Passenger Transportation - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 109

Intercity bus service is the most energy-ef cient passenger transportation mode in the United
States when compared to all others by measuring passenger miles per gallon. On average, the motor-
coach industry provides 206.6 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, compared to the single-passenger
automobile at 27.2 or transit bus at 31.4 passenger miles per gallon. The study titled Updated
Comparisons of Energy Use and Emissions from Different Transportation Modes, produced by
M.J. Bradley and Associates, also shows that motorcoaches produce the lowest carbon dioxide
emissions per passenger mile of any of the 14 transportation modes analyzed.
The motorcoach industry is composed largely of small entrepreneurial businesses. There are over
3,500 companies, 90 percent of which have fewer than 25 buses. These entrepreneurial companies
operate about 19,000 motorcoaches, account for almost 40 percent of the total industry mileage, and
carry one in five passengers. More than half of motorcoach jobs are with small businesses employing
fewer than 50 people. The industry employs 200,000 workers, not including jobs in the bus
manufacturing and supplier sector. Clearly, motorcoach travel contributes signi cantly to tourism
revenues in local communities. In Washington, D.C., alone, 23.4 percent of 21 million annual visitors
arrive by motorcoach. If only half of those visitors came as part of an overnight tour, $424 million
would flow into those local businesses.
Motorcoaches are also the intermodal glue in America s often-disjointed transportation system.

Motorcoaches link passengers arriving and departing through airports, train stations, and seaports with
their final home, work, and tourism destinations.

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Regular/Route/Scheduled Bus Service

About 100 privately owned companies in the United States offer regular route bus service. Greyhound
Lines, Inc., the only nationwide bus carrier for regular intercity route service, serves more than 2,300
destinations with 13,000 daily departures. Nearly 2.5 million passengers each year use Greyhound.
Greyhound has three subsidiaries in the United States that are a part of the nationwide Greyhound
network. They include: Valley Transit Company, serving the Texas

Mexico border; Crucero USA,
serving southern Californa and Arizona into Mexico; and Americanos USA, serving points in Mexico
from Texas and New Mexico. The company

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s Greyhound Travel Services unit offers charter packages
for business, conventions, schools, and other groups.
In addition, Greyhound has interline partnerships with a number of independent bus lines across
the United States. These bus companies provide complementary service to Greyhound Lines

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schedules and link to many of the smaller towns in Greyhound Lines national route system.

Amtrak passengers use Greyhound to make connections to cities not served by rail on Amtrak
Thruway service, by purchasing a ticket for the bus connection from Amtrak in conjunction with the
purchase of their rail ticket. If passengers desire, they may also buy a bus ticket directly from Greyhound.
For travel within Canada, Greyhound Canada carries millions of passengers across the country

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provinces and territories each year. The company also provides Greyhound Courier Express package
delivery service to its various Canadian locations.
For those within Mexico who wish to travel by Greyhound in the United States, Greyhound
subsidiary Greyhound de Mexico can sell Greyhound tickets at one of more than a hundred agencies
located throughout Mexico. The agencies also sell tickets for several Mexican bus companies, such as
Estrella Blanca, which connect to Greyhound service at the United States

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Mexico border cities.
Greyhound is owed by First Group plc of Aberdeen, Scotland. Visit www.greyhound.com .
The Trailways Transportation System, a federation of independently owned bus companies that
market intercity service under the Trailways name, covers a large portion of the United States. They
serve over 1,000 destinations and carry over 16 million passengers a year. Other independent
companies provide service on a regional basis and feed passengers into the Greyhound or Trailways
systems, into the Amtrak rail system, and into airports. The approximate number of places in the
United States served by intercity buses is 3,300. This compares to about 400 airports with scheduled
airline service and to about 500 Amtrak stations.

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