DEN<>PDX on Greyhound in 1997

[Willbridge]

Recently I turned up my post-Pioneer trip report on a Greyhound trip between Denver and Portland. It's interesting in that they were still running two through schedule patterns on US40 and two more on I-80 between Denver and Salt Lake City via Cheyenne. In addition, there was one through schedule pattern between Denver and Salt Lake City via Grand Junction. Salt Lake City and Portland had three through buses. It's hard to imagine now, but this was already a huge reduction from the 1970's when Greyhound and Trailways each ran three through buses between Portland and Salt Lake City.

.... Summer, 1997

GREYHOUND WEST - by Robert W. Rynerson

for Rail Travel News and the CompuServe Travel Forum

I pushed the old German leather bag into the narrow overhead
baggage rack, and then squeezed myself into the narrow Greyhound
seat. As a veteran of European Second Class rail travel in my
Army days, and having made a couple of overnight one-night bus
trips, I would survive what was to be my longest intercity bus
ride-- I told myself.

Crammed between the restroom and a lively young Mexican family,
while the driver begged mothers to quit trying to take a second,
free, seat for their infants, I took a moment to ask myself how I
had gotten into this.

My grandmother was born too late. Her 100th birthday party in
Oregon was set for a month after Amtrak's Pioneer stopped running
this May, 1997, and so I was faced with a difficult decision.
From Denver, discount air carriers offered convoluted travel
arrangements: Amtrak offered an indirect, though scenic, routing
which would consume too much of my limited time. I could pay a
lot of money to ride United Airlines, but there was also a chance
that my arrangements would experience costly changes for work
reasons.

Besides, none of these seemed like a vacation-- just doing
something that I had done before. And, I realized, this is how
our betters want us to travel. Our country's leaders are
designing a transport system that has no middle class, except for
those who can plan their lives months in advance. This trip
would be a peek into the future.

There was no question that I wanted to be there. Not everyone
has a centenarian grandmother who can recall sailing time at
Flavel, Oregon, for the S.S. Great Northern or S.S. Northern
Pacific, "Twin Palaces of the Pacific" -- the band playing as the
SP&S Railway Boat Train, with the through Great Northern
International sleeper from British Columbia rolled into the dock
area. I wanted to get to this party in the worst way. I called
Greyhound.

As the Greyhound driver continued his project of finding a seat
for everyone, I reviewed the schedule. I was the only passenger
who had one, having photocopied the pages from my office copy of
the Official Bus Guide. It was to be a two-night trip, with a
daylight run across Idaho, on a schedule similar to that of the
Portland Rose of the 1950's and 60's, but we were to go on the
scenic US40 route between Denver and Salt Lake City.

Greyhound stopped distributing public timetables under its former
president as part of the many sudden experiments then
undertaken-- experiments which almost wiped the company off the
map. This makes it impossible for the typical passenger to plan
things such as an orderly diet. Meal stops or rest stops are all
surprise events. For most passengers, even the route is a
mystery.

The driver was successful in sorting out the passengers, and so I
was able to move to one of the reclining seats. This left the
rear bench seat for the kids, giving them a little space to bang
around in. The change was a mixed blessing, as the massive guy
in the seat ahead of me reclined his chair with a powerful slam
against my knees. This was the position that he remained in, all
night to Salt Lake City.

Due to the length of this trip, I knew that I would only be able
to offer highlights to readers of Rail Travel News. I jotted
down these notes and more:

-- Departed Denver ten minutes late, but made up the time by
Winter Park. My seatmate, a retired Navy enlisted man on his way
to visit his daughter, had just come across the plains from St.
Louis. He was genuinely astounded at how fast we took the curves
on Berthoud Pass - the driver knew the route very well, and was
doing this safely.

-- The restroom had been stocked in Denver with only a handful of
packaged towelettes (there is no running water on a Greyhound).
I was glad that I had brought some of my own, as they ran out
past Winter Park, 1/6 of the way into this leg of the trip.

-- Sunset near Granby, as if we were on the Rio Grande's
Prospector.

- At Steamboat Springs, the decline of the intercity bus industry
was most thoroughly illuminated. Greyhound must make three stops
there to accomplish a rest stop for passengers, a driver change,
and a station stop. Urban sprawl, combined with insufficient
volume to justify a real station, forces the buses to roam from
location to location for each function. When the driver change
occurred, we were left in the full bus in a parking lot for
fifteen minutes with no one in authority around. Passengers were
uneasy.

-- West of Steamboat, I slept, awaking fitfully at times due to
the pain in my knees.

-- At Vernal, Utah, the Subway Sandwich store was our rest stop
at 2:15 a.m. I got out to stretch my legs, in what proved to be
one of the few rest stops that is actually in a downtown area--
such as it is in Vernal. Streets were silent.

-- Arrived 35 minutes early in Salt Lake City. My checked
suitcase continued on this bus to Portland, due to arrive there
after midnight. I stopped off in the Mormon capital to check out
the site of the planned new Intermodal Terminal (which will be
the subject of a separate article for RTN and the Travel Forum);
the 3.5 hour stopover also provided a less uncivilized arrival
time in Portland, and promised a schedule which is the last one
making off-freeway stops across Idaho.

-- Ate breakfast at J. B.'s Restaurant. Sign up front says "We
Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone." You can tell that
they are next to the bus station. Glad that I had shaved in the
bus station restroom, and had successfully changed some of my
clothing in the tiny stall.

to be continued

 

[Willbridge]

Leaving the Crossroads of the West...

-- Rolling again out of Salt Lake City at 11:43 a.m., with a
nearly full load. Bus was due to depart at 11:00 a.m., but
loading passengers and baggage took ages. Dallas controllers
told our driver that he would not need a second section, because
he was expected to let off more passengers in Ogden than would
board. Instead, the opposite happened. For the rest of the way
to Boise, we flirted with the possibility of having standees,
just staying at the crammed full seated-load level.

I noted that Big Brother in Dallas won the bet. The trick in
intercity bus economics since the beginning in World War I has
been to try to avoid running a second (or third) section on a
schedule, cramming everyone into one bus.

-- On this leg, the person in front of me did not recline all the
way, for which my knees were thankful.

-- The rest stop at Snowville, Utah had burned, so we stopped at
a lonely truck stop at Sublett, Idaho, a place so small that it
is an unidentified interchange on I-84 on the AAA map. Parking
lot was unpaved, and we splashed through mud. Staff struggled to
deal with the unaccustomed activity, as we met two sections of
our mirror image eastbound trip there.

-- Our departure delayed by cowboys on horseback and in pick-up
trucks herding 60 head of cattle down the road. Little boy on
bus asked his mother "why are those cows walking?"

-- Off the freeway, on the only bus scheduled to call in Rupert,
Idaho. Lots of activity around the yard of the Eastern Idaho
Railroad, after we left the bus station ("Misty's" - Worms,
Cigarettes, Bait, Bus).

-- Along the way, the outlook of this land was described in a
billboard for the local paper "World, National, State -- Local,
Local, Local. The Times-News. Get it." Washington, DC a long
way away from these people.

-- Burley stop was in a house on the edge of a residential
neighborhood. If this was run by a public transit agency, there
be an uproar that would be deafening as to how the neighborhood
was being ruined. I wrote down a note in favor of private
enterprise, being able to trash a neighborhood in the name of
efficiency. It was a low-income neighborhood, so some residents
may like having the buses so handy.

-- All seats were full from Twin Falls at 5:19p. A woman in a
car chased the bus down, but the driver would not let her board
out in the highway for "safety reasons." That was valid, but by
not letting her on, we avoided having standees. We were still 49
minutes behind schedule, despite the driver's best efforts, so
she should have missed this bus in any case. Next bus would come
in 10 hours.

-- Driver pointed out Snake Canyon. The Mexican boy behind me
switched to English: "Coo-ool. It's beautiful!"

-- Boise still has a genuine (1950's-vintage?) bus station, on a
standard floor plan that made me feel like I had been there
before. I bought a 1988 Greyhound-Trailways System Map, on sale
at the ticket counter. It shows numerous routes which have been
abandoned on the downward spiral of the intercity bus network.

-- At Boise, we picked up a second section at last. Now we were
bypassing the smaller stops and making up time. More
importantly, there was a bit of room in the bus, and it felt more
comfortable. I was now riding next to a German tourist who was
on his way to Whitehorse. Amazingly, he did not speak excellent
English yet. In the gloom, I pointed out Farewell Bend, and
explained in broken German how the Oregon Trail had worked, and
then we slept.

-- In Pendleton at 1:34 a.m., we were at another of the rare
downtown rest stops. Some passengers stumbled off to wait for
the 2:50 a.m. connection to Walla Walla and Pasco. I thought of
RTN contributor Glenn Lee, and knew that he would not envy me
this writing project. Here, I recalled, the Greyhound system was
all inherited from Union Pacific Stages, and once was coordinated
with main line train service.

-- Our two sections continued west, with us making up time by
skipping more stops in the night. Early, early in the morning, I
forced my eyes open as my body recognized the cant of the bus on
the curves in the Columbia River Gorge. The mountains were dark
shadows against a faint glow in the sky. I peered into the
canyon to see the lights of SP&S Train 3 or UP Train 17 which had
run this time slot, but they had gone ahead of us - 26 years ahead
of us.

-- We rolled past light rail stations into Portland. Our bus was
running just ahead of the first train. LRT passengers were
already waiting at Hollywood.

-- The first section arrived in Portland's intermodal terminal
complex eight minutes early. I stumbled off to be met by my
father, whose newspaper distribution work has left him no
stranger to these early hours. I stretched my legs, glad to be
on solid ground for a few days.

Eastbound next.

 

[NYP]

Robert, you may have seen Greyhound has stopped running Salt Lake to Boise. Salt Lake Express has taken over the route on an interline basis. Greyhound is moving to the Salt Lake City Airport. I think they only have the Denver-Salt Lake City bus route left. They will drop off passengers at Amtrak.

 

[Willbridge]

Robert, you may have seen Greyhound has stopped running Salt Lake to Boise. Salt Lake Express has taken over the route on an interline basis. Greyhound is moving to the Salt Lake City Airport. I think they only have the Denver-Salt Lake City bus route left. They will drop off passengers at Amtrak.

Yes. In studying recent changes, they seem to be going back to segmenting routes instead of running through. I was studying fall-backs in case Train 6 misses Train 59 on a Friday night and found that the one remaining direct Greyhound CHI<>NOL schedule is split into three buses, with one of them being an independent. That's what they've done on DEN<>PDX now. In 1974 GL had seven through CHI<>NOL buses. Trailways ran via St. Louis, but south of Memphis they also had seven buses.

They still haven't done anything to repair the COVID cutbacks east of PDX, except to go back to daily service. A consequence is that their PDX<>SPK fares are often higher than Amtrak's. A single bus heads east out of Portland to Boise but by a transfer at a truck stop in Stanfield (the Hinkle of buses) it is also the PDX<>SPK schedule. And east of SPK it's the Jefferson Lines connection to MSP. When I rode it Stanfield to Portland last summer (as a substitute for canceled Amtrak trains) I think every seat was full.

 

[Willbridge]

Here's the return trip....

GREYHOUND EAST - by Robert W. Rynerson

Monday night and it was quiet in the Portland Greyhound station.
My father and I sat and chatted in the near-empty terminal-- in a
time slot which used to see the old station in downtown
jam-packed. The hot freeway express to San Francisco and its
counterpart north to Vancouver, BC which once drew late night
crowds no longer exist. These "nearly non-stop" trips were
victims of discount airline competition.

At just about its 10:30 p.m. scheduled departure time, boarding
began for Schedule 5532 to Salt Lake City. There is no through
bus from Portland to Denver, but I would have been on this trip
for schedule reasons, in any case. As on the westbound run, the
schedule was very similar to that of the old Portland Rose.

-- We departed 27 minutes late, once again due to slow loading.
There were 46 revenue passengers and an infant on the 47-seat MCI
coach.

-- At The Dalles, we spent time while the driver sorted things
out with a woman who had suddenly decided to make a stopover
there.

-- Although the schedule shows a rest stop in Pendleton, the
driver announced an unscheduled rest stop in Boardman. As I was
once again the only passenger with a timetable, this caused no
raised eyebrows among my fellow travelers. We lost more time,
and arrived in Pendleton 53 minutes late.

-- The Walla Walla - Pasco bus was held for us. Four passengers
watched anxiously for us from its windows. After the transfer of
our passengers, both buses were underway at 3:22 a.m., 52 minutes
late for us.

-- Into Baker City, or more correctly, its massive truck stop, at
5:07 a.m., 42 minutes late. Our driver announced that the stop
would be shortened, due to our running late, but not to worry
because the restaurant knew that we were coming. In fact, the
predominately male waitstaff was short-handed and initially
disorganized.

I placed my order at 5:16 a.m., trying to guess what they could
turn out quickly. Relying on former Greyhound travel experience,
I sat at the counter, where I could keep an eye on the driver.
The smokers sitting on both sides of me were cross-country truck
drivers.

Outside again, passengers were milling about. Some had taken the
warning about the shortened breakfast stop seriously, and had not
eaten a full breakfast.

-- After everyone who wanted to had lots of cigarettes, the
driver was able to herd the last smokers on board, including a
woman carrying a baby in a car-seat carrier. We pulled out at
5:45 a.m., enjoying the panorama of the snow-capped Blue
Mountains. The meal stop had only been two minutes shorter than
the secret schedule indicated it would be.

-- My seatmate from Pendleton east was a very sleepy young man,
who was still asleep when we left Baker City. He had a tendency
to sprawl all over anything or anyone nearby. Fortunately, there
were nine empty seats now, and with the chain reaction problem of
reclining seats eliminated, I was able to leave my seat back up
far enough for him to sleep against it instead of me.

-- East of Baker City, we played tag with Union Pacific freight
trains as we dropped toward the Snake River.

-- At Ontario, the bus was almost full again, with two empty
seats. A black youth moved theatrically, giving the Japanese
tourist who had just boarded and who had sat down beside him the
luxury of having one of the two empty seats. The black youth
announced that he was going to sit with his "brothers." It was
the only open example of racism that I saw on the trip.

-- While we stopped, behind schedule, to take a long break in
Boise for the driver change, a second section was originated
there to handle local traffic and to give our through bus some
relief. I thought about asking to join that bus, knowing that it
would have lots of space on it, but now I found that the second
section had opened up enough space that I would have two seats to
myself.

-- Although totally uneconomic for the company, intercity bus
passengers can become obsessed with getting two seats for
themselves, due to the cramped space situation. For most
passengers, that just means a certain amount of yearning; for
some, it means aggressive action to try and hog seats. When the
load factor drops, everyone breathes easier, and station stop
dwell times are even reduced as the bus loads and unloads faster.

-- As we rolled out of Boise onto the great southern Idaho plain,
I began to have second thoughts about the second section. The
driver on this through bus was a fountain of announcements and
information, some of it questionable and some of it wrong.

-- Before we took our long lunchtime stop in Bliss, we had
already heard several long accounts of stories from American
history, most of which were not relevant to the area along this
route. We were also reminded that the government does not have a
right to keep us from bearing arms, and that "the newspapers"
falsely blame trucks for accidents. As he chatted on, cattle
liners and dump trucks raced past us in the fast lane.

-- After Bliss, passengers toward the front of the bus were given
scary second thoughts about their choice of seats, as they
watched speeding truckers and yahoos in pick-up trucks and sports
utility vehicles cutting each other off as they raced for
position on the occasional grades.

-- As we climbed Sweetzer Summit toward the Utah border, our
driver switched off the air conditioning to gain enough power to
keep up with the flow of road warrior traffic. On this last,
hot, leg of the trip before a cleaning stop, the restroom stench
became overpowering.

Outside, a sign 91 miles northwest of Salt Lake City warned
motorists to watch for pedestrians. In the baking heat of this
lonely, treeless land, I could only think that it was some
highway engineer's idea of humor.

-- Welcome to Utah! We are forced to drive through a Port of
Entry facility with the freight. Motorists, more welcome, whiz
past on the now truck-free road segment, temporarily winning the
road race.

-- In Ogden, the bus was filling up again. Fortunately, there
were still a few empty seats, because one of the boarding
passengers was carrying a massive boombox. It took up a seat.
We got a good look at 25th Street, Ogden's main street leading
away from the Union Pacific Station, where a rundown business
district is being revitalized. Train service was discontinued
there just as the nature of the area around the depot was
becoming an advantage of train travel.

-- Entering Salt Lake City just after 6:00 p.m., we passed a long
northbound traffic jam on I-15. Utah Transit Authority buses sat
in the glacial flow. We arrived in Salt Lake City only a few
minutes after the scheduled time.

-- Greyhound's new concept for handling baggage made a mess of
the Salt Lake City transfer-- but the baggage did not get lost.
By issuing it back to the passengers at transfer points and
having them carry it to the next bus, fewer pieces are
misdirected or lost. However, the scheduled transfer was forty
minutes at supper time in Salt Lake City, and passengers with all
their luggage in hand found that unless they collaborated and
went out for junk food in shifts, they were not going to have
dinner before our 7:00 p.m. departure.

The piles of luggage in the undersized Salt Lake City terminal,
with about the same amount of space as the Amtrak station and
with multiple transcontinental buses on hand, made it difficult
for passengers to even move around.

-- At 6:41 p.m., the public address system announcer called the
"Denver via US40" bus. The driver was not at the gate yet, but
the announcer told passengers to have their tickets ready.
Dutifully, many searched for their tickets, shuffling their bags
forward at the same time. Some struggled to their feet with
baggage. Nothing happened. Three minutes later, after the false
alarm had been recognized, the driver walked up and began
boarding passengers. A few minutes later, the same thing
happened with the "Chicago via I-80" bus, due out at the same
time as ours.

-- Bus 2838 stood before me. I heaved a sigh of relief as I
realized I was on the last leg of my trip. Its rollsign
incorrectly said "Salt Lake City" and multiple buses were loading
at that point, so I asked if it was the bus to "Denver." Of
course, the look that I got from employees handling the baggage
showed me how foolish it was to have thought it could be anything
else.

-- Settling into my window seat, I realized that I had now put in
enough recent hours on Greyhound to become reflective. You win
some and you lose some-- this bus was the first one well-stocked
with the wet-dry towelettes, but someone had forgotten to install
the convenient seat-side garbage bags which have become a
necessity as junk food dominates intercity bus travel.

-- There were about six empty seats in the bus as we rolled out
of Salt Lake City, past the $2 million homes of Mt. Olympus.
The deadheading long-haul truck driver sitting next to me was
genuinely informative. He drove this route regularly, and
enjoyed pointing out features along the way. We talked about his
desire to move his family out of the big town to Heber City,
along this line. He also knew enough about safety issues on US40
to remind me that there are some truckers who succeed in making
their big rigs inconspicuous, through professional driving.

-- East of Vernal, I slept, and the intermediate points and halts
were only a blur till we came down out of the mountains and back
to Denver. We pulled in on time on Wednesday, and I dragged
myself off to pick up my bag. A short ride on a city bus, and
the trip was over. Greyhound Lines had delivered punctual, safe
and economical transportation, along with a good dose of
incomparable scenery.

Some observations to come.

 

[Willbridge]

So here are some 1997 observations. The Amtrak Pioneer and Desert Wind had just been given the axe. Continental Trailways and feisty Pacific Trailways had been absorbed by Greyhound.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Certain things have remained unchanged through the years on
long-distance bus travel. The passenger ranks are divided
between:

-- middle class people, mostly going to or from small towns
written off by other forms of public transportation.

-- passengers with lots of time who are going on long "See
America" trips. This category includes foreign visitors and cuts
across social lines.

-- low income passengers to whom the lack of formalities in bus
travel is appealing. These are the meekest passengers when it
comes to following the directions from bus drivers.
They helped me to understand why a Great Northern Railway
conductor told me in 1966 that he liked strike-diverted bus
passengers better than diverted air passengers.

"If you tell 'em to do something, they'll do it. The d**n
airline passengers think they own the place." He was describing
the catered-to airline patrons of the day.

What has changed is the percentage of each of these types of
passengers on the bus. On the routes which I rode,
Spanish-language bus companies are not yet competitors, and the
buses carried many passengers who had difficulty with English for
that reason. There are fewer of the "See America" passengers
than I recall from before, and almost no military passengers.
Much of that business has been taken by the airlines, and the
military has been down-sized to a degree.

In addition to the Spanish-speaking passengers, it appeared to me
that the number of low-income travelers had become a larger
percentage of the ridership. These passengers have been
returning to Greyhound after the disastrous experiments with
advance reservation requirements-- requirements which negated the
simplicity which attracts these people to bus travel in the first
place.

Also having changed is the contact with small-town America.
Completion of the Interstate system and the end of most
regulation has allowed these places to be bypassed. Rest stops
and meal stops are simply more and more of the same roadside
cuisine that dominates travel in the United States. I was happy
that I had brought some food with me. I thought of the snobs who
put down Amcafe food, and longed for a leisurely microwave meal
as I wolfed convenience store items at the quick rest stops.

About a decade ago, I came to the conclusion that an intercity
bus route, as traditionally operated, has about one generation to
go between the time that rail passenger service is discontinued
on that route and the time that the "replacement" bus route
itself dies. This type of bus service is only society's way of
washing its hands of a problem-- and in regard to bus
transportation, society goes back and uses soap twice. Of the
states affected by discontinuance of Amtrak's Pioneer, only
Oregon has attempted to arrange for offsetting improvements in
intercity bus service.

Greyhound's improved management is battling back, with ridership
being up 7.1% and passenger-miles up 9.2% However, the company is
still losing money, and based on my experiences, some of the
"choice" riders who have come back to the buses will not stay.

I might make an overnight bus trip again, but not where I have a
real choice. I realize, however, that our government is working
hard to eliminate choices, so I will keep that old German "Second
Class" leather bag handy as long as it lasts.

# # #


This file was contributed
by Travel Forum assistant Sysop Robert Rynerson,
74265,761.