Broke But You Want To Get Out Of Town? Take The Bus

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As we’re not accelerating towards any high-speed rail developments, or lower ticket prices on either rail or airfares, one way to travel cheaply is still the bus. Greyhound isn’t the cheapest (or cleanest) either, but there are a lot of new intercity bus services with low fares showing some success:

A survey by megabus.com found that 92 percent of megabus.com customers chose bus travel over other forms of transportation to save money. An ongoing increase in the popularity of bus travel has helped megabus.com to recently serve its four millionth customer…

…Not only are travelers switching to low-cost, express bus services such as megabus.com to save money, 83 percent say the low fares have allowed for them to travel more frequently, according to the survey…

…Among the 92 percent who use megabus.com instead of other forms of transportation, 67 percent use megabus.com instead of driving themselves, 43 percent take the bus instead of the train and 33 percent take the bus instead of flying, the survey found.

via 92 Percent of Megabus.com Travelers Turn to Intercity Bus Service to Save Money.

While the study is definitely skewed (it was published by Megabus in self-promotion), it is possibly telling of how people are choosing to travel these days, if at all. Gas prices have recently hit an all-time high for 2009, and airfares for this holiday season are only continuing to skyrocket.

Now a bus definitely won’t solve money (or time) issues for anyone looking to visit family in another time zone (or across multiple time zones), but if you’re willing to sit in the same seat for four to six hours, it’s not so bad. No security lines, baggage requirements/fees, and on a lot of these new bus companies feature new buses, free Wi-Fi and electrical plugs near seats. It’s not as environmentally-friendly as train travel still, but packing multiple passengers into one vehicle versus everyone driving themselves is definitely greener.

Will you be changing your typical mode of travel this holiday season?