I generally agree. However, the original post was about a Greyhound that had broken down (IMO, the driver's fault for idling the bus forever), and the passengers were left to fend for themselves, even as Greyhound said a replacement bus was coming, but never did. I think it's reasonable for certain business to have certain minimum required duties. Air travel is getting better due to reforms under Pete B, such as for being bumped or cancellations, they need to offer cash refund and not just a voucher for a future flight.

A large corporation I know of typically has engineers new to the company, perform work on the assembly line for at least a few weeks (I don't recall the exact time period), to both better understand the process that they are designing for, and to understand the conditions the labor workers work under. Good idea, IMO. I car-shared with the president of my company back from the airport once, and got to talking about various things, and found out that same company offered him a position but would have required him to do same (he was a business major), and he declined, and expressed to me, words that basically said he was too good for that. And I thought to myself, what an idiot, you would have learned valuable lessons. But boards of directors don't want management that has empathy for workers.

I worked my way through school in labor, and my leadership refected that.

As a retired engineer that also has an economics degree, I can say I was positive on the bus and on Amtrack in this thread, two posts below. (And I also was negative on airlines in a couple posts.)
https://www.bikeforums.net/23530042-post8.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/23530197-post13.html

Perhaps our age (I am 71) means that we are more likely to have experienced much worse transport a half century ago than the younger kids now days?

I'm a bit younger at 65. In our lifetimes we have witnessed the cost of college increase tenfold with respect to minimum wage, putting the ability to bootstrap from poverty to middle class, with college, out of reach. The system, such as it is, has decided we don't need engineers and doctors coming from the poors. Plumbers, but not doctors. The arithmetic is simple - pick the university you attended, compare them and now.

Any statement a boomer makes about kids these days, that ignores this harsh reality, is invalid.

The connection to busses is, if you're on a bus today your chances of upward mobility are not what the were when we were kids.

Yeah, and I believe that was Trailways who offered that.

Yes, life was so much easier back then: I remember the air raid sirens being tested once a month, the bomb drills where we all filed from our classroom to a nuclear fallout facility, assassinations, rioting, the draft, the lousy job market when I graduated, and the same old same old - "young people can't afford to buy a house or raise a family on one income." A comparative paradise! The kids today have it so rough. But, I did catch a bus in Tok, Alaska which ran out of gas before it got to Whitehorse.

Some of what you say, I agree with 100 percent. But some of your statement, I strongly disagree with. That said, I choose not to get into that sort of argument on this forum. Thank you for your comments.

That makes sense.

I went to high school in MA. There was the Peter Pan bus company. I thought that was so stupid. What did the character have to do with busses?

I dunno... Peter Pan could fly, I think that beats a running greyhound.

Peter Pan symbolizes escapism. Perhaps they marketed to people in prison?:foo:

Confession: My all-boys boarding school was near the five college area of western MA. Most times when I went home for holidays I would take the Peter Pan bus that left from school and made stops at/near the colleges on its way to Springfield, where I would catch Amtrak home. After being cooped up at an all-boys school I would eagerly await to see what kind of college girls would board the bus. :D

I took the Greyhound from NYC to Toronto once and it was horrible. Never doing it again in my life, fly instead.

There's also the chance you may be decapitated in your sleep:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean

This last point is of course important, because, as we all know, there is literally no chance whatever of dying when taking any other form of transportation. The chance that you will be killed while traveling is unique to buses.

We all know that deaths while traveling by automobile are nonexistent- there is no such thing as a fatal car crash, or vehicular homicide. Similarly, there are no deaths whatsoever that occur when traveling by airplane. Deaths while traveling by boat/ship are also non-existent, and piracy was abolished long ago. There is no such thing as death while traveling by train.

As all cyclists know, riding a bicycle is totally safe, and cyclists are literally immune from murder

Because the possibility of death while traveling is unique to bus travel, this is an important point, and not an utterly inane argument.

What’s the RATE of people being decapitated by others riding in their cars? That would seem to be the proper comparison because people are also killed in bus crashes.


I don’t think anyone is claiming bus travel is more dangerous than driving overall. I think the general gist is why expose yourself to a miserable experience if you have alternatives that are likely to be more pleasant.

Space shuttles also had a few deaths, but they are no longer in use so no need to worry that you will accidently get on one of them.

I think the point might have *flown* over your head. True, there is certainly still a chance of dying when you are driving your own car. Afterall, you own car can crash just as buses can crash. Bikes, boats, planes, any type of vehicle can crash.

However, your chance of being knife-decapitated by a stranger might be *slightly* lower when you are driving your own car :lol:

Let me put it this way:
The unpleasantness of Greyhound is not the fact that it's a bus. Buses can be the peak of luxury. Beyoncé tours on private bus. It's a palace.
The unpleasantness of Greyhound is the fact that you're sardined shoulder to shoulder with a bus full of ass. And yes, if your luck happens to be poor, one of those could turn out to be a murdering psycho. He could even be sitting next to you.

And by the way when I say ass, I don't just mean ass as an adjective. You are literally sitting in an enclosed air pocket of ass all day and all night. Even if you survive being murdered, your nose will not.

And what about flying? Aren't you sardined there as well? You sure are, but only for one hour instead of seventeen hours. Big difference.

Maybe you are the one missing the point, and now further embarrassing yourself in following up, making clear that you take this truly inane argument seriously?

I didn't just post info on accidental deaths when traveling by non-bus means; i posted info about being deliberately murdered while "driving your own car", and while flying on an airplane, and while traveling by boat, and by bicycle. I was unable to find stats on being murdered while traveling by train- sorry.

There is no means of travel whatever that will render you immune to homicide. This is just a fact. It is also just a fact that your odds of being murdered while traveling by bus, train, automobile, ship, or airplane are infinitesimally small. And of course, statistically, "driving your own car" is by far the most dangerous means of travel available to you, with all respect to those boogey-man knife-decapitators.

And as you make clear, the real reason you can't ride buses with the common folks is that they smell bad- you are "you're sardined shoulder to shoulder with a bus full of" poor people.

Eewww, icky poor people; so nasty.

Err... yeah. Duh.

That's exactly what I think. Pardon me if I didn't make it clear enough from the beginning.