VIDEO: Greyhound Family

In many respects I don't miss the 1980s. I grew up at nearly the tail end of the decade. Watching this commercial, they don't seem to make them like they used to. Even with the interesting jingles. Somehow the old school jingles of the commercials of the past were somehow very special.

There are some cheezy elements in this commercial. The mother and daughter sad that daddy isn't coming to visit the grandparents. The happy and smiling bus driver. It is a relatively interesting commercial and it makes me wanna take the bus.

Except that in the 1980s I wonder if the bus was the travel of choice for a family not much different than the one depicted in this commercial. Even worse this family is one of the main demographics riding the bus in this country. They can be identified by ethnicity or income level. So among those groups would be either black American or low-income people (of any race might I add).

Anyway, I understand that Greyhound is making some changes. More comfortable seats, new terminals, new employee uniforms (for drivers and station employees), buses painted in a new livery (a new design if you wanna know), and even better schedules with some stops being cut while service between major terminals and stations is faster. It's making a difference I think being a Greyhound rider and in the nick of time since this low cost carrier has to contend with discount airlines.

To be sure I checked out airline fares over at priceline.com. Well I decided to check out fares between Atlanta and Chicago. Not exactly looking at the discount airlines, but just looking for the cheapest rates as well as the fastest times. I couldn't find any costs lower than say $500 and we're talking about a coach seat on a plane.

I've concluded about the airline industry this.

First, since the airline industry knows that people want to fly because they'll save the most amount of time getting there (as opposed to driving, taking the train or bus) and that's what most travellers are going for. Of course it may not matter since thanks to 9/11 you have to be inspected before they'll let you on the flight.

At times it seems like overkill especially since you aren't (or perhaps weren't) allowed to take and liquid substances on the place. Especially in light of info that certain liquid substances can be used as explosives. And I've heard how they even make you take off your shoes to check you out. To me all these precautions isn't worth taking the shortest length trip possible.

Second because they know travellers are willing to spend the money for the shortest possible duration trip the pricing starts to resemble gouging. It's almost like they overcharge for flying from point A to point B in say 20 Minutes. I just checked out Chicago to Milwaukee on United Airlines you may have to pay $629 to travel for 47 minutes. Not worth it!

Even worse it seems some people want to game the system to get the lowest possible fare. Indeed I've heard that people hope they get bumped from a flight that was cancelled because it didn't get filled up in order to get a free ticket. Not only that it seems you can't do a last minute trip on an airline and I've heard about how some travellers might plan their trip months in advance to get the lowest fare possible. It's not worth that much work to me although, you might still have to do that for Amtrak and even then you can start at the last minute for a train to "points unknown use your imagination" and it would still be cheaper than an airline, but you'd still have that long ride from point A to B.

The final thing I should mention is that I remember watching a John Stossel special about myths and they mentioned airline delays. The airline might claim delays are caused by the weather but experts will say that it's not always the weather it's overscheduling. I would liken it to a form of gridlock so many planes ready to go it's funny and not many going anywhere.

You know what. I heard how once upon a time Greyhound had buses going somewhere every half hour. That's not true any more, because I suppose real life economics have changed the nature of that business. Greyhound can't afford to have a bus leaving a station every half hour anymore. In fact they can't even afford these small town Greyhound outposts anymore. I think at some point the airline industry might go that way.

In fact didn't they beg the federal government to bail them out in the months after 9/11?

Anyway this post almost made it to The Eye. And I wonder what is it with me and these long winded posts lately. Ah well I hope what I said so far has made sense.