other bus companies, Greyhound has sensed the boom in the interest for inter-city bus travel, and invested accordingly.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Despite the free wireless and new coaches, my intention was always to take the train to and from New York for the Thanksgiving holiday. Not only do I find trains pretty cool, I also their ability to avoid traffic to be crucial factor during the busy Thanksgiving holiday travel season, crucial enough in-fact that I planned to abandon my Boltbus ways in favor of the substantially more expensive Amtrak. Amtrak's recent sale on tickets also played a role in my decision, although tickets on the Northeast Regional, the no-frills train service that services New York and Boston, can cost upwards of $70 each way, the sale put the price at just $49, still expensive but quite the bargain when compared to non-sale prices.

So why will I be on the bus come this afternoon?

I received quite a sticker shock when I went to book my ticket two weeks ago. To my surprise, one-way tickets on the Northeast Regional were pushing upwards of $130, far higher than even the most expensive, non-sale tickets. For this price, I could travel between New York and Boston several times on one of the many bus services that service the two cities. To put it in perspective, the cost of a flight between New York and Boston was about $74 each way(with taxes and fees included). What was I paying for? Could I seriously contemplate paying more than $200 dollars to travel home and back by rail, when the bus would perform the same service for a about 15% of the cost?

So that settled it. I was riding the bus.

Apparently, this tired college student isn't alone.

Even before he took the bus, Northeastern University student Jimmy Okuszka knew he'd like it better than the train. The last time he made a visit to his family in New Jersey, it was on Amtrak, but when he learned the BoltBus service from Boston had free wireless Internet access, he made the switch.

 

"I kind of got a little bored last time just watching movies [on my laptop] and not being able to go on the Internet,'' said Okuszka, 18, as he waited in line to board the bus at South Station, on his way to visit a friend at Rutgers University. Never mind that he had to transfer to a train once he got to New York; for most of the trip, he would be able to e-mail friends and check out his favorite websites. It didn't hurt that he paid only $30 on Bolt for a round-trip ticket to New York, compared with the $100 price tag for the train.

Long-distance bus ridership in the United States is estimated to be up about 10 percent since last year, according to Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, which conducts an annual survey of the bus industry. The number of passengers traveling by air and train, on the other hand, was down about 8 percent for the first eight months of the year, according to numbers from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and Amtrak. Bus tickets are more affordable, and many bus companies also offer something that most trains and planes don't - free wireless Internet access - which is attracting not only business travelers, but a legion of young riders used to having the Web at their fingertips.

 

The two newest companies to offer service on the ultracompetitive Boston to New York bus route - Megabus and BoltBus - are reporting increases in passenger counts since they began making the trip a year and a half ago. Both outfits offer fares that range from $1 to $15 for a one-way trip to New York, compared with as much as $21 on Peter Pan or Greyhound.---Boston Globe

The booming success of these bus companies on the Northeastern corridor represents the complete failure of this nation's inter-city rail system. Granted, many will point out that trains between Boston and Washington are regularly sold out, but in reality this fact only serves to highlight the increasingly obsolete nature of our nation's highways and rail systems. If America were serious about investing in rail, a fast, cheap and flexible rail service would be available to zip businessman, families, and yes, tired college students between east coast cities. It would be done in two hours, not four, and it would be a complete game changer.

At the present moment, the status quo is untenable. Our woefully underfunded and inefficient rail system is taxed beyond capacity, and nightmarish traffic consumes our roads and airspace.  In reality, most if not all of the intercity bus travelers should be on the train. A renewed investment in modern, high-speed inter-city rail isn't merely a theoretical way out, but rather a proven one (see China, Europe, Japan etc...). It's time for us to get serious.

As for Okuszka, he's already purchased his next Boltbus ticket.....