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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

There is something very romantic about this - obviously there are other ways to make the trips, but somehow is feels more free and a bit furtive, like if you had to sneak out of town for some reason it's a good thing to know.

I'm in Canada and I can't think of any meaningful distance you could cover in this way. Maybe Toronto-Barrie. Our cities are all so far apart, they are mostly isolated hubs and spokes.

Curious in the US, would there be any regions where you could get anywhere by this method?

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My hunch is that the best odds to get about as far in the US by bus would be the NE corridor, specifically from Washington to NY (which is about 225 miles / 362 km). Most of these cities have transit authorities that cover their metro region, and they'll probably all have bus service into the adjacent one.

Think that would break down around Philadelphia - New York, unless you consider the NJ transit coaches "local" buses.

I just looked out of curiosity, and it looks like it's doable (not sure about the time frame, just the route options). From Philadelphia city center:

SEPTA 4 to Cecil B Moore Av

SEPTA 3 to Frankford Transportation Center

SEPTA 14 to Oxford Valley Mall

SEPTA 127 to Trenton Transit Center

NJT 409 to High St & Broad St

NJT 413 to Camden

NJT 317 to Asbury Park

NJT 139 to NY Port Authority

I mean, if you're including the 317, you could already get on it in central Philadelphia (its other terminus). That's sort of my point though - those buses are big Greyhound-style intercity buses, not the hop on / hop off city buses from the british experiment.

Depending on the timing of the bus schedules, you could just about make it from Maine to Florida in a day—actually over 30 hours but definitely to the Carolinas from Maine within 24 hours.

This was done with local buses, not intercity buses.

You could get much, much further using coach routes.

Not really. They are buses with multiple stops rather than direct city-to-city coach connections but the X buses (eg X6, X7 from the route in the OP) are intercity routes.

The long distance coach to e.g. Leicester starts at the same place, but takes the motorway and doesn't stop until it gets to Leicester. Maybe it will then continue to another city, e.g. Manchester. (I've done this trip.)

The OP took intercity / intertown "local" buses, but they stop at many larger villages and towns along the route. This is much slower, as it usually involves leaving the large road and winding through narrow roads to the centre.

Example map for the Leicester-Loughborough-Derby bus, showing a fair number of stops, where a coach service might make 1 stop between Leicester and Derby: https://www.trentbarton.co.uk/services/skylinkderby/maps-and...

The distinction is buses that a Bus Pass would or would not be valid on.

If i was trying to sneek put of london i'd be more interested in how far i could go in 24h without being spotted on a camera. Canada would probably win that race.

Could you go 10 feet? I think the best thing to do to sneak out would be to put on a few of the correct type of items to make facial recognition difficult, and have enough options you could pop into a shop and discreetly change outer layers while exiting different doors (where possible) to slow the tracking down.

Since they all have cameras, you couldn't go on a local bus or train without wearing sufficient clothes to obscure your face. For example, a hoodie + cap.

Cycling while avoiding roads with lots of shops is probably the best bet. In practise, private cameras aren't an issue except in very unusual cases. (E.g. with runaway children there might be a request for shop owners in a specific area to check their recordings.)

Depends on the company. The US has no dearth of characters. And most of them seem to travel by bus. One time I ended up next to a dude who would excitedly point out every prision along the highway he had been a guest at. Another time a "paranormal investigator" with a 2 inch thick binder of haunted houses and she wanted me to go through every page.

When people at the state prison, which is in my town of residence, are released they are given a set of clothes and a bus ticket back to the major city. Some of them are nice to talk to - polite, and very happy to be outside again. I can only think of once while riding the bus that there was a guy I was concerned about. The “normal” clientele tend to be far worse behaved than the folks just getting out of the system

I've taken the Go bus from Toronto to Barrie, I think the transfer stop was in Bradford.

From the Barrie bus stop you need to get on Ontario Northland to go further, but that is a regional bus and is significantly costlier. I paid over $90 each for the regional bus to Toronto - compared to some of the pre-pandemic flight deals: Abbostford BC to Hamilton ON for $17! Greyhound is no longer in Canada - you used to be able to cross the country using Greyhound. The Bolt Bus and others can be good options, I've gone overnight from Toronto to New York. I've also taken these buses in Europe, and yes you do transfer in Lille.

Our hack was to take the CasinoRama bus from Toronto to Rama for $5, or on the first trip it was free and they gave us play money to spend at the casino.

Say that’s interesting as there (pre-pandemic) was a Bolt bus from Seattle to Vancouver- so I’m hearing you could theoretically get from Seattle to NYC via Canada… seems logical now that I type it, but guess I’d never really thought about it. Would be more that 24 hours I assume, but maybe not

Except for that supercheap Abbotsford to Hamilton flight, it was almost always cheaper to take the bolt (or amtrak) bus from Vancouver to Seattle (or Bellingham), and fly quickly and cheaply to Newark, or other airport hubs in the US.

I think you’re right, the current record for fastest coast-to-coast drive (NYC->LA) is around 27 hours. [1] And that’s going well above the speed limit the whole time without stopping!

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-...

The SF Bay Area allows this possiblity, though it would be most feasible by including local rail; a walk-on north-south trip between Santa Rosa and Monterey could be done by going SMART->ferry->BART->Caltrain->Hwy 17 Express->SC Metro bus. If you were very patient there are bus routes that would cover the SF-Peninsula leg.

I would have to check to see if Sacramento is possible without resorting to rail or coach.

Edit: actually, going to Big Sur looks to be possible with the MSC bus system. It's been a while since I rode in that region and Monterey isn't part of the SC Metro system anymore. From Big Sur I could imagine it's possible to get even further down the coast.

>I would have to check to see if Sacramento is possible without resorting to rail or coach.

The last time I looked into this, no. There is a gap, I think around Solano, that requires BART or Amtrak.

In the dc-boston metro you can get a bus to all major cities and most smaller regional ones without much trouble.

But with a car you can drive from Baltimore to Montreal in like 10hrs so...

Someone did this about ten years ago, going from LA to San Francisco in about three days https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfweekly.com/news/in-transi...

Having recently learned a new skill, here's a link to the full thread on nitter (for those not logged into Twitter): https://nitter.net/i/status/1428438081871433731

If you could anywhere it'd be the east side (think starting in NY), itd be a lot easier if coaches and trains were allowed though.

Talking about free, catching the bus in Canada involved scanners and bag searches. Only place in the world I’ve seen that.

Canada had a decapitation on a inter-city bus a few years ago, people were pretty freaked out.

What's a little decapitation between friends?

It's one way to get ahead.

Getting ahead of navigation

Is this your experience or something you read about? I take the bus all the time in Toronto and have never had a bag searched.

Where is that? Certainly not on city busses, and not on any of the coach busses I have seen.

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