Go Greyhound?
Fri ,21/08/2009
My first time on a Greyhound bus was in 2002 on a trip to Dallas, TX. From Kansas City to Dallas it’s an 8-hour drive, or a 12-hour trip via Greyhound. I swore up and down that I would never ride a Greyhound again because of the giant inconvenience that it is, however this last week I was forced to ride one from Kansas City to Detroit because there was no other option.
I had a lot of time to think on the 20-hour bus ride to Detroit. By the time that I was coming home on my 22-hour bus ride home, I decided that I was going to write an article about my experience and the giant inconvenience that is the Greyhound bus system.
Firstly, for those who haven’t ever rode a Greyhound before, there’s a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’. Most of them have two or four hour layovers in random odd places. (Like hole-in-the-wall-Iowa or Bethany, Missouri.)
There are absolutely no security checks. This is what bothers me most of Greyhound’s system and standards. They will literally let anyone ride their bus. You do not have to have an ID to purchase a ticket – they do not check any baggage or even have something so simple as metal detectors. They literally let anyone on board.
On a four hour layover on my way home in Chicago I started talking to two kids about this. One girl was 15 years old, the boy was 16. Both were traveling alone, both had bought their tickets with cash. Either of them could have been running away and they could disappear forever. The girl was very cute and very naïve, taking to anyone who wanted to talk to her, telling strangers on the bus that her uncle was sending her back to Oklahoma to live. She mentioned the name of the city where she was going, what school she went to… anything you wanted to know about her, you could have asked and she would have told you. She was very lucky that I sat by her and talked to her, keeping her company the whole ride. She rode with me until Kansas City and then I told her what bus to get on afterwards. I could have been a bad stranger; I could have been someone who wanted to harm her.
The 16-year-old boy brought up a good point as we were sitting in the Chicago bus station – the Greyhound would be the perfect way to transport drugs. No one needs an ID, no bags are searched, and you get on and get off wherever you want and no one would ever notice.
However, it’s not drugs that I’m worried about – it’s weapons. Because there are no security measures, no metal detectors – imagine just how many people have knives and guns that are sitting next to you. Imagine why those people are carrying those weapons. It’s a scary thought.
And lastly, with how many people are riding these buses, how much money Greyhound is pulling in per year, they can’t afford cleaner facilities? I find that hard to believe. In my trip I only found one bus station to be sanitary – the St. Louis bus station. It surprised the hell out of me too. I’ve been to St. Louis many times and it’s not a very clean city as a whole, so for the Greyhound stop to be clean? I’m very impressed. In the Kansas City, Detroit and Chicago bus stops they were all so filthy that only one or so of the stalls were clean. On my way to Detroit in my layover in Chicago someone threw up next to me in the bus stop and no one cleaned it up. It just stayed there on the floor, people walking around it like it wasn’t there.
Greyhound’s website wants you to believe that they are a clean, efficient and economically friendly way to travel. If they actually want people to believe that and continue to ride with them, they should change the way that they do things by hiring friendly people, retraining the ones they have, cleaning up what’s disgusting and employing new security options – actually employing ANY security options would be a start. Safety for their customers should be their number one priority.
[[image courtesy of google.com/images]]