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Is The Trailways Name Little More Than a Joke?

 
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Dieseljim
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Joined: 26 Jun 2008
Posts: 548
Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 7:17 am    Post subject: Is The Trailways Name Little More Than a Joke? Reply with quote

After Concord Coach Lines and C&J dropped their membership in the Trailways Network and more and more charter only outfits becoming dominant, I would have to wonder if the Trailways Transportation Network is becoming little more than a joke, since so many member carriers do not operate any line service of any kind, but only charters and tours. As the National Trailways Bus System, to me, it stood for the finest in bus transportation between any two points, with such famous names as Edwards, Martz,Adirondack, Continental as part of the system. With the oil companies returning to manipulation of gasoline prices if not outright price gouging, rebuilding both the bus and rail passenger systems may not be such a bad thing to do.
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RailBus63
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 8:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In my opinion, Trailways hasn't had a true national presence since Continental Trailways was bought out by Greyhound in the 1980's.

Bus transportation is indeed making a comeback, but the future will likely involve a hodgepodge of companies - discount carriers like MegaBus and Bolt in the high-volume lanes, regional carriers covering multiple states (but not going nationwide), and maybe Greyhound. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Greyhound brand gradually downsized and maybe even phased out if First Group decides they can make more money by expanding Bolt.
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Dieseljim
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Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 3:09 pm    Post subject: Trailways Name a Joke? Reply with quote

If First group goes the Bolt route, does that mean they will be issuing printed timetables for their service ,something I wish Greyhound never stopped doing?
RailBus63 wrote:
In my opinion, Trailways hasn't had a true national presence since Continental Trailways was bought out by Greyhound in the 1980's.

Bus transportation is indeed making a comeback, but the future will likely involve a hodgepodge of companies - discount carriers like MegaBus and Bolt in the high-volume lanes, regional carriers covering multiple states (but not going nationwide), and maybe Greyhound. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Greyhound brand gradually downsized and maybe even phased out if First Group decides they can make more money by expanding Bolt.
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RailBus63
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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 9:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've yet to see a printed timetable for Bolt, or any of the other discount carriers for that matter. Bolt and Megabus seem to prefer to keep everything online as much as possible.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 7:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Chances are, both will hold to an "on line" model, IMHO. Recall, printed TT folders closely tied to requirements of regulation, now many years back.

Meanwhile. I've been a bit surprised by very positive anecdotes and reports from those largely in "Under Age 35" market segment. Apparently, fairly
wide awareness and related acceptance of the market presence of these carriers. It's vital to keep in mind the "Under Age 35" folks have known
computers for most of their lives. On line support is a familiar concept...

It is an important "sea change" in how retail marketing done...

..................Vern...............
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metrolinecoach111




Joined: 25 Dec 2008
Posts: 18
Location: Atlantic City, NJ

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 12:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

HwyHaulier wrote:
Chances are, both will hold to an "on line" model, IMHO. Recall, printed TT folders closely tied to requirements of regulation, now many years back.

Meanwhile. I've been a bit surprised by very positive anecdotes and reports from those largely in "Under Age 35" market segment. Apparently, fairly
wide awareness and related acceptance of the market presence of these carriers. It's vital to keep in mind the "Under Age 35" folks have known
computers for most of their lives. On line support is a familiar concept...

It is an important "sea change" in how retail marketing done...

..................Vern...............


I agree with your statement and I can add a few points to it: the target markets the curbside carriers (including Bolt and Mega) are going for are on-the-go tech generation individuals who value convenience vs. price with benefits - thus the mass appeal to the public with the advertisement of $1 fares, Free Wi-Fi and in the case of Bolt and another curbside outfit Tripper, electrical outlets. The whole idea of the curbside bus is to maximize the profit yield while reducing the overhead and giving passengers more of what they want - online marketing and operations both reduce the overhead needed to sell tickets, board passengers and account for the revenues and purchases while creating a more convenient and accessible platform for people to utilize the service. In addition, most of the people you find on thse buses would not have gone to a traditional bus station (aside from Boston, MA) to get on a bus - the literal "curbside appeal" funnels people form central locations that are convenient to mass transit and/or park-n-rides.

What's more with the reason they do not have printed schedules is really two-fold: one is the cost with printing the schedules themselves and distributing them,if they just keep it online, they save themselves all of that overhead and additional marketing costs, and two they have operational flexibility. In the case of Bolt, they can change and adjust schedules every month if they like based on demand (and they have actually done this 3 times this year to date) with only a few weeks notice to sell the seats and without a new internal pick (as all they really do is adjust times or have whatever extra runs there are as reliefs built into the cycles). In terms of Megabus, if they find a schedule or group of schedules to have heavy demand, they can go back into the system, re-open a schedule and ad-hoc an extra bus from a charter outfit or from another Coach property - the same deal with cancelling services, they can easily eliminate unprofitable schedules and adjust them acccordingly.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2009 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

metrolinecoach111 wrote:
...In terms of Megabus, if they find a schedule or group of schedules to have heavy demand, they can go back into the system, re-open a schedule and ad-hoc an extra bus from a charter outfit or from another Coach property - the same deal with cancelling services, they can easily eliminate unprofitable schedules and adjust them acccordingly...


Metro' -

Excellent and vital point! One of the long time troubles with printed timetables is that everything committed to print had much the same gravity
as high holiday, religious ceremonies. In running coaches, a carrier could not lightly make any changes and cancellations, short of force majeure
circumstances...

..................Vern...............
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traildriver




Joined: 26 Mar 2011
Posts: 2452
Location: South Florida

PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 1:04 pm    Post subject: Re: Is The Trailways Name Little More Than a Joke? Reply with quote

Dieseljim wrote:
After Concord Coach Lines and C&J dropped their membership in the Trailways Network and more and more charter only outfits becoming dominant, I would have to wonder if the Trailways Transportation Network is becoming little more than a joke, since so many member carriers do not operate any line service of any kind, but only charters and tours. As the National Trailways Bus System, to me, it stood for the finest in bus transportation between any two points, with such famous names as Edwards, Martz,Adirondack, Continental as part of the system. With the oil companies returning to manipulation of gasoline prices if not outright price gouging, rebuilding both the bus and rail passenger systems may not be such a bad thing to do.

I agree that the current Trailways "System", is reduced to nothing more than another bus association like ABA, UBOA, etc.
IMHO, the Trailways relevance ended with the government permitting Greyhound to purchase Continental Trailways back in '87....
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