I've been following the expansion of Mega Bus, a low-cost British carrier, into the U.S.A over the past couple of years, awaiting the day they hopefully would decide to enter the Canadian market. They started in the mid-west, with Chicago as the hub and then started serving the West coast of the United States early in 2007. As of a press release dated 28 March 2008, they'll begin East coast operations 30 May of this year!

To highlight the significance of this, I'll let you in on one of their major promotional selling points: each departure has a number of seats available for $1US each way(plus a small booking fee of a whopping .50$US. These appear to have been eaten up quite fast, but I've found fares for late June that are as little as $15US from Toronto to NYC. Tight. I also saw some $25US and $60US one way fares. Still very reasonable, but there appear to be quite a number of the cheaper fares still available.

They also have a nifty promotion, moot at this point, that all fares on the East coast from their service launch on 30 May, until 5 June are free, save for the aforementioned $.50 booking fee.

Also, one books online or by phone. If you book online, all you do print out the ticket on regular printer paper, as with TicketMaster web tickets.

And they don't service regular bus terminals, but pre-designated departure/arrival points in the various cities in which they operate: e.g. Their stop in Toronto will be directly astride the Royal York Hotel, across the street from Union Station; hardly inconvenient.

If you're as I am and don't mind spending 10 hours on bus, especially to obtain such a high discount(Greyhound one-way to NYC, from Toronto, is $95CDN), then check it out.

I wonder if this sort of thing will help increase mass transit ridership over time. I hear their buses are actually quite comfortable and new.

Smartssa, still up for that trip?

www.megabus.com
megabus.com - Press Releases

 

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