USA: By bus
If you're traveling on your own and making a lot of stops, buses , by far the cheapest way to get around, make a lot of sense. The main long-distance operator, Greyhound , links all major cities and many towns. Out in the country, buses are fairly scarce, sometimes appearing only once a day; here, you'll need to plot your route with care. But along the main highways, buses run around the clock to a fairly full timetable, stopping only for meal breaks (almost always fast-food dives) and driver changeovers. Greyhound buses are slightly less uncomfortable than you might expect. It's feasible to save on a night's accommodation by traveling overnight and sleeping on the bus - though you may not feel up to much the next day.Greyhound 's nationwide toll-free information service (tel 1-800/229-9424) can give you routes and times, plus phone numbers and addresses of local terminals. You can also make reservations. Alternatively, check out the Greyhound website : .
To avoid possible hassle, lone female travelers in particular should take care to sit as near to the driver as possible, and to arrive during daylight hours - many bus stations are in fairly dodgy areas. It used to be that any sizable community would have a Greyhound station; in some places the post office or a gas station doubles as the bus stop and ticket office, and in many others the bus service has been canceled altogether. Reservations , either in person at the station or on the toll-free number, are not essential, but recommended - if a bus is full you may be forced to wait until the next one, sometimes overnight or longer.
Fares on shorter journeys average about 11ยข a mile, but discounts are common on longer hauls (for example it will cost you $75 to get a round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but for $218 you could get all the way to New York and back). For long-trip travel though, considering the time expended (around 65 hours coast-to-coast, if you eat and sleep on the bus), riding the bus is not necessarily a much better deal than flying. However, the bus is the best deal if you plan to visit a lot of places: Greyhound's Ameripasses for domestic travelers are good for unlimited travel nationwide for 7 days ($185), 10 days ($235), 15 days ($285), 21 days ($335), 30 days ($385), 45 days ($419) and 60 days ($509); reduced rates for foreign travelers are typically a saving of $20-40 per pass.
Greyhound produces a condensed timetable of major countrywide routes, but this is not distributed to travelers. To plan your route, pick up the free route-by-route timetables from larger stations.
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