More Greyhound cutbacks and comparison with airlines

[Willbridge]

Gray Line is hanging on in some markets

https://www.grayline.com/

Gray Line is set up differently than Greyhound Lines. While Greyhound kept buying connecting and parallel bus companies and integrating them, Gray Line is a century-old association of local and regional operators. To the public it's all standardized, but within the organization there are differences.

In 1973 I was the last dispatcher for the Gray Line of Portland. In 1974 it was bought by Norman Kneisel (Holland-America and other activities) who had the local American Sightseeing affiliate. He dropped American Sightseeing and picked up the Gray Line operation. I doubt whether the public ever noticed the difference. In the years since, tours have been discontinued and been added, as the market evolved.

Gray Line affiliates often have a fleet that is partly second-hand buses because of the wide variations in traffic with tourists, charters, Amtrak bustitutions, airline fog runs, etc.

In 1973, an ex-Las Vegas-Tonopah-Reno GMC PD4106 at Timberline Lodge.

 

[Fenway]

As recently as the early 2000s by 8 AM the major newsstands in Montreal had the Boston Globe and Herald and NY Times ( which the Globe printed ) which were shipped on the overnight Vermont Transit (owned by Greyhound) bus from Boston - VT would hold the bus until both Boston papers delivered the papers. I was always bemused you could get a morning Boston paper in Montreal but not one from Toronto until 10 AM.

Vermont Transit in the mid-90s even experimented with having DirecTV on buses.

As an article linked above pointed out the "Chinatown' buses changed everything as passengers were content with no terminals but only curbside.

 

[Fenway]

This video dropped a couple of weeks ago and it is horrifying to watch



I did San Francisco to Boston in 2007 which was a horror show but this is insanity.

 

[railiner]

I remember that Scenicruiser, it use to be stored at ABC Companies in Florida. ABC donated that bus about 9 years ago I think it was to this museum.

It was great that the MOBT finally acquired a Scenicruiser. Unfortunately the otherwise generous donor required them to keep it in that livery, and not allow it to be restored to its correct Greyhound livery....

 

[jiml]

This video dropped a couple of weeks ago and it is horrifying to watch



I did San Francisco to Boston in 2007 which was a horror show but this is insanity.

It was his second attempt to complete a similar trip. What stuck with me was the appalling customer service of Greyhound, although at least one helpful employee was shown.

 

[TheVig]

It was his second attempt to complete a similar trip. What stuck with me was the appalling customer service of Greyhound, although at least one helpful employee was shown.

The lackluster employees are probably passengers too. Crap begets crap.

 

[Willbridge]

This video dropped a couple of weeks ago and it is horrifying to watch



I did San Francisco to Boston in 2007 which was a horror show but this is insanity.

Not that many years ago the St. Louis<>Denver<>Las Vegas segment of his trip was twice daily, which would have reduced the wait for a misconnect. In 1997 when the Desert Wind was discontinued, there were three trips daily on the Denver<>Las Vegas segment, running through to Los Angeles.

Some of the problems that he experienced were very similar to the later stages of the pre-Amtrak rail passenger network. That includes employees who know that they are on the Titanic, not Noah's Ark. That includes station food services being limited. Other problems have been created by trying to change the culture and procedures.

New owners Flix are gradually replacing Greyhound with Flix-branded services. That has been working fairly well on corridor services, but they are still trying to get the hang of long-distance routes. For example, Portland<>Denver, which was through service, has now been chopped into three segments connecting in Salt Lake City and Boise. In the past year, Greyhound has been put onto segments and then replaced again. The Denver<>Salt Lake City segment has stayed with Greyhound so far, with the other two sections going to Flix. Their connections are not showing in the reservation system, so the computer is looking for crazy alternatives. The modern Portland, old-school Boise, and modern Salt Lake City stations have been replaced with curbside operations.

That Denver<>Portland route had been with the same company since it was Union Pacific Stages. It's not surprising that change to something so stable is creating problems.

 

[joelkfla]

It seems like Greyhound has a chronic problem of drivers simply not showing up for work. I've seen reports of that on other videos.

 

[Willbridge]

It seems like Greyhound has a chronic problem of drivers simply not showing up for work. I've seen reports of that on other videos.

One of the features of long-distance operation is the need for low-level supervision at remote places. It always reminds me of seeing a job posted in the '70's by Greyhound for a dispatcher in Pasco. One of the duties was keeping tabs on the hours of service worked, so that regular runs and extras and occasional charters would all be legally covered.

There are three things going on that result in drivers not showing up.

There's a math formula that someone here likely knows the name of, that says the smaller the operation, the more spares are needed. If a transit system buys a cute bus for a special route, it actually needs two. If a little bus company assigns one driver, it actually needs two. If a bus company assigns twenty drivers, it actually needs twenty-five drivers. And so forth. In a big city, especially with non-union drivers, some of those additional drivers can be part-timers. That's more difficult in Pasco. As Greyhound has shrunk, my surmise is that they have economized on extra board drivers and I know that they have economized on remote positions like the Pasco dispatcher.

Secondly, Greyhound has the same problem recruiting as transit systems, police, airlines are having. As the video showed, drivers often end up having to be social workers. With computerized load management there is a good chance that the bus will be full. As I've mentioned here before, when a load goes over 80% complaints arise that are hard to deal with.

The first and second items lead to the third. Sad to say, there are employees who consciously or without thought will take advantage of the situation. During the energy boom in the late 1970's, Edmonton Transit had to increase the budgeted estimate of expected sick leave to be used. In September 1982 as a result of the energy crash/National Energy Policy and city policy changes, we laid off 250 transit operators on one day. Interestingly, sick leave use and other absences plummeted.

Some of this problem can be avoided by a company that bases all its drivers in one city and operates routes that are no longer than one day's on duty driving. Flix has many contractors working that type of route. A European/Mexican variation of that is to have a sleeper cab for a second driver. Either way, the drivers have face to face contact with management every workday or two. Passengers get a cleaner bus and minor repairs are likelier to be dealt with. The trade-off on extremely long journeys may be an awful lot of connections in places without stations.

2015 = pedestrian route from Union Bus Station to downtown Indianapolis.


Breakfast time in the Nashville Greyhound station in 2015.


2015 = Chattanooga's modern Greyhound station, out near the airport. Subsequently, they moved back into the city. In November 2023 the closest Greyhound stop for Chattanooga, TN is at Wildwood, GA, ten miles from downtown, at Billy's Exxon station. If a bus fails to show up at Billy's, there is no place to wait.
https://www.wdef.com/greyhound-moves-chattanooga-station-to-wildwood/

 

[railiner]

This video dropped a couple of weeks ago and it is horrifying to watch



I did San Francisco to Boston in 2007 which was a horror show but this is insanity.

That is indeed very sad. Having spent 55 years on and off in that business, it really hurts to see what has become of a once great company. The sumnation by the author of the way they treat their customers is especially hurtful to hear, but unfortunately rings all too true…

 

[Caesar La Rock]

The poor experiences of riding Greyhound can be traced back to John Teets and Fred Curry. They're the reason Greyhound is where its at in the present. So many people lost their jobs because of them. The drivers went through absolute hell, and the most senior drivers at the time simply quit when they started cutting the pay, leading to the strike of 1983. I've spoken to drivers who were involved and even arrested during that strike.

Ask any former Greyhound bus driver who was around during that period of the 1980s, and they'll tell you that John Teets and Fred Curry were the second coming of the devil for them. If you want to learn more about what they did exactly, here is a link. The videos I posted, the narrator Bob Redden (Robert Redden) does mention what those two and others were doing with the company.

https://www.angelfire.com/al/silverball/badboys.html

 

[Amtrak25]

Kerrigan was fired from Greyhound, replaced by a series of bean-counters starting with Teets. Kerrigan went to Continental Trailways, but spent money there like there was no tomorrow competing against Greyhound with a vengeance, but got to the point Greyhound bought them out to avoid a complete shut down. Little is left of the Continental routes today. Their Belgian-built Eagle buses were far nicer than MCI MC5's - MC8's. In the mid-70's from college, I would ride an overnight GL/Continental pool route from Buffalo to Williamsport, PA, changing onto an I-80 express to NYC that came from California at 2am. It was a 4 way meet with east-west and north-south buses and quite a contrast getting off a rag-tag, window rattly MC5 or MC7 onto a Silver Eagle.

I have ridden pre-Flixbus GL about 4 times over the last 15 years, out of Montreal, Charlotte, and Salt Lake (on the defunct route to Grand Jct to avoid Amtrak #6 at SLC at 3am) - and never again now. Not once did the buses depart anywhere close to on time, drivers show up 5 minutes before departure, then dither at intermediate stops far too long. The buses can be monitored from HQ, but obviously no one is watching, nobody cares, and when they get to the endpoint or major intermediate terminals hours late, they have no fear of explaining, unlike a passenger train crew.

My last experience was taking GL out of Montreal in 2018, departing 25 minutes late, stuck in traffic at the border, delayed by US Customs, two hours late into the driver change point at Burlington Airport, people from Montreal fretting about their plane connections. That is normally a one hour stop, yet the bus sat there with engines running for an hour anyway until the next driver, who was present, decided to leave. Today, that route operates 2 frequencies rather than 4, and no stop at the airport. They are deliberately chasing the business off the system.

There should be a both a rail and bus passenger bill of rights as there are for airlines. But this so-called DOT Secretary Buttigieg does not seem interested in anything but EV's and SWA plane delays of last Xmas, not on several PTC meltdowns affecting Amtrak out of Chicago for several days, not on Amtrak's 19 hour siege on a Michigan train, not on GL passengers stranded mid-trip outside of Boise for 3 days.

 

[TheVig]

I not sure anyone in Congress, much less the DOT cares about a bill of rights for passenger bus.

 

[railiner]

I not sure anyone in Congress, much less the DOT cares about a bill of rights for passenger bus.

Exactly. Long distance bus passengers have close to zero influence on regulator’s.
The very bottom of the “pecking order”…

 

[Caesar La Rock]

Kerrigan was fired from Greyhound, replaced by a series of bean-counters starting with Teets. Kerrigan went to Continental Trailways, but spent money there like there was no tomorrow competing against Greyhound with a vengeance, but got to the point Greyhound bought them out to avoid a complete shut down. Little is left of the Continental routes today. Their Belgian-built Eagle buses were far nicer than MCI MC5's - MC8's. In the mid-70's from college, I would ride an overnight GL/Continental pool route from Buffalo to Williamsport, PA, changing onto an I-80 express to NYC that came from California at 2am. It was a 4 way meet with east-west and north-south buses and quite a contrast getting off a rag-tag, window rattly MC5 or MC7 onto a Silver Eagle.

I have ridden pre-Flixbus GL about 4 times over the last 15 years, out of Montreal, Charlotte, and Salt Lake (on the defunct route to Grand Jct to avoid Amtrak #6 at SLC at 3am) - and never again now. Not once did the buses depart anywhere close to on time, drivers show up 5 minutes before departure, then dither at intermediate stops far too long. The buses can be monitored from HQ, but obviously no one is watching, nobody cares, and when they get to the endpoint or major intermediate terminals hours late, they have no fear of explaining, unlike a passenger train crew.

My last experience was taking GL out of Montreal in 2018, departing 25 minutes late, stuck in traffic at the border, delayed by US Customs, two hours late into the driver change point at Burlington Airport, people from Montreal fretting about their plane connections. That is normally a one hour stop, yet the bus sat there with engines running for an hour anyway until the next driver, who was present, decided to leave. Today, that route operates 2 frequencies rather than 4, and no stop at the airport. They are deliberately chasing the business off the system.

There should be a both a rail and bus passenger bill of rights as there are for airlines. But this so-called DOT Secretary Buttigieg does not seem interested in anything but EV's and SWA plane delays of last Xmas, not on several PTC meltdowns affecting Amtrak out of Chicago for several days, not on Amtrak's 19 hour siege on a Michigan train, not on GL passengers stranded mid-trip outside of Boise for 3 days.

The Belgian Eagles I've heard so much about their ride and I wish I had ridden one. The last Eagles under Greyhound ran into 2003 I think it was on local runs in Florida. The MC-5-8s had one thing on the Eagles, and that's longevity. While there were Eagles that did find second and even third careers after Trailways, they were very rust and corrosion prone. MCIs did have rust and corrosion issues too, but most carriers were able to address them.

My ride on Greyhound was only in the 90s, and while the buses were not in bad shape, I can tell even as a kid the company felt off. Like something had been taken from it, and I wouldn't find out until years later. My favorite MCI to ride on is also one of the most underrated buses in Greyhound's fleet, the 102A3s.

Everyone talks about the great MC-9s and MC-12s, and rightfully so those buses were good. However, the 102A3s I can say without hyperbole were on theMC-9's level. Yes about 500 of the coaches were repossessed during Greyhound's bankruptcy, but about 300 or so of the older 1985-86 models were retained, with a few 1987s and 1988s making up the fleet retained. They lasted until 2004.

The 102s as in the name were 102 inch wide coaches (this was before Greyhound got it's 102-D3s, 102-DL3/D4500s, and G4100/4500s), and had more room then the slightly cramped MC-9s and MC-12s.

 

[railiner]

Their Belgian-built Eagle buses were far nicer than MCI MC5's - MC8's. In the mid-70's from college, I would ride an overnight GL/Continental pool route from Buffalo to Williamsport, PA, changing onto an I-80 express to NYC that came from California at 2am. It was a 4 way meet with east-west and north-south buses and quite a contrast getting off a rag-tag, window rattly MC5 or MC7 onto a Silver Eagle.

Interesting...doing that must have taken about 3 hours longer than riding one of Greyhound's Buffalo-New York City nonstop expresses. If you wanted to ride Continental Trailways all the way from Buffalo to New York City in the mentioned era, you could have ridden one of their Buffalo-Pittsburgh schedules to Dubois, PA; and connected to the same California to New York schedule that later stopped in Williamsport. Running time would be about the same, or maybe slightly longer via Dubois, but you would probably be in an Eagle, all the way. Most of the Eagles had 46 seats, but on the coast to coast pool buses, they removed one row, yielding 42 seats with more leg room...great for overnight trips.

Should mention that the Continental Trailways routes mentioned above, were as a result of them purchasing the former Edwards 'Lakes-To-Sea System', in 1969. That was why Continental Trailways and Greyhound ran that pooled operation, as a legacy of the original partnership on the Buffalo-Elmira-Sunbury-Washington route. Greyhound was probably too worried about ending it, when Continental bought Edwards, stemming from their years of litigation with Pacific Trailways in the Northwest, over a similar pooled operation. As in that case, Greyhound could have used one of their own alternate routes from Elmira via Binghamton and Scranton to circumnavigate...

 

[Willbridge]

The Pacific Trailways case had a couple of aspects. Besides dropping the Spokane <> Bend <> San Francisco interline service (I think all the equipment was from GL), Greyhound agents were selling east-west tickets for Willamette Valley points via all-GL routings through Portland. PT had a shorter route across Central Oregon on US20 and they had a long ago agreement with GL for through fares.

PT also had Bill Niskanen, who was irascible. He was the key person in killing the approved 1975 plan for coordinated rail and bus service in the Willamette Valley. Ticket agents were given anti-Amtrak leaflets to give to passengers. He tried to get my colleague who had led the 1975 Oregon Intercity Bus study fired (I was already gone by that time). When he died, his three sons inherited the company. Reportedly, the youngest son wanted to carry on, but the others wanted to take the money and do other things. Bill Jr. helped finance the Cato Institute, which carried on the family traditions. The 1980's were full of corporate shuffles and court action.

After Greyhound got control of PT they gradually disposed of all of the PT system except for one daily round-trip Portland <> Bend. Then that was gone. Oregon DOT hurriedly put together a network of small operators as Amtrak Thruway lines. And they developed a coordinated rail and bus service in the Willamette Valley.

PT was particularly threatened by discount air travel because it had so little intermediate population. It was also threatened by the fact that Greyhound's US30 route became I-84. PT was on US20 - a fast, modern highway, but not an Interstate. And one trip a day was on US26, an old highway that was mostly on its original Oregon Trunk Roads alignment, with some unspiraled curves. A PT executive testified at an OPUC hearing that people rode that trip one time and swore they would never come back.

Those factors are not mentioned in what was otherwise a fascinating history by a former PT employee: https://www.angelfire.com/80s/joycewiggins/Jon-10.html .

US20 west of Burns, Oregon in 2008.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

He was the key person in killing the approved 1975 plan for coordinated rail and bus service in the Willamette Valley. Ticket agents were given anti-Amtrak leaflets to give to passengers. He tried to get my colleague who had led the 1975 Oregon Intercity Bus study fired (I was already gone by that time). When he died, his three sons inherited the company. Reportedly, the youngest son wanted to carry on, but the others wanted to take the money and do other things. Bill Jr. helped finance the Cato Institute, which carried on the family traditions. The 1980's were full of corporate shuffles and court action.

After Greyhound got control of PT they gradually disposed of all of the PT system except for one daily round-trip Portland <> Bend. Then that was gone. Oregon DOT hurriedly put together a network of small operators as Amtrak Thruway lines. And they developed a coordinated rail and bus service in the Willamette Valley.

One of the ironies of bus companies being anti-train is that, as you yourself have noted, once a train route is cancelled, nearby bus routes start drying up as well.
Which is especially evident in the Pacific Northwest, where Flix/Greyhound seems to be doing very well---every Flixbus I took in 2023 was more or less full. And this is in a place with very regular corridor service. My personal experience is that I made a lot of combined Amtrak/Flix trips, and I would have stayed at home for many of them if I didn't have the combined schedules of both.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Miles in Transit says Little Rock recently lost both its intercity bus services. Then corrected himself to say there's a Mexican bus company serving the city, but I don't know where it goes.

Virginia subsidizes three, once-daily, Megabus routes from different points on the NC border to Washington, called Virginia Breeze. Notably, in Charlottesville it stops at a shopping center* rather than the popular Amtrak station.

These curbside stops do make a certain amount of sense. Even in the 1970-80s Greyhound/Trailways was slow to wind through every city. Baltimore was especially long. Congestion with cars and trucks has increased plenty since then, and will continue to do so. Greyhound/Trailways didn't or couldn't spend to move their stations to locations better served by the road network, which do exist in downtowns, with some exceptions.

I can't conceive the economy makes sense without transportation for people without cars. Buses meant freedom to fourteen year-old me, but that was just my luck, not an essential thing. Caesar La Rock mentioned the strike and management decisions. The replacement drivers were not quite as good. A lot of that job was managing passengers, but it wasn't so apparent to me until later. A drunk guy talking your ear off and then falling asleep, hopefully not on your shoulder, I could handle. And there were better experiences with fellow passengers. The last memorable driver I had was on a run from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Before we set off, the large Texas-clad driver, with a showpiece belt buckle, walked up the aisle announcing the boys who had just gotten off a three-week stint on an oil rig were not to cause problems. All this was before the cheap buses taking the major routes, and the current shambles at Greyhound. By contrast, on the Denver commuter rail to the airport, a conductor reassured work-release jail inmates they wouldn't be in trouble for getting back late, due to an earlier trespasser collision on the tracks.

(*) The Breeze stop in Charlottesville is a 45 minute walk to the Amtrak station, which is a ten minute walk to the Greyhound/Trailways former station, which is a ten minute walk to the transit center. There is local bus stop five minutes away from the Breeze though. We're talking a small city, metro population 0.23m. Places like that are a dime a dozen in the Midwest. It's only an interesting example because a fishbowl that small is has about one of everything, plus or minus one, so it's simple. For instance, there's a new zoning ordinance for density, but a streetscape and transit improvement project was derailed when city utilities engineers quintupled the cost - I think by adding on more incremental work to separate the combined sewer system, a common problem in old cities.

 

[Amtrak25]

Interesting...doing that must have taken about 3 hours longer than riding one of Greyhound's Buffalo-New York City nonstop expresses. If you wanted to ride Continental Trailways all the way from Buffalo to New York City in the mentioned era, you could have ridden one of their Buffalo-Pittsburgh schedules to Dubois, PA; and connected to the same California to New York schedule that later stopped in Williamsport. Running time would be about the same, or maybe slightly longer via Dubois, but you would probably be in an Eagle, all the way. Most of the Eagles had 46 seats, but on the coast to coast pool buses, they removed one row, yielding 42 seats with more leg room...great for overnight trips.

Should mention that the Continental Trailways routes mentioned above, were as a result of them purchasing the former Edwards 'Lakes-To-Sea System', in 1969. That was why Continental Trailways and Greyhound ran that pooled operation, as a legacy of the original partnership on the Buffalo-Elmira-Sunbury-Washington route. Greyhound was probably too worried about ending it, when Continental bought Edwards, stemming from their years of litigation with Pacific Trailways in the Northwest, over a similar pooled operation. As in that case, Greyhound could have used one of their own alternate routes from Elmira via Binghamton and Scranton to circumnavigate...

I rode the 11:15pm Greyhound Express (with Gray Coach equipment from Toronto) once. I didn't like hanging around the old downtown Buffalo bus termninal late at night. It was creepy enough during the day. I liked the idea of riding a LOCAL with 5 - 10 people on it and seeing the small towns.

I wanted to do it overnight. This is over 45 years ago now, but I don't think the Dubois routing from Buffalo would work for that, and I would have had to walk to the Trailways terminal. I didn't like the idea of walking around Buffalo's streets. Via Elmira, I departed Buffalo at 6pm, arrival in NY at about 5am. BUF-Dubois route is now Fullington Trailways.

Every Eagle I rode had certificate lettering on it for "Edwards Motor Transit". I do wonder why I got no other, and if that bus actually came from California, or was there a forced change at Cleveland though not indicated in the schedule? The overnight BUF-WAS bus was Greyhound equipment southbound, Continental (either a Eagle or a PD Deck). Tickets agents had to write both Elmira and Williamsport on the 3 ply tickets and I often had to remind them to do it. They also struggled to find the correct tariff to charge. The 2 times I took it in late December from fall semester, the Continental bus was always one hour late. I wondered if they were padding up overtime for Xmas shopping. There was also a connection at Mansfield, PA at 1035pm with a Erie - NY Blue Bird bus that Grehound conveyed east of Scranton. Today US15 does not even go downtown and part of the old highway has been dismantled.

The Greyhound portion of the route north of Elmira is long gone. The parallel Empire Trailways (with Rochester) route still exists. Since the pandemic, Elmira-Mansfield-Williamsport no longer exists. It had been Capitol Trailways, then Fullington Trailways. New York Trailways and Capitol Tralways were running the route from Buffalo to Harrisburgh once a day until Capitol collapsed.

Can't go home again.

 

[Bembidion]

Good article...thanks for posting. Here's a view of the Breezewood Post House...



Not shown is the two bay garage to the left side, and close to camera.

Those pictures brought back memories of my college days (1978-1982) travelling from Ohio to Connecticut. The bus would get into Breezewood at some wee hour of the morning and I would be rather groggy getting out. I recall the food looking pretty good, but being a typical college student on a tight budget, I would generally subsist on two or three Snickers bars for the whole trip so I didn't generally order there. The couple of times I did, it was fine. Didn't know it was run by Greyhound.

 

[cirdan]

The first and second items lead to the third. Sad to say, there are employees who consciously or without thought will take advantage of the situation. During the energy boom in the late 1970's, Edmonton Transit had to increase the budgeted estimate of expected sick leave to be used. In September 1982 as a result of the energy crash/National Energy Policy and city policy changes, we laid off 250 transit operators on one day. Interestingly, sick leave use and other absences plummeted.

Sadly it's not just the drivers who will seek to take advantage. Some of the passengers will endeavor to exploit every loophole in the system and hope for magnanimity, understanding and charity on the part of the staff in expecting these to turn a blind eye, allowing them to get away with things to which they are clearly not entitled. I think after years of exposure to such individuals it is natural that staff grow a thick skin and develop a cold, tough and unfriendly demeanor, maybe even towards those who have not deserved it.

The same is probably true of cops and other professionals.

 

[Barb Stout]

Here's a rather bleak, but all too real take on the state of long distance bus travel today.
At least, for now, it is still possible to take such a trip, on the rapidly shrinking 'network'...

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/jul/26/america-roadtrip-greyhound-bus

What this writer says about the Albuquerque Greyhound bus station is a little deceptive. He says that the Greyhound station is closed when they don't have buses scheduled. Greyhound, Amtrak, and the city buses share a station/hub there and thus it is usually open. It is possible that the station is locked in the middle of the night since Amtrak trains arrive and depart during the day, but you can definitely go in there even when Greyhound doesn't have a bus scheduled because Amtrak is there. He said that the station is closed when Greyhound doesn't have buses scheduled due to homeless people making problems and he also laments that that they were curled up outside on the sidewalk. I can assure you that they are curled up on the sidewalk (or just sitting on the ground) during the day. When I have been catching Amtrak at the ABQ station, they do have security/cops there that check to make sure you either have tickets or are going to buy tickets when you enter. I am sure they are profiling people though, as I have not been asked for proof of ticket. However, I always roll in with my big fat suitcase, so it's obvious that I'm traveling.

I love that Amtrak, Greyhound, and the city buses operate out of the same place. And it's also a stop/station for the Rail Runner which is a regional train, although the office for that is in an adjacent building. Why don't other cities have transportation centers like that? I moved here after it was in place, but I do believe it was a city-sponsored (and funded?) arrangement. What other cities have that? Toledo, OH has the Amtrak and Greyhound station at the same place, but the current Greyhound schedule doesn't work for connections, although it did not too many years ago.

 

[TheVig]

What this writer says about the Albuquerque Greyhound bus station is a little deceptive. He says that the Greyhound station is closed when they don't have buses scheduled. Greyhound, Amtrak, and the city buses share a station/hub there and thus it is usually open. It is possible that the station is locked in the middle of the night since Amtrak trains arrive and depart during the day, but you can definitely go in there even when Greyhound doesn't have a bus scheduled because Amtrak is there. He said that the station is closed when Greyhound doesn't have buses scheduled due to homeless people making problems and he also laments that that they were curled up outside on the sidewalk. I can assure you that they are curled up on the sidewalk (or just sitting on the ground) during the day. When I have been catching Amtrak at the ABQ station, they do have security/cops there that check to make sure you either have tickets or are going to buy tickets when you enter. I am sure they are profiling people though, as I have not been asked for proof of ticket. However, I always roll in with my big fat suitcase, so it's obvious that I'm traveling.

I love that Amtrak, Greyhound, and the city buses operate out of the same place. And it's also a stop/station for the Rail Runner which is a regional train, although the office for that is in an adjacent building. Why don't other cities have transportation centers like that? I moved here after it was in place, but I do believe it was a city-sponsored (and funded?) arrangement. What other cities have that? Toledo, OH has the Amtrak and Greyhound station at the same place, but the current Greyhound schedule doesn't work for connections, although it did not too many years ago.

Once our gateway center in Charlotte gets completed, the idea is to have Amtrak, Greyhound, some city busses, etc in one spot.

 

[railiner]

Every Eagle I rode had certificate lettering on it for "Edwards Motor Transit". I do wonder why I got no other, and if that bus actually came from California, or was there a forced change at Cleveland though not indicated in the schedule? The overnight BUF-WAS bus was Greyhound equipment southbound, Continental (either a Eagle or a PD Deck).

As you probably know, even though Continental Trailways was (mostly, with a few exception's), a singly owned company, and the largest member of the National Trailways Bus System association of independent carrier's; it kept its many formerly acquired companies as separate divisions, for financial and labor relations reasons. If one division went on strike, for example, the remainder would keep on running. Besides the "legals" lettered in smaller letters on a baggage door, you could tell which division owned each bus by the first two digits of the 5 digit fleet numbers. Edwards was "33". The third digit indicated the type of bus, and the last two its individual number. When some divisions ran out of numbers when the fleet became mostly all-Eagle, they used more than one number for the third digit.
The way Continental formed "pools" of equipment, for different interlined routes, was to have each division contribute a prorated number based on their mileage proportion. In some cases, they did not contribute to one particular pool, but balanced mileage by contributing more than their share in a different pool with their "partner" divisions. Pools were mostly necessary in the days before the Interstate Fuel Tax Association sticker, replaced a bunch of different state license plates that had to be on each bus. (I miss seeing the many colorful plates in far from home locations).
Each pool had a "home shop", where all the assigned equipment were licensed, and all preventative maintenance was performed. Sometimes, the home shop was far from the owner's territory, for example, the home shop for the coast to coast pool via I-80 was in Omaha. The buses would run coast to coast usually westbound, but eastbound, they would be "cut" at Omaha, during a meal and driver change stop, taken from the depot to the garage, and parked door to door with their newly serviced replacement. Passengers items left in the seats and overhead racks, would be moved to the exact same location by a cleaning crew. The baggage and freight was all unloaded and reloaded at the depot. The average passenger was never aware they were reboarding a different bus unless they happened to remember its fleet number, or there was some other difference in the bus.

As a result, all of the buses Edwards used on their local schedules, as well as the ones they contributed to their pool with Greyhound, would be their equipment. It is just "luck" that you happened to catch an Edwards bus on the coast to coast trip, as the vast majority in that pool were contributed by the American Buslines division, as they run coast to coast (via Pittsburgh), and turn over some trips to Edwards at Cleveland.