Whatever happened to "Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us'

I do not like bus travel.

Whether local or short haul or long haul. I do not like buses.

Never have, never will.

I grew up in a city that didn't have rapid transit.

If you wanted to go down city (which was Worcester, Massachusetts, for downtown) for shopping or the movies, and you didn't have a car, you took the bus. I remember going down city with my mother and sister to shop at Denholm's, Barnard's, and Filene's. When I was a kid, my mother did not (yet) drive, and my father couldn't chauffeur us, as he was home taking care of the younger kids. So we took the 19 Burncoat down city, and the 19 Cherry Value back home. Once my sister Kathleen got her license, if we went shopping, Kath drove. Then I drove. Then my mother finally got her license. No more taking the bus down city to shop.

And - pre-license - if we wanted to go down city to see a movie, my friends and I took the bus.

Getting to my high school required taking a general-purpose city bus down city, and then transferring to a bus that was earmarked for Notre Dame Academy. The journey reversed on the way home. There was a late bus - the "activities bus" - but if you missed it, you had to trudge over to a general-purpose city bus stop and wait forever for a bus down city, where you could transfer for home.

I went to college in Boston, and the principal way of getting back and forth was via Trailways bus, with its ancient, gloomy, and dumpy terminal in Park Square, right next door to the Hillbilly Ranch, a notable music venue known for country & western and bluegrass. (I never stepped toe in there. It seemed too weird, cruddy, and adult to me.) 

From Park Square, I took the MBTA out to the Fenway stop and back to campus. 

Ah, rapid transit. 

Not that the Green Line was all that rapid. You could often walk faster. But not being on a bus was just so much cooler than being on a bus. 

Once I settled for life in Boston, where most of the time I didn't have a car, I took plenty of bus trips back and forth to Worcester while my mother was still living. Now, when I go to Worcester to visit my cousin Barbara, there's a train option. And I occasionally take a Peter Pan bus down to the Cape to visit Babs at her summer place in Pocasset. I used to drive - my own car, when I had one, or a rental -  but I really don't care to drive much anymore.

My first long haul via bus occurred in April 1967, when I took a Trailways bus to New York with a friend. My first trip there, and the beginning of my love affair with NYC. We stayed with her aunt in Queens, and took the subway into Manhattan each day for the week we were there. 

Taking the subway. Now that was cool. Romantic, even. 

My second long-haul bus trip was to Washington, DC for the November 1969 Moratorium against the Vietnam War. The trip was uncomfortable - I don't think there was a toilet on the bus - but seemed so very righteous.

Over the years, I've taken the bus to New York a few times, mostly when I spent a year there in grad school. 

But mostly, I've stayed off buses wherever possible, taking them here and there, but rarely. And, since the advent of Uber, even those rare occasions where I had to get somewhere that wasn't walkable, on the T, or accessible via commuter rail, bus trips have become rarer still.

I know that they're a necessity - both financially and out-of-the-way-location-wise -  but I have always, always, always found buses wildly depressing. 

But at no time when I've been on a bus have I ever feared that a bus I was on was going to break down and strand me in the middle of nowhere. Sure, there were were bus breakdowns. The no-frills (as if buses had frills) and ultra-cheap Fung Wa bus from Boston to NY was notorious for breaking down. On more than one occasion, I saw one pulled off to the side of the Mass Pike, the engine smoking away, flames shooting out, while the unfortunate passengers stood there waiting for help to arrive. But I never heard of another bus not being sent to retrieve the stranded passengers.

Which happened to the hapless passengers who were on a Greyhound bus from Boston to NYC last August. 

Elisa Kennedy was only on the bus to begin with as her Amtrak train had broken down. Since trains and buses all leave from South Station, she thought she'd just hop on the bus, Gus. A Greyhound bus.

But things didn’t go as planned. In a rural area of Connecticut, the bus abruptly pulled off the highway and the driver announced it could not continue due to serious mechanical problems. (Source: Boston Globe)

Granted, "serious mechanical problems" can occur on any mode of transpo, public or private. When it's private - your own car - you figure out how to get from wherever your car was towed to, to wherever you wanted to get to. But when it's public transportation you're on, most folks would make the reasonable assumption that you'd be taken care of. You might have to wait a while, but somehow a substitute means of transportation would show up.

Anyway, the passengers on the ill-fated Greyhound were ordered off the mechanically problematic but air-conditioned  bus, and made to stand in the broiling August sun in MiddleOfNowhere, CT. The driver had told the passengers that help was on the way, but two hours later, he had some bad news:

No bus was coming and, as far as Greyhound was concerned, they were on their own.

After fruitlessly trying to get an Uber or Lyft, Kennedy was able to find a livery car willing to come get her and a few fellow strandees she'd befriended, and drive them into New York. 

A couple of days later, Kennedy emailed Greyhound asking for a refund of her $83.98 ticket plus the $200 she had paid to complete her trip in the van.

But Greyhound said no.

Alas, her Greyhound ticket was non-refundable. When Kennedy tried again, she got this answer:

“We are unable to honor the request due to ticket restrictions, as the service was still provided, and the passenger [was] still able to complete the trip.”

Well, Kennedy was able to complete her trip no thanks to Greyhound. And maybe they did eventually send a rescue bus. 

But balking at refunding the ticket? Yikes!

Kennedy is still going for some compensation. She's lodged complaints with the state AG and federal bus regulators. And she enlisted the help of the Globe's consumer advocate.

He got a hold of Greyhound's mumbo jumbo, 10 page, densely worded contract. Where he found the Greyhound weasel word wiggle room.

“In cases where a bus becomes unserviceable during the trip,” Greyhound will exercise “reasonable commercial efforts” to provide passengers with “a substitute bus or transport.”

I suspect that Greyhound's interpretation of "reasonable commercial efforts" is different than that of the Globe ombudsman. I can only imagine...

When he pressed Greyhound on what "reasonable efforts" they'd made, they didn't answer .

Anyway, eventually Greyhound did agree to refund the price of Kennedy's ticket. (In contrast, Amtrak immediately refunded Kennedy when their train broke down.)

Whatever happened to their old motto, Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us?