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Notable News about Bus Travel in
New England and New York State
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Intercity Bus E-News, February 2025 | |
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As we near the finish line with our 2025 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry report, we'd like to present a sneak preview of our New England and New York coverage. The news from these regions is a microcosm of the major changes underway across the country. Related to this, we are adjusting our traffic outlook for the next year after consultations with industry leaders at the American Bus Association Marketplace in Philadelphia. Stay tuned for this and other predictions. (Spoiler alert: we upwardly adjusted in our traffic outlook!).
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The past few weeks have also brought a flurry of other developments.
- Surprising news arrived that The Jet, a first-class provider that generated much excitement on the New York - Washington route, is shutting down, despite sold-out buses at peak times and recent expansion to The Hamptons.
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The State of North Carolina rolled out a new twice-daily service linking its large publicly supported bus system operated by Sunway Charters with the similarly expansive Virginia Breeze system. The route allows for "through ticketing" on megabus.com for travel between Greensboro, NC and Washington, DC, and many other points, most involving transfers at Danville, VA.
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NBC News has a new feature article on why many budget-savvy travelers prefer the bus. We shared our analysis of bus fares in 310 markets, which shows fares remained largely unchanged from 2023 to 2024, despite inflation, with the reporter.
| Watch your inbox for our Outlook report within a few day. After the Sneak Preview, you'll find details on our free February 27 webinar, Join us to discuss the industry! |
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Joseph P. Schwieterman, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, Chaddick Institute at DePaul University | Intercity Bus E-News Editor
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Intercity Bus Services Round the Corner
in New England and Upstate New York
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An Excerpt from Stepping up Service: 2025 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry | |
New England’s intercity network grew stronger last year due to significant service expansion at two major hubs, Boston’s South Station Bus Terminal and Boston Logan International Airport. Many buses serve both locations, which are only four miles apart, giving travelers a greater range of schedule options than most other metro areas. South Station’s role greatly expanded after FlixBus consolidated activity there in 2023. | |
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The hotly contested Boston – New York route is a case in point. The three largest providers use South Station Terminal. FlixBus and its sister company Greyhound, which was acquired by FlixMobility in 2021, have 27 and 14 trips in each direction, respectively, on busy days. Our review of service levels, based on our analysis of recent schedules, shows that FlixBus has grown roughly 20% since early 2024. Its 27 trips are the most on this route and the second highest frequency by any bus line on a US route over 200 miles, topped only by its 29 New York – Washington, DC, trips. Additionally, several schedules operate via a new route through Storrs, CT, home of the University of Connecticut.
Peter Pan grew sharply from around a dozen to 14–15 daily trips to New York and has routes from South Station Terminal in many directions. Having a smaller presence, GoBuses makes two trips from Cambridge, MA, and OurBus (a booking platform) makes a similar number on busy days, most originating in Boston’s Back Bay area. Finally, niche player Coach Run often has a pair of trips from a curb on Huntington Avenue.
Cumulatively, these six providers offer 64 daily trips in each direction on busy days, totaling more than 3,200 daily seats. Based on our review, Boston – New York service increased around 20% from a year ago. Plus, there are nine separate trips daily on the Providence, RI, – New York route, where Peter Pan (5) is the frequency leader.
All bus lines benefit from Amtrak’s premium pricing, which can push peak hour and weekend Boston – New York fares to more than $175 (or more for Acela premium higher speed service), three or four times bus fares. South Station’s expanded role has been coupled with fewer curbside departures in the Boston area.
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Heading to Logan....to Catch the Bus! | |
Boston Logan Airport continues to have the most intercity bus departures of any U.S. airport. Its curbside stops at the four major terminals, each near baggage claim, give bus travel significant physical visibility among flyers leaving the terminals. Concord Coach and Dartmouth Coach (under common ownership), Boston Express, and C&J Bus Lines link the airport to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, using full-size motorcoaches, each offering half-hourly service at certain times, with more trips also serving South Station. | |
C&J expanded its half-hourly offering to Seabrook and Portsmouth, NH, and added a 1 am trip from Logan last year. The line is renovating the two New Hampshire terminals and will soon roll out a bus tracker. C&J also recently took delivery of seven new motorcoaches. | |
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Logan’s intercity bus lines face competition from Amtrak’s Downeaster between Boston and Brunswick, ME, offering five daily trips. Still, there is much bus-train synergy. Buses allow quick connections to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridors train at South Station. (The Downeaster does not allow for this due to its use of Boston North Station). Plus, there are no outbound trains from Boston between 5:20 and 10:30 pm, making buses critical for those with specific schedule needs.
Synergy grew with last year’s launch of “The LAP,” a new intrastate bus route funded by the State of Maine linking Lewiston and Auburn with the Portland Transportation Center, a transfer point for Downeaster trains and buses to Boston and New York. LAP’s schedule shows 13 weekday trips in each direction and nine weekend trips over a 40-mile route. Concord Coach phased out its Lewiston service roughly the same time the new service started.
Peter Pan and Plymouth & Brockton Bus Lines link Logan to points in other directions, including Cape Cod and Falmouth, MA. Both have rebounded strongly from the pandemic. P&B boasts the most service from Logan to the Cape, but Peter Pan has more routes, including to New Bedford and Springfield, MA service. The state of Massachusetts, meanwhile, added several new inter-regional bus routes last year, including Greenfield – North Adams and Northfield – Pittsfield.
New England’s premium service has held steady, with Concord Coach, Dartmouth Coach, and C&J continuing business class services from New Hampshire and Maine cities to Midtown Manhattan. (Concord and Dartmouth use curbside stops in east Midtown and C&J uses the PABT). These services, provided on coaches configured to 2×1 seating, bypass Boston and benefit from the absence of thorough train service from those states to New York.
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Competition Grows in Upstate New York and Eastern Canada | |
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The competition on intrastate New York trips we observed last year has intensified. New York – Ithaca (Cornell University) service is particularly dynamic, with OurBus now having four to six trips on busy days and FlixBus five, with Trailways of New York (which includes Adirondack and New York Trailways) and ShortLine also offering direct service. New York – Syracuse has even more service on busy days, divided between FlixBus (7), Greyhound (6), New York Trailways (4), and Amtrak (4).
Substantially lengthened schedules (and multiple service cancellations) on Amtrak's Adirondack resulting from various rail-related restrictions provided an opening for more New York – Montreal, QC, bus service. Trailways of New York, FlixBus, and Greyhound cumulatively grew to eight trips on busy days, an increase of several buses from two years ago. Many buses make the trip in around 9 hours and 15 minutes, about three hours faster than the train. As part of the Montreal expansion, Greyhound, after almost 30 years of absence, returned to St. Albans, VT, over a route originating in Boston.
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These same three lines dominate the New York – Toronto, ON, route. Due to
Trailways of New York's expansion following Megabus’s withdrawal, each now has several daily trips. Within the Provence of Ontario, OurBus launched the Ottawa – Toronto, ON, service, possibly spurred by Megabus’s cutbacks. Besides these changes, however, relatively few significant schedule changes came to our attention. Yet, fleets are being rapidly upgraded. Peter Pan is expanding and modernizing its fleet and received an American Bus Association Leadership in Sustainability Award, while Greyhound acquired 60 new buses, primarily for the Northeast.
New York’s on-again, off-again push for congestion pricing has ended with a mostly favorable outcome for intercity lines. Initially, fees as high as $35 per bus trip were proposed, but after much pushback, regularly scheduled buses were exempt. After being postponed, the program was revived early this year with lower fees, with most scheduled buses still exempt.
The City of New York began buying bus and plane tickets to transport migrants out of town, often back to Texas, in retaliation for the State of Texas’s practice of sending migrants to New York via charter bus. Around 4,500 tickets have reportedly been purchased for migrants to leave New York, in some cases to Chicago and Florida.
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New England has largely avoided the problem facing other regions regarding closing traditional bus stations. However, the Greyhound Station in Albany, NY, has been sold for redevelopment, although it remains in use. Some regard its brutalist architecture as an eyesore. Adirondack uses a temporary terminal adjacent to the Greyhound terminal, but the city is reportedly examining alternatives for both.
Additionally, South Station Bus Terminal is undergoing a major improvement linked to a new office building being built over railroad platforms. This will expand the terminal’s footprint by 50% and allow for improved transit connections at South Station. After some delays, completion is expected this year.
Concord, Dartmouth, and C&J continue to maintain and improve dedicated stations in the region, each with staffed ticket counters, long-term parking, vending, and spacious waiting areas. Hyannis’s state-run Transportation Center is a multimodal showpiece, serving local and regional transit, intercity buses, tour trains, and the seasonal Cape Flyer train to and from Boston. It is in walking distance of the ferry terminal serving Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
The first phase of rebuilding New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal is underway. This includes a deck-over of Dyer Avenue to enable bus service to continue during construction, though concerns about the effects of constrained station capacity during subsequent construction phases have been voiced. The expected completion date for the $10 billion project remains unclear, but it is well into the future.
| Much more news from the Northeast Region is in our forthcoming Outlook report! | Free Webinar, February 27, 2025 |
Save the date for our free webinar on the industry's outlook on Thursday, February 27, 2025, from Noon -12:50 pm CT. It lasts less than an hour and is free. Click here to register. | Help Intercity Bus E-News Grow its Readership | Join or invite your colleagues to join our Intercity Bus Listserv. Reply to this email or contact chaddick@depaul.edu to notify our program manager, Zaria, to join. You will receive 10 – 12 emails per year. No spam and unsubscribing is easy if you choose to do so. | |
Other reports and podcasts of interest
Captions: Top: A Plymouth & Brockton bus at Hyannis, MA in summer 2024. Bottom: A FlixBus service for Midtown Manhattan is curbside in Washington’s DC Dupont Circle neighborhood on January 9, 2023. Credit: Chaddick collection
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