 In the mid-1950s more than 2,000 buses operated by Greyhound, Trailways, and other bus companies connected 15,000 cities and towns. However, with the creation of the Interstate system and air travel, ridership declined by nearly 75% until cross-county buses only accounted for 3.6% of travel in the United States in 1997. However, in the late 1990s Chinatown bus lines, named for the Chinese Americans who operated them, began to attract younger passengers with their cheap prices. Chinatown buses have attracted much controversy due to the number of accidents they have been involved in, some of them fatal. Today, cross-county bus ridership continues to increase-- it increased by 6% in 2010, twice that of air travel, and 12 times the increase of Amtrak. The most popular bus routes tend to be the 200-300 mile ones (New York to Boston, Chicago to Detroit, Los Angeles to Las Vegas), as they are too long for a leisurely drive, but too short to justify the cost of a plane.   Chinatown Bus (image from http://images.nymag.com/news/intelligencer/features/fungwah070604_1_560.jpg) |
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