Greyhound used to be good. Whole songs have been written about how great it was for seeing the country. Now, though? It’s a mess and it’s hard to find a better example of just how awful the storied bus company than the regularly scheduled service between Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.
To see just how dumb this bus is transit blogger Miles decided to buy a ticket and ride the line from end to end. For $16, Miles managed to experience the worst of Greyhound’s notorious delays as well as some of the densest traffic Manhattan has to offer along Canal street as the bus approached the Manhattan Bridge. The result was a ride that, not even taking the delayed departure into account, took nearly fifteen minutes longer than the $2.75 ride on the subway would cost.
For those who don’t know, the Greyhound station in Downtown Brooklyn is located basically right on top of Hoyt-Schermerhorn station on the A and C trains. Those same two trains also stop in Manhattan immediately below the Port Authority Bus Terminal where this route originates. Now, the New York City Subway has problems but, as you might imagine, a train unimpeded by vehicular traffic makes the trip an awful lot faster than the bus, and Miles’ return trip proves it.
I tried to reach out to Greyhound to get an understanding of why this route is offered but the response unsurprisingly remains indefinitely delayed. Miles suggests that it could be useful to out-of-towners making connections who might not be interested in learning how to use the subway for their first or last leg. Either way, it seems like an awful waste to me.