Bay Area Diaries — Part II: Megabus

Last summer Megabus chose Los Angeles as the second hub for the English coach operator’s American market. Soon after the service debuted, MetroRiderLA took Megabus on a short jaunt from Union Station to San Diego. The fare, speed and ride quality on that service left a helluva first impression. That was a two-hour journey, mere child’s play for an operations manager.

But what about taking the big blue bus — no, not that one — to its limits? How well can Megabus do when traveling across California, from the congested megalopoles of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area? And, more importantly, is the Megabus concept catching on here as it has in the UK and the Chicago hub?

A trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco is scheduled for 7 hours, 15 minutes. This won’t take nearly as long to read.

Let’s ride.

Seven and a quarter hours seems very tight, if not impossible, for a bus to go from Elhay to Sanfran. Greyhound’s fastest trip between the two cities is 7 hours, 45 minutes, only with a few stops in the Bay Area and Southern California. Megabus takes a similar route for the cross-state run. This bus runs along I-5, then takes the Pacheco Pass — potential High Speed Rail alignment alert — to US-101. On a long trip like this, the bus makes a food break at the world-famous Burger King in Coalinga (#4355), which is not noted in the schedule. World-famous at least for hungry bus passengers, as many an intercity bus makes a pit stop here.

Jaime the bus driver enjoys a meal during the rest stop at the Coalinga Burger King.

The 7 a.m. trip, made on January 15, had 20 passengers. That’s about a third of the MCI’s capacity. Megabus probably took a bath on carrying so few people, but even a third-full bus is showing that the low-cost carrier is building a ridership base. It was a quiet crowd, about three-quarters adults who appear to be 25 years or younger, and the rest senior citizens. This morning trip is the only one of three daily that serve the San Jose and Millbrae stops.

The stop locations are Megabus’s strongest asset. Yes, the stops are even better than the $1 fare. Only the earliest bird gets the $1 worm; the rest of the passengers pay higher fares every time someone buys a ticket. The stops, though, are directly near major multimodal transit hubs. Union Station needs no introduction. San Diego moved its stop from a forlorn Coach America property northeast of downtown to the Park & Market Trolley station, the day after the MetroRiderLA Ride Report, no less.

The Bay Area stops are tops. First was San Jose, at the Diridon station. The bus arrived on time at 1:10 p.m. So far, so good. This is a very important regional hub. Steel-on-steel options are Valley Transportation Authority’s 902/Green/Mountain View-to-Winchester light rail line, Caltrain service between the Silicon Valley and San Francisco and the Altamont Commuter Express between San Jose and the San Joaquin Valley. VTA operates a few local and express buses, including 180 and 181 to the Fremont BART station. Also, there are regional bus connections to Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

Half the passengers got out at San Jose. The city has the demand for the other two trips to stop here.

A Monterey-Salinas Transit bus parks in front of San Jose Diridon station. The transit agency assumed operation of a Thruway connection to the Monterey Peninsula.

Scenes from a bus window: Top, the downtown San Jose Skyline with the Children’s Discovery Museum in the center. Bottom, the HP Pavilion, aka the Shark Tank.

Next stop was Millbrae. Again, props to Megabus for choosing the Caltrain/BART station as its stop. Megabus arrived on time at 1:55 p.m. Outstanding. The buses stop at the shelters shared by samTrans [sic] and private shuttles to office parks, such as a large fleet of charter buses to Genentech. Man, Millbrae has a colossus of a parking structure. Sierra Madre Villa Station has nothing on Millbrae. Plus, there are several surface parking spaces around the mammoth garage. They were mostly empty, though.

Megabus approaches the bus stop in the Millbrae Intermodal Transit Center. The parking garage on the right is twice the size of what appears in the photo.

Megabus had 20 minutes to get on the Bayshore Freeway and arrive in San Francisco. And it did … almost.

The bus arrived in San Francisco at 2:20 p.m., only 5 minutes behind schedule. For a trip over 7 hours, that kind of performance is commendable. Traffic was cooperative, and heavy morning fog through the Central Valley did not slow down the bus.

Megabus arrives at the Caltrain terminal at Fourth and King streets in San Francisco.

The Caltrain station and San Francisco Megabus stop is a simple, slender glass enclosure reminiscent of European train station layouts. Besides indoor seating, the station also has a food counter and newsstand.

San Francisco’s Megabus stop is at the Caltrain terminal at Fourth and King streets. It, too, had fantastic transit connections, although in Sanfran, Megabus could pick itself a stop anywhere and have frequent connecting transit available. Here, though, is yet another Caltrain stop. This one is a simple glass box, reminiscent of European train stations, and it has a restaurant and a newsstand. Muni operates two trains here, but on separate platforms, and several local and express buses pass by. Interestingly, the no-frills business model compelled Megabus to avoid the most obvious site for its SF stop: the Transbay Terminal. This large complex serves as a terminal for regional buses, both public and private. Then again, this is Greyhound turf.

Megabus does not stop here, but most of the Bay Area’s buses stop in or around the Transbay Terminal on Mission Street. Market Street, with rail connections, is one block north. Below, the interior of Transbay Terminal has lanes where AC Transit Transbay buses board in San Francisco. Greyhound buses use the lane to the left of where this photo was snapped.

The Caltrain terminal is two blocks west of the San Francisco Giants‘ AT&T Park. Good grief. One glance at this neighborhood shows that Dodger Stadium is not an embarrassment. It’s a disgrace. The ballpark has attracted mixed-use development of offices and living quarters, with great restaurants, practical shops and even a supermarket on the street. There are no oceans of parking lots. And the stadium makes it possible for anyone from the Bay Area to go out to the ballgame without driving. There’s Caltrain, Muni’s N-Judah and T-Third Street rail lines and local buses, as well as special baseball service. And since AT&T Park is near the water, fans can also take special ferry services to the games. L.A., meanwhile, has to agonize over getting a simple shuttle bus up to the stadium. Paradoxically, while Dodger Stadium maintains a 100 percent mode share for cars, it can do very little to manage traffic because of the geographic constraints of the local neighborhood, and many fans still don’t bother to watch the game to the end of the ninth. Bay Area boosters, L.A. spots you this one.

Considering the traffic in and out of Dodger Stadium, it can feel like seven hours to see and leave the ball game. By that logic, we might as well take Megabus to watch a Giants game. OK, that’s reaching. Two hours, though, is a more realistic figure, and Megabus drops off within blocks of the San Diego Padres‘ Petco Park. Take Megabus and be a Dodgers fan when they play in San Diego.

That concludes the baseball segment of the Bay Area Diaries. While here at the depot though — one of three visits to this stop, with the second being the forthcoming Caltrain entry — this was also the origin for the 8:15 a.m. return trip to L.A. on January 18.

The return trip was identical to the trip up to Sanfran. There were also 20 passengers on this trip, with half boarding in Sanfran and the other half in San Jose. Megabus did not pick up anyone in Millbrae, even though it still stopped there. Maybe someone flaked. The demos were also the same. Lots of <25s, and a small contingent of Chinese seniors. Hey, Megabus could develop a niche as a prominent Chinatown bus. The fares are low enough.

Traffic was markedly worse on the southbound trip. The two bottlenecks were around San Jose and in the Burbank/Glendale area. The bus traveled at about 15 mph in these areas. And yes, there was the 20-minute stop in Coalinga.

With the slowdowns, Megabus completed the same trip in … 7 hours, 20 minutes. Again, it was only 5 minutes late, even though this trip was slower than the northbound trek. And being off by 5 minutes is not bad with the time and distance involved.

Megabus returns to Los Angeles, with similar passenger counts and runtimes as the trip up to San Francisco.

Megabus came through with flying colors. It’s 2 for 2. The buses are clean, the schedules are reliable, the stops are well served by public transit, and even its highest fares offer more value than the Dog. Help ridership grow and support this service.

Previously:

• Prologue

Photo by neutralSurface via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

BART Board for upcoming arrivals: Golden Gate Transit to Santa Rosa arrives in 1 day Santa Rosa CityBus and Sonoma County Transit around Santa Rosa arrives in 2 days Golden Gate Ferry to Larkspur arrives in 3 days Muni Metro trains to Balboa park arrive in 4 days Muni buses around San Francisco arrive in 5 days CalTrain to Millbrae arrives in 6 days BART to Pittsburg/Bay Point arrives in 1 week Closing thoughts arrive in 1 week, 1 day