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ChineseAnother Bus Bites The Dust
Image courtesy of Sung Sook.
Angelenos now have one less transportation option when it comes to traveling to San Diego.
One of our readers, Michael, reports that Megabus has canceled its Los Angeles to San Diego route. According to Wikipedia, this route was ended due to low ridership and service officially ended on March 23rd. San Diego now joins Phoenix (which ended in January due to low ridership) in the Megabus route graveyard. It was less than a year ago that Megabus was introduced to Los Angeles, and Wad gave us a ride report chronicling the Los Angeles to San Diego route. It looks like even a positive review from MetroRiderLA and fares as low as a buck can’t convince Angelenos to get on a bus. The Los Angeles hub still has a few routes left, including Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Los Angeles to San Francisco (via either San Jose or Oakland). How long will these routes last? Only ridership will tell.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
I’ve ridden the SF-LA route at least a dozen times now and I have always seen full or nearly full runs. I think that one is here to stay. The fares now range from $1 for the early bird to $52 for the last minute buyer. Still relatively cheap for a last minute ticket. One thing I wish for is Greyhound’s BoltBus service to come in and provide some competition so we can get some power outlets and wi-fi on the buses.
I’d like to think that there’s no market for Megabus between LA/SD because it’s a trip that works pretty well by train.
It’d be nice to see competitive train service between SF/LA (which I don’t think would have to be anything as fancy or expensive as the CAHSR’s bullet trains).
Go Pacific Surfliner! It kicked that Megabus’ ass!
I can’t say that I’m surprised. It seemed to be providing a service that nobody wanted. Spokker is right – people who didn’t want to drive took Amtrak, and their Pacific Surfliner at least resembles its own schedule, which can’t be said for the Coast Starlight.
The LA-SF route is more of a pickle. Amtrak is unable to provide the service that everyone wants, and CaHSR is pretty fanciful right now. But man, that’s a long trip by bus.
If I can get from NYC to DC in three hours by train via the Acela, why can’t I get from Union Station to San Francisco in three hours? It’s about the same distance. Does it need to be HSR or just an express train running through open areas?
Eventually, I can see the Moorpark line extending its commuter service to Santa Barbara.
Dan: It’s nearly double the distance as NYC-DC. When I describe LA-SF to my friends back east (New England), I tell them it’s the same as Boston to Baltimore. Stick it into Google Maps, the comparison is spookily accurate.
The problem on the route isn’t Amtrak. I feel bad for Amtrak. If I were Amtrak’s president, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Back East, Amtrak largely only shares track with commuter services (MBCR, CCR, Metro-North, NJ Transit, MARC). Along most of the route through the New York Tri-State, Amtrak and Acela have access to median express tracks which allow the trains to pass the CCR/Metro-North service.
Out here, Amtrak’s trunk line, the Coast Starlight, shares track with freight service, and perversely, the freight service, which runs slower trains due to safety and weight, has priority. Presumeably they could make it in the same roughly 6.5 hours that Boston-Baltimore takes, but they would have to be given control over the route. Won’t happen.
Since that’s not going to happen, the only answer is to build them a dedicated route. The Acela, with its limitations on fast turning and brake problems, could make the trip in probably 5:30 if it had signal priority, and that’s not an improvement over flying. Additionally, it runs on overhead power, which we can’t put on a freight line.
So the answer becomes true European or Japanese high-speed rail, which Amtrak, as a creation of the Federal Government, can’t out-source to buy off-the-shelf technology from Paris or Tokyo. This is why we built the Acela trainsets, which is a great effort, it’s hardly junk, but the brakes and turning problems are serious. Acela could make the trip much faster but they just haven’t figured out a way to do the curves at high speeds safely, so you have a handful of areas where Acela gets up to an amazing speed, and the rest of the time it’s only at about 75 or 80mph.
So now we have a situation where:
1) We need new track, or a non-freight right-of-way.
2) We need new technology, and Acela is inadequate for the purpose.
3) We can’t do it through Amtrak because then we’ll just get Acela 2.0.
4) We can’t do it through Amtrak because Amtrak considers it a good day when they can keep the lights on, thanks to the current situation.
And that’s how we got the concept for the Authority. A public-private partnership with the capability to obtain a right-of-way not run by Union Pacific, not subject to Amtrak’s financial constraints, and able to buy off-the-shelf technology from Europe or Asia without Federal protectionist policies intervening.
Oh. And to cite some sources:
NY Times: On the brake/undercarriage.
Railway Age: Tilt/Curve problems, power problems.
That note about Rhode Island isn’t insignificant – the stretch they mean is the stretch between Providence and suburban Boston, where MBCR has excellent track maintenance and Amtrak coordinates efficiently with Boston. That part of the trip is *fast*. I once lost a Red Sox hat to the Acela when I was waiting for the commuter rail at Ruggles. The big thing about Acela north of New York is to get out of Boston quickly. If you pick it up in Providence or points south, you’re not saving significant time anymore.
Thanks Aaron, that was really informative.
I’d love to take rail to San Francisco. My dream is a high speed rail to Seattle, but that is unlikely to ever happen.
Dan:
It seems inevitable. The West Coast has too much in common with the Northeast Corridor – a row of major cities that you can hit with one line without significant zig-zags (San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle) – we’re basically talking about mimicking the purpose of the 5, which is what Acela does to I-95. However, it’ll take something faster than Acela to do it as the coastline is much longer, and without addressing cost, we’ll have to adequately resolve the freight problem, the “How to get out LA without zig-zagging across the mountains” problem, and the “We gotta convince Caltrain to re-build/consent to a re-build of 4th and King” problem. Maybe the T-Third can be incentive to convince Caltrain that they can cut service off south of the Financial District in order to take the year or two needed to re-build 4th and King underground (to allow for the bay crossing).
I’ll vote for HSR in November but expect it to fail. Rising gas prices and landing fees, combined with increased efficiencies in rail construction, will drive the cost differential enough that it will eventually become more attractive.
The public is mostly in favor of CAHSR, but most of the influential leadership is not, which could cause it to fail at the ballot. I actually expect it to pass, but getting the funding in place and building the thing might be a lot harder.
Any train service north of Los Angeles isn’t very convenient nor does it have as good of a reputation as the service south of LA. Only a few trains serve Santa Barbara and even fewer service San Luis Obispo.
However once you get on the Los Angeles-San Diego segment things are much better. The LOSSAN corridor is flourishing and ridership is growing all the time. Metrolink/Amtrak/Coaster provide mostly on-time convenient service. Monthly passholders on Metrolink can ride the Surfliner within the station stops on their passes which was a genius move.
Amtrak does better in this corridor because a lot of the track is owned by Metrolink and Coaster, with the stretch between Los Angeles and Fullerton owned by BNSF. I’m sure the transit agencies treat Amtrak better than the freight companies ever did.
North of LA it’s a different story. Metrolink only owns the tracks until Moorpark, then Amtrak is in the hands of Union Pacific. The infrastructure isn’t as robust either. The 798 southbound Surfliner usually meets a Metrolink train sometime after Oxnard and has to pull into a siding to let it pass, then BACK out of the siding to continue on.
I think the demand is there though. Hell, we should have had a bullet train from at least LA to San Diego a long time ago.
Man, what an informative comment thread. This is why I visit this site.
I was hoping for Megabus to expand to Santa Barbara and (perhaps) Bakersfield, but…
Train service in the Northeast is only slightly faster than in California. If you compare travel time on Acela Regional (a fair comparison to the Pacific Surfliner) from Boston-Washington DC (7 hrs. 416 mi.) with Amtrak California’s San Joaquin Service from Oakland-Bakersfield (8 hrs. 35 min. 415 mi.), you will find that Acela Regional is only about 90 min. faster. Even the Acela Express is only about 2 hrs. faster. And that’s with a connecting bus from Bakersfield to Los Angeles (2 hrs. 20 min. 100 mi.)
If California were to build a high speed bypass line (150 mph) from L.A. to Bakersfield, and continue up the existing route to Oakland, the Acela Regional and San Joaquin travel time would be the same. If the line continued up I-5 to the Bay Area, with local San Joaquin Valley service splitting off at Bakersfield, the trip to S.F. would take 3 hrs. Much faster than the 6 hr. 415 mi. trip on Acela Express !
I went over to the Megabus site, and, sure enough, they don’t list San Diego anymore.
(I found absolutely nothing about Megabus dropping the San Diego route in either the Union-Tribune or Google News….)
from aaron’s acela brake’s article above:
oh mr. stevenson if you only knew what we were working with out here. and i agree in the most simplest of ways, why?
The Megabus just didn’t advertise to people that took the Amtrak from LA to SD. I heard about the Megabus through word of mouth. Amtrak is expensive as hell. I was trying to save money buy taking the Megabus (less than $15 roundtrip).