Thursday, April 16, 2009

Bolt Bus

Recently I had to go to Philly for the day and was directed to take a Bolt Bus there. I hadn't heard about this company before but was surprised and pleased. It is NOT, repeat NOT one of those scary Chinatown buses nor does it force you to brave the hell that is the Port Authority.

Instead, you book your ticket online, print out your confirmation, and pick up the bus either on 34th street and 7th or 8th Avenues or downtown on 6th Avenue between Grand and Watts. If you have an "A" confirmation number, then you're guaranteed a seat. Anything after that is the equivalent of stand-by. The buses leave every half-hour or so.

The cost of a one way trip is $13 and round-trip is $26. Much, much cheaper than Amtrak and it only takes a little longer to get there.

After my trip on Bolt Bus I decided to dub it the "Yuppie Express." See, it only serves the big cities on the Eastern seaboard -- Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and DC -- so you're out of luck if you want to go to places like Baltimore or Wilmington or Hartford or places like that. Also, the buses have Wi-Fi service and nearly half the people on the bus were firing up their laptops. Most of all, you have to get your tickets online, you can't buy them at the bus stop so it requires all its passengers to be Internet users.

However, if you're reading this then you're probably a pretty regular Internet user already -- and if you need to get around the Northeast, this is a great find.

1 comment:

  1. I love the Bolt Bus too. You should check out BusJunction, it's a search engine for bus tickets like Bolt Bus and Megabus.

    ReplyDelete

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