In the late 1990s when the 1st low-fare bus service from Chinatown in new york to Chinatown in Boston started running, few would have anticipated the impact it would have had on the bus industry in total. This wasn’t a service that was marketed to the public. It was meant to appeal to a targeted group of people–recent Chinese immigrants–who needed an inexpensive way to travel between the two cities to visit family, shop, or work. The expansion of this phenomenon was organic. The public heard of the’Chinatown bus’ thru personal recommendation. It caught on quickly and shortly the market was flooded with other companies offering similar service on a variety of routes.
it might be inaccurate to claim that the only reason that these companies succeeded was due to price . Certainly this was the main enticement for travelers. However, it must be claimed the service that the standard bus carriers was offering was ripe for competition. Truthfully were the ‘full service’ offerings of the traditional bus firms worth a premium? Hardly. Shopper service lacked on each level, bus stations didn’t provide a snug waiting area, buses were often tacky and service was plagued by delays.
Years after the arrival of this first NY to Boston route, it is worth examining how it has caused the bus industry to evolve as a whole. Overall, it sort of feels like the independent companies and the traditional carriers are meeting somewhere in the middle. Independent carriers have had to offer more facilities, adhere to more closely to safety standards and rules, and increase fares. At the same time, the normal carriers have been forced to offer wildly competitive pricing and generally tighten up their operations. Greyhound and its partners have a tendency to offer the most competitive pricing on the popular New York-Boston and NY -DC routes. Further, these routes are the only ones for which online shoppers do not have to pay the hefty $4 online booking surcharge usually imposed at Greyhound’s website. They heavily promote this discounted pricing and it sometimes requires customers to book ahead online ( purchasing tickets at the time of exit can be almost twice as expensive as thru their website ).
What about safety standards? This is the most argumentative point of debate in the industry. There are many reports of safety violations and certainly anecdotal accounts of poor safety practices. it doesn’t appear that the tangible safety records of these firms are actually worse than other bus carriers that depend on the same federal rules. Thanks to intense lobbying efforts, in 2004 a special task force was set up by the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ( FMCSA ) to step up inspections of’curbside’ ( Chinatown ) bus corporations. Despite the increased inspections, the FMCSA said that curbside carriers had about the same rate of violations as other sorts of carriers under her agency’s authority3. This could be a sign that hazardous operators have either stopped running or have improved their level of safety.
Fortunately bus travel is generally a highly safe style of transportation, with an average yearly death rate of only twenty-two for the past ten years. No bus deaths to date have involved Chinatown bus carriers. Accidents are often reported for all segments of the industry–municipal buses, line run carriers, charter and tour companies1,2. No concrete research has pointed to the fact that Chinatown bus companies have a higher occurrence of Problems than other operators.
it’s important to notice that what was once a little niche of the bus industry is now an overcrowded segment. To lump all carriers following this low-cost model in the same group would be badly judged. The standard of the service offered by the assorted firms is wildly variable. Some are fly-by-night concerns while others have transitioned into sizable firms with many employees and fleets of buses.
Another development is that Chinese immigrants are no longer the sole players in this segment of the bus industry. Many supposed’Chinatown’ bus companies are owned by Hassidic Jews. Additionally many charter bus corporations have entered the line-run business using the same low-cost model as Chinatown bus lines.
The Chinatown bus industry has grown from an easy, one-man-operation to a longtime segment of the bus industry. In all chance the evolution of the industry is not complete. We may likely see some regulatory changes that may effect the way the Chinatown carriers run their operations. Likewise, as competition in the segment increases, the poorly run operators will most probably be forced out of the game. The standard carriers will have to continue to offer competitive fares and will also need to find new techniques compete. What is extravagantly clear is that shoppers are more than pleased to forgo plenty of the services offered by standard carriers to economize.
1Police : Driver fatigue likely allow for fatal bus crash
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