Just hop on the bus, Gus.

Planes and boats and trains are all fine by me, but I've never been much of a bus aficionado. Maybe it was all those early mornings sitting in the back seat of a diesel-belching bus, heading to high school, feeling queasy. (Why my friends and I insisted on sitting at the back of the bus, given how disgusting the diesel fumes were, is beyond me.)

Maybe it was the bus ride out of New York on Thanksgiving Eve. I fell asleep when I got on the bus at Port Authority. And woke up 3 hours later, by which point we'd reached....Yankee Stadium.

Maybe it was the bus ride from Shannon Airport to Galway, on an unseasonably warm and sunny Irish spring day, on a bus full of smokers.

No, it's been a while since I've hopped on any bus other than a city bus.

But the bus, it seems, has become cool.

I should have seen this coming - all those kids lined up in Chinatown to pay $15 to take the Fung Wah bus to NYC. So what if you risked an engine fire or an off-road experience. $15 to get from Boston to New York. How cool is that. (A lot cooler than the $700+ airfare I discovered when I had to get into New York for an early meeting. Having converted to the train, I hadn't taken the shuttle in several years. And, of course, aging crank that I am, I'm nostalgic for those $69 round-trip air fares of the 70's and 80's.)

And my sister and her family have taken the far more upscale luxury coach to New York a couple of times.

So, the bus is back!

According to a recent article in The Boston Globe, cheap fares are one of the drivers swelling demand for bus travel. On the Boston-NY route, Greyhound is going to take on Fung Wah with fares as low as $1 and with wifi. ($1? I can't get from Boston to Cambridge for $1. Of course, that fare is a come on, and there will be few seats available at that price. Still, even at the likely price of $25 for most seats, it's what you'd have to call a bargain.)

But it's not just the money, honey. The article also sites "frustration with driving in traffic jams and standing in airport security lines" with the increase in bus travel, which - based on the numbers of departures and arrivals - grew by 13% last year. It's still not where it was in the "halcyon" days of bus travel, but it is on the rise.

MegaBus operates primarily in Chicago, and their COO, Dale Moser is quoted in The Globe, as saying that the bus is no longer just for poor folk who can't afford to fly.

"We're getting affluent travelers who are leaving their $45,000 SUV at home," he said.

Meanwhile, the train travel between Boston and New York has grown quite a bit over the last few years, too. (It's definitely my preferred mode. I can walk to the train station from home, and - once in New York - can often walk to where I'm going. Neither of these walking options are available when I fly. Not to mention that the shuttle to LaGuardia can run you voer $700.)

I'm not sure I'm quite ready for the bus to New York - I like the train too much - but I'm happy to see think that the jump in bus travel means fewer cars on the road, and fewer fuel-guzzling planes in the sky. Or maybe it just means more people on the go.

In any case, once Greyhound starts up their BoltBus service, I may at least wander over to the bus station to check out what it looks like. Anything's better than $700+ bucks on the shuttle, and that always-exciting cab ride in from Queens.