If passenger rail is the red-haired stepchild of our transportation network, passenger busses are the skinny kid hanging around with a cardboard sign pleading for scraps. It is truly outrageous that there appears to be no real constituency for maintaining a viable and usable passenger coach business.
Forty some years ago, I took a mammoth, meandering transcontinental bus trip (almost 6000 miles in total, to get from the East Coast, where I was leaving school, to Seattle, which was to be my 'temporary' home. (Though 'temporary' turned out, except for a two year sojourn in New Orleans, to be for the past forty five years!) Even back then, it seemed a fairly adventurous thing to do. But in those days, there were bus routes connecting nearly all major metropolitan areas and lots of smaller towns, too. And in every major city, there was a clean, staffed, safe bus terminal to wait for the next connecting bus. Today it would be impossible to replicate that trip, and even the legs that still exist mostly don't have terminal space to await connections.
Today, nobody takes the bus who has any other options. No wonder governments are reluctant to provide the basic amenities that make bus travel possible. Truly sad...
