econ had better start working before someone gets hurt

Getting back from Philadelphia yesterday was not fun. I imagine it won’t surprise anyone to hear that the Chinatown bus has been getting more and more crowded as people respond to higher gas prices. What is surprising is how badly the bus industry is dealing with it. Are they running more buses? No. Raising ticket prices? No. They seem not to have noticed that anything’s different, in fact, despite everyone else managing to — yesterday there was even a young guy shooting footage and doing interviews for what I presume to be a short documentary about the situation.

And that situation is not good. Sommer, Jeff and I showed up around 4:30, intending to catch the 5:00 bus. The 4:30 was late, so we were in time for that, too (buses to DC only depart a few times during the day, but these two are scheduled close together). But a couple hundred other people were waiting, too. The two buses came, loaded and left for DC, but we weren’t able to make it onto either. Nor were a lot of other people. And it was nerve-wracking: the crowd was pushing and people were fighting. The situation wasn’t helped by new riders who seemed to feel they were entitled to physically bar others from boarding while their families and friends pushed up to the front of the crowd. Understandable, I guess, but dangerous.

At that point we decided we’d had enough and, after confirming that Greyhound wasn’t running another bus anytime soon, we headed to the train station. Amtrak, at least, has responded to the increased demand: they’ve jacked up their fares. That at least makes it easier to avoid being crushed to death, but it’s still hard to understand why bargain-basement rail travel costs six times as much as the bus. I mean, sure: infrastructure. Overhead. Better service. Relatively paltry public subsidies. But six times?

I hope that the bus companies begin to respond to the demand for this route soon. All the new players — Bolt, DC2NY, Megabus — run NYC/Philly and NYC/DC routes but, despite the NYC/DC bus assuredly passing through Philly to drop off passengers, they won’t let you book a trip that doesn’t include New York. As someone already prone to seething over New York City’s collective solipsism, it’s pretty infuriating to see half-empty buses leaving for the Big Apple on the half hour while people are risking serious injury jostling for a $15 seat to DC.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pm and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.