The Cost of My Weekly Commute

Are bus companies somehow exempt from the rules of the free market system?

I’m at the bus station downtown in Wilmington, Delaware. Two Israeli girls pass a spliff back and forth beside me. I look down and there are ants clustered around an unidentifiable glob of orange goo between my feet. I decide against putting my backpack down even though my shoulders are getting tired. It is so ungodly humid.

I see a train take off in the distance. Oh, how I long to be on it. The tune of the Harry Potter theme song commences in my head and I imagine I am an owl soaring through the sky riding an ocean of wind. I descend towards Harry and Ron and Hermione’s window to —

“Spare change?”

I take out my wallet to grab a dollar but it’s empty.

“Sorry, man,” I say, and show the gentleman with bags under his eyes that I unfortunately cannot help him out. He asks again, as though my wallet’s emptiness is irrelevant. I check my pockets for coins. I can feel everyone’s attention on us. “I wish I could,” I repeat. When he asks a third time I just kind of cringe and look away.

A number of people are smoking cigarettes and I haven’t wanted one less since the D.A.R.E. program came to my class in fourth grade.

“The bus will be here — [sneeze]— in no more than forty minutes,” a voice promises over the intercom.

One arrives twenty minutes later. It’s going to Baltimore. Shit.

The one headed to New York arrives after another thirty minutes. We cluster towards the door like the ants did around the goo. Inside, the AC is blasting. We, the passengers, sigh a collective sigh of relief. I find a window seat towards the back of the bus. In seconds, I catch a whiff of the bathroom just behind me and realize the gravity of the mistake I have made. The whiff becomes a wave and I become a scuba diver without an oxygen tank. I see two of my fellow travelers put their shirts over their noses.

When the final passenger shuffles onto the bus, she peruses the aisle only to discover that all of the seats are taken. She notifies the driver, who stands up from her seat so quickly that for a moment I worry she might smack her head on the bus’s ceiling.

“Alright, guess we’re doing this again!” she shouts. “Someone who was supposed to get off here is still on the bus. So unless whoever that is wants to ‘fess up now, I’m going to have to go through and check everyone’s tickets.”

The silence is palpable. It’s actually quite thrilling.

“So that’s how you want to do it? Fine!”

This is her routine. It is not efficient. She starts in the back; she asks each individual passenger for their name; she asks them to repeat it; she shuffles through the mess of tickets in her hands until she finds theirs, looks for their scheduled destination, and continues on after scanning her object of scrutiny head to toe as if to ensure that no one is somehow scamming the system.

During the process, the surplus, seatless woman stands at the front of the bus, her eyes glued to her cellphone. She does not dare look up. The whole thing takes about an hour. But it’s bus-time — no — it’s late-bus-time, so it feels like three hours. At one point I say, “Pretty unbelievable,” just audible enough for my comrade beside me to hear. He raises his eyebrows a millimeter, but otherwise does not respond. I peek over towards him ever so subtly and catch a glimpse of his texts. It looks like he might be experiencing a break-up. I turn towards the window, gnashing my teeth.

When the driver reaches passenger Number 50 she announces that it would appear that Greyhound may have overbooked the trip. A couple people chuckle in disbelief. She politely asks the unlucky woman patiently waiting to get off the bus.

By 8:00 p.m., we’re underway. The smell of the bathroom does not relent. My overachieving sensory neurons fire throughout the drive, stimulated each time its door is opened. The intensity of the AC does not cease either. I hug myself to retain warmth. Because the mishap allows us to avoid rush hour traffic, we arrive at Port Authority by 10:15 p.m.

I’ve been spending half of each week here in Brooklyn, which entails a trip up from Delaware and a trip back down. On this occasion, my ticket cost $27.50 because I bought it the night before the trip. If I had gotten it earlier it could have been as low as $20. If I opt to take the bus both directions, the average cost per week including metro rides to and from Brooklyn comes out to $49.50.

Compared to what I only imagine would be a glorious experience riding an Amtrak train, the Greyhound is actually significantly cheaper. Amtrak tickets come out to around $8o each way, unless you want to leave in the middle of the night, in which case you can find one for $50 or $60.

The most ideal option, both experience and price wise, would be to get a ride to Trenton and take the NJ Transit from there. Tickets are only $16.75. But I live an hour from Trenton. Another alternative is driving myself. The tolls and gas actually put this option in a similar price range as the Greyhound, maybe a few dollars cheaper. Plus there’s the stress of having to drive in and out of the city to account for, as well as finding parking and moving my car for street sweeps.

I estimate the total amount I’ll be spending to commute into the city for these 10 weeks to be around $500.

While taking a bus may be one of the cheaper options, it’s also the least reliable. Traffic is an unavoidable issue, one that is out of the companies’ hands, but let’s not pretend the problems stop there. Most of the busses I’ve taken this summer have been late, even ones originally departing from where I am.

Why hasn’t the competition between Greyhound, Megabus, Bolt, etc., boosted the quality of the industry? Do the rules of the free market not apply to privatized methods of public transportation? Do we, the passengers, need to come together and protest these unsuitable conditions? Should we unite as consumers and abstain from purchasing tickets until punctuality and ventilated bathrooms are a guarantee?

I don’t know. But I do know that after this past experience I’m probably going to bite the bullet and drive myself next Sunday.

All things considered, though, I can’t really complain with a fully functioning L train for the second phase of my trip. I sympathize with those who will have to deal with the 18 month shutdown in a couple years.

Yoni Blumberg is an Awl network intern this summer, and senior at the University of Delaware.

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