How do you lure Greyhound to serve everybody including middle-class law abiding citizens

[PatrickR720159]

Some people think that Greyhound only cares about people that are poor and mostly if they are those who live in the ghetto areas of our cities.  And they know their job is to transport people that are holding tickets no matter where they come from.  What i would love to do is to lure them like a high-pressure car salesman into making routes that serves us good people.  Now if any of you have a good idea on how to lure Greyhound into listening to us, please let us know.  

[fffred]

I had no idea that Greyhound's target market was the poor and "ghetto residents". I checked out their site recently (after having seen your first post). They did mention their new buses. Some of them seemed pretty "posh" ... in fact, there are some bus lines out East that run from Boston to Washington, D.C. that have posh "Executive" buses with airplane type seats (First Class), wifi, etc. More convenient than driving yourself or flying, and cheaper than flying. Even the Amtrak express train that runs the same route is very nice (the Acela, I think it is).

I think the common thread for these East coast facilities are the high demand on these routes. ...which translates into "money" ...for the company. Hence my original comment "follow the money". It's when there is little or no demand for a route that the service will decline. We can't "force" a private company to handle a route at a loss...that's unsustainable. (On the other hand, a public service such as the TVA, the national mail system, etc, can be partially subsidized by government.)

Some of my wife's family were affected by Greyhound closing routes in western Canada. So we have some first hand knowledge of the situation.

Good luck

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@PatrickR720159 wrote:

Some people think that Greyhound only cares about people that are poor and mostly if they are those who live in the ghetto areas of our cities.  And they know their job is to transport people that are holding tickets no matter where they come from.  What i would love to do is to lure them like a high-pressure car salesman into making routes that serves us good people.  Now if any of you have a good idea on how to lure Greyhound into listening to us, please let us know.  

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[retiredtraveler]

"....What i would love to do is to lure them like a high-pressure car salesman into making routes that serves us good people....".

And what routes would that be? Bus companies create routes that they believe will be profitable. You can't 'serve' the public without making a profit. Greyhound, over the years, has started and ended various routes that didn't have enough ridership. There was a lot of press, a year ago, about Greyhound in Canada cutting a huge area of service. It was simply losing too much money.

   And you do realize (?), that Greyhound is subsidized. It's like trains. There is no passenger train in the entire U.S. that is profitable. Every line across the nation is subsidized at local, state, or federal levels.Greyhound is subsidized by the feds, largely, in the plains states.

   If you want more routes, you need to ask for your taxes to increase to pay for subsidies from the feds for more bus routes.

[PatrickR720159]

Oh I see. Yes Greyhound and Amtrak are subsidized.  For the federal level, sadly my congresswoman Ann Wagner has chosen to lie about transportation funding.  And she knows that is part of her job.  I can get my state represenative to fund Greyhound to see if they can make some of these Missouri routes.  Cost is probably why Greyhound went and bought Freightlienrs rather than the traditional MCI buses due to cost restrictions.  Now with the Democrats in control of I think the house, I could write to one congressman who represents North St. Louis County to see if he could make a bill that would help increase a special tax increase for Greyhound.  

[fffred]

Money talks.