A beautiful, broken America: what I learned on a 2,800-mile bus ride | Hacker News Reader

A beautiful, broken America: what I learned on a 2,800-mile bus ride

theguardian.com

151 pointsstryan137 comments

It's a good read. Even over 15 years ago, as a newcomer to this country, I found Greyhound rides to be fascinating, while certainly not being well-run by any stretch of the imagination. And it does expose you to parts of American society that those on the right-hand side of the distribution don't often see.

> something I saw repeatedly: the exclusion of those without smartphones or credit cards. The cashless society appears to be winning.

> “As of 25 January 2023 – you will need photo ID to buy tickets.” Yet another barrier between those with little money, no fixed address, no car, no passport or credit card and their ability to travel.

I'm in favor of retaining (both legally as well as culturally) cash as a medium of exchange, as well as maintaining and restoring a high-trust, cohesive society where most private transactions don't require showing one's papers.

Unfortunately, powerful forces are against both. Cash transactors have long been treated with suspicion by authorities, and the coming age of CBDC will further demean what it even means to have money. And the security state continues to impose one checkpoint after another on civil society, which I have no doubt was behind Greyhound's policy on requiring ID.

I'd certainly vote for a congressperson that would take action on either of those matters.

> Greyhound stations now often close between buses to keep homeless people out – yet another communal space closed to those without the money to access private spaces

Greyhound stations shouldn't also need to be homeless shelters, and it seems like smart business to spare paying customers from the antisocial, erratic behavior exhibited by many homeless people. This seems like a strange ding on Greyhound.

> Greyhound stations shouldn't also need to be homeless shelters, and it seems like smart business to spare paying customers from the antisocial, erratic behavior exhibited by many homeless people. This seems like a strange ding on Greyhound.

Except if you're waiting for your bus, it sounds like there's no where to go?

The homeless people are still there, just outside, you can wait with them!

I'vehad to wait 6 hours between buses during a transfer. I sure hope they aren't stopping that :(

> And the security state continues to impose one checkpoint after another on civil society, which I have no doubt was behind Greyhound's policy on requiring ID.

Greyhound and Amtrak are notorious for being randomly boarded by CBP, who go down the aisle bullying people to consent to a search. Something like 90% consent despite absolutely no need to.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/amtrak-...

DEA too as the article mentions. I've been on a bus that was stopped in the middle of the route to walk a dog through it. Pretty fucked.

The last point is a problem (on both sides) but it seems to have a simple fix - a small area where you can buy tickets, and a larger area where you need a ticket to access. You can trespass homeless out of the smaller public area if you need to (you very likely don't) and if you have a ticket you belong in the ticketed area whether you're homeless or not.

I needed to get from Portland to Eugene. In Oregon, there's a bus service that's paid with some state funding that goes from train station parking lot to train station parking lot. I wanted to use the restroom at Union Station in Portland and the security guard required me to show him that I had a valid ticket to stay in the building.

So it was kind of like what you are suggesting.

Not trying to put on a tinfoil hat here, but there's a clause in the laws about Real ID that says you can only have one form of it. I think they put that in there so they have the option of revoking it and preventing people from traveling inside the US by driving (since it's tied to your license), taking the Greyhound, Amtrak, plane, etc. Interstate travel is supposed to be a constitutional right, but I suppose the argument would be that you're free to hire a chauffer or walk if you need to get to Nebraska.

If that comment isn’t you putting on a tinfoil hat, I’m not sure what would be.

The thing that made me think of it was that several years ago I went on vacation to a different state and when I got there the rental car company turned me away because my license had expired a couple of days prior. I hopped in a cab, went to the local DMV, and got a new license. When I returned to my home state I renewed my license there, and all was good, until a couple of years later I went to add an endorsement or something and mentioned that I had a backup driver's license from that other state that was still valid. Nope, they said, that's illegal because it means we can't revoke your driving privileges if we need to, and they made me destroy it. So why would they prevent me from having two forms of Real ID, like a driver's license from one state and an ID card from another state? Presumably each one is vetted to the point that there's no question about its authenticity.

I'd expect it's more to do with various entities checking Real ID to verify residency for the purpose of state benefits and voting.

It looks like it's a DHS regulation (?), but I'd assume states were supportive because it made their lives easier.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/6/37.29

You could probably skirt around the rules by applying for and keeping a passport, which isn't tied to a physical address.

> So why would they prevent me from having two forms of Real ID, like a driver's license from one state and an ID card from another state

Why would you want/need to have them both?

Also remember that revoking someone’s license is a terrible way to get them to stop driving. If it worked people wouldn’t be out getting multiple DUIs. When driving is the only option to get around, taking away a piece of plastic doesn’t stop people from doing it.

> So why would they prevent me from having two forms of Real ID, like a driver's license from one state and an ID card from another state?

Having DLs from multiple states implies that you’re a resident of multiple states, which you legally cannot be for things like voting and taxation.

I’m honestly surprised that you were able to get a driver’s license without having any sort of proof that you lived there. Most states require you to provide documents showing an in-state address

Because you can't be a resident of multiple states, or at least not in most systems like vehicle licenses or taxes or what have you.

Say you're driving, and commit a felony, and are caught on tape. The idea is that the license identifies you. If you have fifty licenses and fifty addresses and you're not at 49 of them, then it doesn't serve that purpose. For that reason, it's considered fraud.

Likewise if you have one ID and it isn't accurate. Sure, there are grace periods and what have you but the end result is the same.

Back before 9/11, I worked with a techie, a good kid who was a careless driver and racked up traffic tickets. He worked and I supposed lived in Washington, DC. With relatives in the District, Maryland, and Virginia, he had no trouble acquiring three drivers licenses, and could manage things so that at least one license wasn't suspended any given month.

Now I'm sure that this is impossible.

>Nope, they said, that's illegal because it means we can't revoke your driving privileges if we need to, and they made me destroy it

That's just a state by state thing in how they handle driver's license. I don't think every state requires you to destroy your previous license.

What does RealID (or "only one form of it") have to do with having a license or not compared to the pre-RealID days? Are you thinking of someone trying to maintain licenses in multiple states or such?

And is it "RealID for Greyhound" or "photo ID"? (Not that passports are super easy to get if you're homeless and had your documents lost or stolen in the past or such either... IMO the lack of proactive work by government agencies in *getting homeless people the documents they need without a permanent address is a huge shame.)

A passport also counts, so your Real Driving License would be a second one.

You can definitely have more than one, your passport card, global entry card is a real id…

>I'm in favor of retaining (both legally as well as culturally) cash as a medium of exchange, as well as maintaining and restoring a high-trust, cohesive society where most private transactions don't require showing one's papers.

America has *never* been a high-trust, cohesive society, and it never will. Just ask any black person. Maybe decades ago, in some isolated small towns with zero diversity, there was a high-trust situation since everyone knew everyone, but it's never been high-trust nationwide.

It's still relatively high-trust, though you are right not in the same way as other high-trust societies that are also monoethnic. There actually aren't that many places in the world (monoethnic or not) where you can order takeout food online and just show up to the restaurant, claim that you are so-and-so who ordered the food, and take it, without providing any proof (whether it be ID or an order number, what have you).

> Just ask any black person.

For what it's worth, I live in a Deep South city that is majority black. I used to live in a major coastal metropolis, widely considered to be very "open-minded" on race, with a single-digit percent black population. I think blacks and whites get along better here than they did back there. It's certainly not that case here that black people are treated with suspicion on a day-to-day basis.

Next you'll say race relations were better before Obama in the Bush years and after Obama in the Trump years.

Maybe the delineation should be before and after the "social media era"

I wasn't in this country for most of the Bush years, so you'll have to tell me how it was. But if you ask me in general, focusing our attentions on our differences and pitting people against each other on racial boundaries isn't the way to make progress on the issue.

Is your point that I must be mistaken about race relations being better in the South than in coastal metropolises? Where I used to live, it was the kind of neighborhood with BLM signs on every other lawn, and approximately zero black people living there. Where I live now, there are approximately zero BLM signs on lawns, but plenty of people of different races living as neighbors, coworkers, friends, and lovers. Actual black people are moving back to the South[0], while champions of diversity are moving to less diverse places[1].

If that wasn't your point, please do tell.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-new-great-migration-b...

[1]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.13268

Why did you cite an article discussing black migration from 1965 through 2000 as proof that race relations are better in the South in 2023? (And on that note, the U.S. census data shows that California's black population in 2022 is larger than it was in 2000.)

Also, the second link you does not state that "champions of diversity" are moving to less diverse places...it in fact states that positions on diversity play little to no role in where people actually live (though it does strongly inform where people prefer to live), and the general finding is that people of all races generally prefer to live with people of the same race except that Trump-supporting minorities prefer to live in White neighborhoods.

But if you ask me in general, focusing our attentions on our differences and pitting people against each other on racial boundaries isn't the way to make progress on the issue

Bush had his faults, but race relations wasn't one of them. OTOH, inflaming racial tension was the centerpiece of Trump's campaign. Just a week ago Trump lauded a singer for a video glorifying vigilantism in front of a courthouse where falsely-accused black men were lynched by vigilante mobs.

> Why did you cite an article discussing black migration from 1965 through 2000

I'm sorry, I meant to cite this instead: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-new-great-migration-is-.... It shows big gains in black net migration to the South in 2000-2020. From net migration, West as a whole lost more black residents than in gained. I'd imagine there's been even more from 2020 till now, considering recent movement patterns.

> California's black population in 2022 is larger than it was in 2000.

In absolute numbers, yes (because the state grew a lot), but in proportion, it went from 6.7% black in 2000 to 6.5% in the 2022 estimates. In contrast, Mississippi, which isn't even a place people associate with the economic drivers of the New South, went from 36.3% black to 37.8% black in the same timeframe (out of a population increase of a mere 100k in the state).

> it in fact states that positions on diversity play little to no role in where people actually live

The study shows that whites regardless of their views on immigration/diversity, starting out from more diverse places, tend to move to whiter places compared to nonwhites starting from the same places. So yes, to be fair, it's not just white "champions of diversity" moving to less diverse places. But the gap in rhetoric vs. action is greater for that group, so I thought it worth notice.

> inflaming racial tension was the centerpiece of Trump's campaign

No arguments there from me.

> a video glorifying vigilantism in front of a courthouse where falsely-accused black men were lynched by vigilante mobs

Cooler heads have analyzed that the singer in question, Jason Aldean, does not in fact support lynching[0], and that the people accusing him of such are actually engaging in that very behavior of inflaming racial tension.

[0]: https://www.thefp.com/p/jason-aldean-isnt-pro-lynching-and

It seems that you're not American, so you don't appear to be aware of the history of lynchings in America.

Aldean has been accused of being in support of lynching because he literally sings that he will lynch someone in his song if they try shit in his town. Aldean is from the South, he damn well knows what lynching means and it's history.

Lynching refers to an extrajudicial murder, carried out by a mob or a posse. Literally, what Aldean sings about in his song. Over and over again.

Specifically the lyrics: "See how far ya make it down the road/Around here, we take care of our own/You cross that line, it won't take long/ For you to find out, I recommend you don't/Try that in a small town".

In the music video, he says these lines while prancing in front of a courthouse infamous for the lynching of an innocent black man by a white mob.

If Aldean doesn't want to be accused of supporting lynching he shouldn't glorify it in a song and music video in which he happily sings about lynching. Over and over again. In front of a courthouse where an innocent black men was lynched by a white mob.

people accusing him of such are actually engaging in that very behavior of inflaming racial tension.

Today I learned that when a white man sings about lynching black men, in a music video full of images of black men committing activities (not even crimes!) of the type that he sings about wanting to lynch them for, I'm the one inflaming racial tensions when I call him out for it. Not the racist guy singing the race-baiting lyrics. Me.

By the way, his name was Henry Choate. He was accused of rape (you cross that line), but even though the supposed victim said he wasn't her attacker, that night (it won't take long) a mob of about 250 white men (around here, we take care of our own), broke him out of holding, beat him with a hammer (for you to find out, I recommend you don't), tied to him a car, dragged him through the city, tied a noose to the second story balcony of the Columbia County Courthouse, threw him over the railing, and hanged him. http://john-banks.blogspot.com/2020/03/that-sends-you-to-hel...

Changes things when you know what the lyrics of the song actually refer to, doesn't it?

Just in case there's any doubt about what Aldean meant in his song, at a concert this weekend, he stated of the Boston Marathon bombers:

""And anybody, any of you guys that would’ve found those guys before the cops did, I know you guys from Boston, and you guys would’ve beat the s--- out of them, either one of ‘em.'" [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jason-aldean-defends-tr...]

Note: for several days after the bombing, a number of innocent men were accused of being the bombers. An actual posse formed to hunt down the man Reddit thought was the bomber. If he hadn't already been dead for a month, the posse would have killed him. Several of the other accused went into hiding or were placed into protective custody due to the credible death threats against them.

I live in a majority-black city in the Deep South, and I can think of three restaurants within five minutes' drive (and at least one more within ten minutes) where takeout orders are literally placed on a rack once they're ready if you paid online. You don't have to speak to anyone.

If you wanted to steal a meal, you could do it pretty easily.

One fast food, three fast casual.

Yes, that's my observation as well. In contrast, I was born and raised in a developed, monoethnic country with high social cohesion, where hardly anybody would steal a meal (and evidenced by comparing theft rates[0]), yet it's customary to provide some kind of proof that you were the person who ordered the food before being allowed to pick it up.

[0]: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/theft/

>yet it's customary to provide some kind of proof that you were the person who ordered the food before being allowed to pick it up

I'm guessing one reason for this is to make sure the customer is picking up the correct order. People do dumb stuff all the time, and it's easy for someone who's distracted to grab the wrong bag. If this happens, then the restaurant has to make another meal for free, maybe two.

Why would anyone steal food, unless they were horribly desperate and hungry? This isn't the mark of a high-trust society, it's the mark of a somewhat wealthy society with a criminal justice system that's very harsh towards petty offenders. Stealing a bag of food at a restaurant would be dumb: there's cameras, and you don't know what's in the bag (likely something you don't like that much).

A high-trust society is one where you can go to that restaurant, and leave your wallet and smartphone on the table to reserve it while you go to the bathroom. That's something that's unthinkable in America, but perfectly normal in Japan and South Korea.

America has been between 80% and 100% white and fairly homogenous for the vast majority of its history. It's only since 1970 that the demographics of the country were vastly changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...

>America has been between 80% and 100% white and fairly homogenous for the vast majority of its history.

Wow, this is seriously stupid. America had slaves back in the 1600s and earlier, and certainly as long as America was a country. You apparently don't think black slaves count as human beings. Wow. Never thought I'd see such a blatant display of outright racism and white supremacy as this on HN in 2023, but here we are.

You're also discounting the Native Americans, who were there all along and long before the white Europeans came.

I'm on a European vacation right now, and I think this will be the first long trip I've made here where I don't have any cash at all.

Even the pay kiosk at a remote lake at the end of a dirt road back home takes credit cards. Solar powered, cell.

That's not really an exclusive American thing. In the Netherlands everyone is legally required to carry a valid ID.

It's typically considered an anti-American, anti-freedom ideology in the US to require people to carry any sort of documents, including ID.

Of course, this idea is slowly being eroded by authoritarian ideas and if you are not white (in the southwest US at least) you better have an ID unless you want to risk being unlawfully detained/arrested by border guards or police. This has been a big deal in some states for quite a while now.

But it used to be that in the US, having to show authorities an ID was a horror straight out of the USSR or East Germany.

I took a long greyhound trip from Los Angeles to the small border town of Lordsburg New Mexico as part of a longer trip from Seattle.

It was awful.

The trip started off okay. The Greyhound station in LA isn't in a super nice part of town and it was pretty run down and dirty. There were probably about 15 of us on the bus at first and we had plenty of room to spread out and put our luggage on the seats.

Eventually we kept picking up more people and by the time we got to San Bernardino, the bus was full and people would need to move their luggage. This was at about 1 am and the people getting on without seats were ANGRY. I thought several fights were going to break out but luckily none did. The driver didn't speak very good English so he wasn't super useful in helping with the conflict.

All through the night about a dozen people were watching movies or playing games on their phone with the sound on. There was also a pair of kittens someone had that meowed quite a bit. Lots of talking all night long as well.

Every few hours we would stop for gas or a rest break. On one of the longer legs people started complaining that they needed to stop and smoke. Every stop people would rush off the bus and light up immediately.

We stopped in Tucson to switch busses but due to the driver's poor English and most people's misunderstanding of the bus schedule, I somehow became the only person that could answer the questions like "Why are we stopping? Why are we changing busses? How long do we have to wait?"

The lady that sat next to me had a giant pillow covered in stains. She was a nice lady, but clearly was having a pretty rough go of it. Most of the people on the bus seemed like that.

Eventually we got to my destination and the stop was a McDonalds in town. The driver gave everyone time to get off the bus and get some food. A homeless man with no shoes got off and was asking people in the McDonalds line if they could buy him a coffee. I bought him a whole breakfast before walking straight to the Comfort Inn next door and booking a room to finally get some sleep and take a shower.

It was an interesting experience, but I would never do something like that again if I didn't have to. I had originally booked a train all the way from Seattle. My train from LA to Lordsburg got canceled and I needed to scramble to make it to my destination. The first leg of the train trip was delightful.

I wonder what it was like 30 years ago. I would guess some of the same people rode these busses? Were they always like this? I assume the mad dash for the door to have a smoke has been around about as long as restrictions on smoking, before that the bus would've been unbearable to a non smoker.

What I really wonder about this all: was america always like this but people were just more OK rubbing shoulders with each other's filth and sweat in those days, or are these people hollowed out, dying versions of the Americans of yesteryear? What's changed: our willingness to tolerate the greasy, sweaty animals that we are and that surround us, or the health of our society?

Other forms of transportation are (relatively) cheaper and faster so only those absolutely forced to remain on the bus.

Amtrak is not allowed to sell bus-only tickets because those busses are much nicer than Greyhound.

> I wonder what it was like 30 years ago.

Aside from "people were watching movies or playing games on their phone", it was the same.

I took some trips on Greyhound through the West and Midwest in the 1980s. Stations and buses were clean, quiet, and orderly. No homeless or people with obvious issues. It was pretty much like the experience of taking a commuter flight today. I started hearing bad things about traveling Greyhound in the 1990s but I don't know what caused things to change.

I've heard the Greyhound level of service plummeted after they acquired their competitor Trailways, but that was before my time so can't comment first-hand.

That + plummeting prices of air travel due to deregulation likely gutted the industry profits, which led to less reinvestment in their capital assets, which led to poorer experience, GOTO 20.

There's a famous family story where my grandmother kicked my 14 year old uncle out of the car for being an asshole (I'd imagine that he was) on a family road trip. This would probably have been the mid 70's. She got him a bus ticket and then forced my mother (recently gotten her learner's permit) to drive off without him. When he came back he said he had a good trip with the "winos" on the bus, so I always thought it had a reputation even back then as being a bit rough, but I suppose good enough to send a teenager on.

Yes it was the same 30 years ago.

The problem never was that you’re rubbing shoulders with the “poors”. The problem is mentally unstable people and drug addicts. Formerly there were far fewer hard drug addicts and the insane got shipped off to asylums (which we don’t have anymore).

I hear you, I'm also careful to make the distinction between poor and antisocial. However, you must also acknowledge that extremely poor people have less at stake, and so it's not surprise that the two are correlated.

There was more of a sense of community in those days, for good and for bad. People cared about their neighbours, but the flipside of that was a willingness to exclude the antisocial from society entirely. The article mentions racial segregation which is one prominent case, but more generally, 30 years ago if there had been a junkie or someone who stank or what have you on the bus, the driver would've thrown them off and the "decent" passengers would've supported them in doing so, and conversely if someone who seemed respectable had mislaid their ticket then that same driver would've been more understanding.

I'd guess that these days, the upper bracket of clientele are travelling in other ways (flying, own car, car hire, etc), people now are more rushed, and processes/businesses are optimised to eke out a profit or make for a predictable schedule. Combines to create a rushed and ruthless atmosphere full of people already feeling under pressure.

it's just that mostly, nobody takes a Greyhound bus if they have another option, you'd rent a car or fly.

there are intercity bus routes in New York/New England that have a mix of all kinds of people. but I think this is sustained both by having students travel home, and by the buses being the only non-car route to some vacation spots.

When everyone with a job could afford a car public transportation became the refuge of the lowest society has to offer: homeless and students.

But then in the 1990s traffic became so bad that everyone in European and Asian cities was forced back into the trains and subways. This never happened in the US because its too rural.

This could probably be debated for hours, and I’m not firm on this belief (curious to hear what others think) but I believe Reagan contributed to this decline with the deinstitutionalization of mental health.

With the slow ascent of wealth inequality causing more people to feel financial strain, people at the bottom who mentally break no longer have a means to get mental health care.

(These days it is incredibly hard to get mental health care in the USA regardless of your financial status, IMO.)

There was bipartisan support for what Reagan did. You have to remember that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a hit in the mid 70s and there was a massive bipartisan support for the idea that institutionalization was infringing on rights. And to be fair, Mental Institutions in that era were horrendous. So this was an easy bipartisan win for politicians in the 70s and 80s.

Yeah, I can imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time. But it probably could have been done differently and I definitely think it should be fixed now!

That's why you're seeing more discourse about this in 2023. The pendulum is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, but it will take at least 10-15 years to see any impact.

I think youre right. Unfortunately, once the issue of, particularly homeless, severely mentally ill people is out of sight (i.e. no longer on the streets), it will be very easy for the issue to be forgotten by the masses. And it would be a huge cost center, since many of the patients would likely not have large quantities of savings, so no good material incentives to do it well either. It would be dangerously easy to fall right back into the terrible asylums of the past.

Pretty much anything that's widely available to the masses suffers from the introduction of a higher price for better experience competitor. It's a matter of distillation; People who can afford the better experience will pay extra for it, leaving only those without other options using the original service.

In the case of greyhounds, the competitor was air travel. Before the rise of discount airlines, flying was prohibitively expensive for a good portion of society. Now, oftentimes the only people who take longhaul busses are people who are either unable, or unwilling, to pay an extra ~50-100 bucks to save themselves several hours.

The upper classes weren't riding Greyhound fifty or sixty years ago. College students would, yes. Some college students would book a $130 one-month pass and travel a lot. But in general, would you prefer to fly from one coast to another or spend three days on a bus? You have to remember that airfare was relatively more expensive then.

I never saw people standing in the aisles except once when the Midwest was fogged in and people were desperate to get home for Christmas. In those days I would stand in the back of the line, knowing that if the bus filled up, five or ten of us might get another bus all to ourselves.

All through the night about a dozen people were watching movies or playing games on their phone with the sound on

This was surprising and irritating to me, when I first came to the U.S. I have had the pleasure of experiencing this everywhere - elevators (what kind of person thinks it is a good idea to play loud music in a tiny space like an elevator?), subway cars, Cafes (they play music on top of the music the coffee shop plays) and even in planes.

What mythical country are you from where this doesn't go on? Ime this behavior crosses cultures, country and social class

Not true. Very few people do this in an enclosed space where I live. They aren't doing it on the plane, at the gym, in the store, in the restaurant, etc. Unfortunately people do seem to think it's cool to play their music outdoors just about everywhere, though.

How can you say those without including where you live lol

I'm not comfortable being too specific about where I live, but I've lived in a couple of large cities in Tennessee and been all over the state, and my previous comment applies to all of them. I can say the same for all of the other cities I regularly visit as well.

>What mythical country are you from where this doesn't go on?

Japan. This kind of inconsiderate BS almost never happens here. The rare times you do see horribly inconsiderate behavior, it's almost always a foreigner.

Japan. Singapore. South Korea.

I've never seen behavior like this anywhere else in the US in similar contexts. If you did this on an airplane people would yell at you and the flight attendants would make you stop.

> She was a nice lady, but clearly was having a pretty rough go of it. Most of the people on the bus seemed like that.

This pretty much describes my long-haul Greyhound experience (Atlanta to Texas).

It's also why I think everyone should travel more Greyhound for perspective. Take a book, some shareable food, some alcohol (concealable) and an extra cup, a willingness to have a conversation with a stranger, and an open mind.

There's a LOT of America and Americans we don't see these days.

Lordsburg is a pretty odd place to stop. Going just slightly on to Deming seems like 10x better.

Lordsburg is where shuttles to the beginning of the Continental Divide Trail leave. The trail also walks right through town.

So in Thailand, inter-city buses and even shuttles are a hugely popular mode of transport. They are cheap, clean, reasonably fast and comfortable. This is a third world country, how do they do it? How do they have vastly better inter-city bus transport than the richest country in the world?

I'm pretty sure it boils down to one word, which astoundingly is never mentioned in this article. Monopoly. The American government has seen fit to grant Greyhound a monopoly over most inter-city bus routes, like it has done for so many other lucky companies in so many other sectors. The result of monopoly is almost universally a worse consumer experience. I don't see why it would be any different here.

In Thailand there is no monopoly over bus travel, if you want to take a bus there are state-run options, private options, you name it.

So this is how a random middle-income country on the other side of the world, with a name that one former US President couldn't even pronounce correctly, has beaten the pants off of America. It hasn't (yet) succumbed to monopoly (in this area).

> How do they have vastly better inter-city bus transport than the richest country in the world?

There is your error in thinking. The US is lacking a lot of basic infrastructure, even if it is it doesn't act like a rich Country at all.

> The US is lacking a lot of basic infrastructure

The difference in ridership experience in the NYC or Chicago subway system vs. any East Asian major city subway system is eye-opening.

I also wonder if some parts of their tourism industry aren’t also subsidized. Tourism is a huge component of Thailand’s economy.

But yes, even on domestic flights you will get a free hot meal in Thailand. A lot better than the tiny bag of pretzels you can expect on a 5 hour flight in the US.

Are busses a monopoly in America? From my anecdotal experience growing up in North Texas and driving all over the state up and down i35, most of the buses appear to be charters for specific routes from the border or between a major city and the casinos in Oklahoma. Do those not count? There's nothing to stop you from taking the casino bus from Houston and getting off in Dallas.

I just googled it and apparently Flixbus is now available in the US; even for the HOU->DFW route I just mentioned.

Flixbus acquired Greyhound in 2021. This made them the largest operator by a wide margin.

They also own or control a number of other inter-city bus operators in the US.

They also have a monopoly (about 95% of the market) in Germany.

There is no monopoly, see MegaBus, FlixBus, OurBus, many others, not to mention specific city to city routes. For example, I used to live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN area and there are specific shuttle busses to go to Rochester, MN to go to the Mayo Clinic.

Also, remember the US is huge. The bus usage in a country like Costa Rica (the closest non-US country I have experience with) is very high, but you can go the length of the country in a day. That wouldn't even get you part way across the US, so depending on where you're going it's not even comparable.

Your thinking is more accurate than the thinking along the lines of "American infrastructure is bad"

But you fail to consider that business and monopoly are about a lot more than whether a competitor exists. Under the law, the main issue is market power. Greyhound absolutely has 90%+ market power along most of the biggest routes which is a concern for antitrust law. There is a good case that this is illegal under US antitrust law - and there should be more competitors.

In rich countries two-thirds of the cost of bus service is labor. When labor is cheap compared to capital it's more feasible to have a larger fleet of drivers and buses to keep wait times low. (Cheap labor also means it's feasible to have more diesel mechanics to keep fixing buses well past the 12 year service life benchmark the USA uses). Building a rail system is extremely expensive as they can't offload the cost of cars to customers, and can't reuse an existing right of way. But once built the capacity is unmatched and you only need one driver per train which can have multiple cars each holding 200 people versus one driver per bus (40 riders)

In Anglophone countries governments provide in kind subsidies to automobile users in the form of toll-free highways, mandated parking at every building, and general revenue tax dollars to pay for road costs not covered by fuel taxes or registration fees. Because buses are the cheapest and slowest option the clientele is self-selected as low income. This creates a vicious cycle downward. Greyhound ended service in Canada.

> The quaintness Beauvoir describes in 1947 [...] of bus stations with restaurants, juke boxes, showers and lockers she compares to columbariums.

With all these comparisons it's worth checking whether the price of the product itself (and therefore expected quality) may have changed. TLDR: A difference, but not as big as I expected.

AFAICT in 1950 it was $12 for a one way trip between Seattle and San-Francisco [0], or about $152 adjusting for inflation. Today the trip is $90-$110 [1].

[0] https://www.periodpaper.com/products/1950-ad-greyhound-bus-t...

[1] https://www.greyhound.com/en-us/bus-from-seattle-to-san-fran...

P.S.: While this time it wasn't a big difference, for contrast I'll recycle this comment from two days ago about air-travel:

> It's kind of like looking at airplanes of the 1950s, with beds and champagne and caviar, and ruefully comparing them to the ones of the 2020s.

> Is it because airlines became greedier? Did the average passenger (in the same income-bracket) lose their desire for fine things? Nah: It's probably because once you remember to adjust for inflation, those 1950s passengers were paying $7,300 per flight instead of today's $600.

And for flights especially, the modern flyer has repeated indicated over decades that they are willing to forego many nice things for cheaper fares. When the consumer wants a commoditized flying bus, the consumer will get one.

$600 still seems really high to me as a European.

Busses here are more expensive than flying, however. Even if the bus ticket itself might be slightly cheaper than in the us. Hopefully costs keep going down, inflation adjusted.

What she learned is that America is so rich that only the very poorest people near homelessness travel on a Greyhound bus, and that life for the very poorest people is unpleasant.

Is this supposed to be a surprise? It certainly isn't representative of America as a whole, regardless of whether she geographically traversed America in the process. She chose to travel America in literally the shittiest possible way besides maybe hitchhiking or walking on the side of the road.

Also that policemen are armed.

does it need to be surprising?

I don’t think so, but the tone of the article seems to indicate it.

I agree. I think there is a potential commentary about the bifurcation of America—I think it is getting harder to be poor, but the Greyhound just isn’t the transportation for the working class like it used to be. Most everyone flies any trip that is of sufficient length.

The Greyhound, motels, etc are all dying. There just isn’t as much need for them anymore and there are alternatives. As the author said, she found a much nicer hotel for even cheaper.

It’s sad but it’s a problem that compounds. Middle class don’t take greyhound because it’s awful, so ticket prices drop and it gets even worse.

>Is this supposed to be a surprise?

It remains a constant surprise that the richest country on Earth can't make life better for its poorest homeless people.

Because poverty is seen as a moral failing and with enough gumption, anyone can pull themselves out it.

I don't think it's as simple as that. In some ways the very policies that made America the richest country in the world are ones that prevent the state from directly pulling the very poor and homeless out of the situation they're in; I'm speaking of a largely free-market economy with comparatively (to other advanced economies) smaller social safety nets, and a legal and cultural emphasis on individual freedoms.

The latter was a big part of the deinstitutionalization movement throughout the 50s-80s; there were several Supreme Court decisions that made it more and more difficult for the state to involuntarily confine mentally ill people in psychiatric institutions. That same subset of people are now homeless and addicted to drugs.

And in terms of social safety nets, two developed countries at opposite ends of the world (Spain and Japan), both with unarguably better social support than the US, have higher poverty rates[0]. And in all but one of those developed countries with lower poverty rates than the US, the median person is poorer[1].

It's possible that the very poorest of the poor (the kind you might see strung out on a street in San Francisco or Philadelphia these days) are better off in those other countries, but clearly providing that level of support incurs a cost that is borne by the rest of society. I'm not making a judgment call here on which approach is better -- merely pointing out that there is never a free lunch when it comes to social policy.

Well, I take it back somewhat: there is a judgment call to be made on the way we "help" those very downtrodden today, where taxpayer money is spent on letting addicted people continue their addiction in the name of "compassion", all while ignoring the damage it does to everybody else that lives in those neighborhoods. Bring back the institutions if we must, but the current approach cannot be the right one.

[0]: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

I dare say that with 12% of the population under the poverty line, it surely is representative of what life it is like for a fair portion of the Americans.

Now, once you factor in that the "poverty line" for a 2 people household is defined as 16'000 dollars a year, it is not a stretch to estimate that the population in poverty, or near poverty is around 20-25% of the population.

That makes this social experiment a lot more interesting.

I took a Greyhound from Florida to California in 1992 because I couldn't afford airfare, and Greyhound was offering $69 one way anywhere in the US. It wasn't a sociological experiment, it was my life. It was 3 days and 3 nights on half a dozen buses. It was sad and scary and difficult for everyone. No one that I saw could afford hotel rooms. We all slept wherever we could.

Sounds like it hasn't changed much.

This American Life, episode 102 (May 22, 1998):

> Act One, Busman's Holiday. Regular listeners to our program may remember Dishwasher Pete who travels from state to state washing dishes and publishing his zine Dishwasher. Usually he only stays in one place for a few weeks. And then he takes the Greyhound bus to the next town. Lately he's been living in Portland. But he was only too happy to get back on the bus.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/102/road-trip

I appreciate gonzo journalists like hunter s Thompson or Andrew Callaghan for showing what I always considered "real America" and "real Americans." The people you meet at the DMV, the people that live in that one town that's copy pasted on every freeway in the country.

If you like stories like this I highly recommend reading some hunter s or watching some of Callaghan's videos.

In your opinion what makes these people more "real" than other Americans?

I’ve thought about this topic many times. At times, I’ve found the conflation of various meanings of “real” to be confusing at best, but more often, I find it to be a mark of confusion. Coming to the conclusion that someone else is likely confused may seem uncharitable. (At the very least, blending meanings in this way is prone to misinterpretation.) Nevertheless, criticizing word choice and conceptual understandings is important, particularly in any culture (especially mainstream American society) that too often skips over self-reflection.

While thinking about “real America” most recently, I had a conversation with ChatGPT while reviewing the English Stack Exchange[1] and various etymology web sites. As a result of this research and conversation, this response emerged *:

> Dictionaries define "real" as "actually existing or happening, not imaginary, not fake or artificial." When used in the context of describing people or groups, "real" often signifies something genuine, authentic, or without pretense.

> Now to the claim: when "real" is used to describe communities or individuals, it is often in contrast to something perceived as inauthentic or disconnected from the majority's experiences. The term "grassroots," for instance, refers to the most basic level of an activity or organization, therefore, when someone talks about "real" people or "real" America, they often imply these grassroots, everyday experiences.

> Poverty, while a difficult and complex issue, is an experience that many people across the world can relate to or understand. The struggles associated with financial hardship often seem more "real" because they are visceral and undeniable.

> On the other hand, wealth, especially extreme wealth, is experienced by a smaller portion of the population. The lifestyle of the rich and entitled often includes privileges and luxuries that the majority do not have access to, which might make their experiences seem less "real" or relatable to many. The wealthy are often seen as living in a kind of "bubble" that separates them from the rest of society.

> It's worth noting, however, that "real" is a subjective term in these contexts and its usage can vary greatly depending on who is speaking and their perspective. People of all economic statuses have "real" experiences, but societal narratives and cultural biases often shape how we use and understand terms like this.

I think this writing is somewhat useful. You?

P.S. A few words of pre-defense against knee-jerk criticisms of my use of ChatGPT here. I consistently use it conscientiously and critically. I’ll grant that I might write something better if I did 10+ hours of concentrated research. In this case, I combined my experience with ~20 minutes of thinking.

* I say emerged deliberatively. The way that I use interactive AI technologies is shaped by my experience, education, and skepticism. Don’t assume that generative text is roughly in the same ballpark; the difference in quality is substantial based on how a human asks. The text is path-dependent; you would get quite different results.

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com

Their life is not shaped to a large extent by advertisement.

How can you possibly think that?

Pervasive advertisement affects perception and frequently creates illusory goals and desires (which is exactly the goal of advertisement). People who are not targeted/affected by advertisement don't have artificially induced goals/desires and thus live a more realistic life.

It's so hard to say, really.

I traveled extensively across the USA on Greyhound, Amtrak, car, and motorcycle, over maybe a decade. The America I saw on those trips felt so different from the America of living in SF as an engineer, or living in Houston as a student, or watching a tv show or movie set in America.

When I read Hunter S, or watch a Callaghan video, I think of those trips. Hari Kunzru said that Hunter S "makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him," and I think that puts it well. My chief takeaway from my trips across middle America is that America is ugly. It's thousands of miles of freeway with towns dependent on the local mcdonalds and gas station stamped around it. It's trailer parks and fentanyl and painkiller addiction. It's isolation, boredom, malnutrition, anger, untreated disease. It's violently masculine. It's unhinged conspiracy and functional illiteracy.

When I watched Callaghan's Q conference video: https://youtu.be/KYKOLwt8pwo all I could think was "holy shit I met every one of those people." Not actually, it's just, so many people I met on my travels were like that.

> My chief takeaway from my trips across middle America is that America is ugly

I feel the urge to defend my country but there is a smug certainty to this take that tells me I would be wasting my time trying to change your mind. I'm literally shaking!

Idk, go and see for yourself I guess. I'm not talking about the natural environment, Roosevelt was correct to protect America's greatest asset with the national parks programs.

This doesn't also mean everywhere on earth is perfect. I don't know what to tell you other than I recommend traveling to some towns with populations of 10k or less and talk to people. It's a totally different America from the cities and major suburbs. I don't mean to come off as smug, I've just seen a great deal of the country, the beauty and the ugly, and I think the ugly is like... I dunno, this great massive hidden secret or something.

I've been around the country myself. As with anywhere else there is, to quote you, "the beauty and the ugly". Maybe I'm being pedantic but to say your "CHIEF TAKEAWAY"....you know.

That's fair, my intention was to indicate my chief takeaway during the trips, which was in contradiction to my chief takeaway from other parts of my life there, that is to say, when I was just living in a city studying or working.

Actually, then too did I find life in the USA quite ugly. There was beauty but having traveled a lot of the world now... it doesn't balance out. You're talking to someone though that is hyper sensitive to how car-focused transit mars the beauty of anywhere, and in my travels the I've never seen anywhere give as much space to cars as I have in the USA. It's just concrete, as far as the eye can see...

The ugliness is made more apparent I think by my frustration at the possibility. America has the greatest national parks on earth, and the best mechanisms for ensuring those parks are visited and seen. 3.7 million visitors to Yosemite yearly, that's over half the yearly visits to Sistine Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel is in the middle of Rome, which is chock full of tourist goodies. Yosemite is just... out there, in the middle of nowhere, and 3.7 million people a year make the journey. So the possibility of maintaining phenomenal infrastructure and natural beauty is there, why isn't that replicated elsewhere in the USA? Why not tear up the parking lots and lay down more tracks for trams or install more busses? Why not build an inter-country train system that passes through the beautiful Rocky and Appalachian mountains?

And why are so many Americans left in the dust of industrialization? I mean where else on earth would someone say to me "please don't call an ambulance, I can't afford it" after I pull them out from their crashed car? Among a million other degredations the people out there are experiencing it. There's so much good in the usa that's completely out of reach for so many Americans. Ugh.

So no, I'm not smug, I'm frustrated. It's the richest country on earth by every economic measure by a long shot. What is happening??

Cosmopolitans vs Nationalists People who are citizens of the world vs people who are grounded in a specific time and place, who's ancestors have lived in that area for generations and have the stories to share of it.

> I knew I would encounter ecological catastrophe. I expected the poisoning of rivers, the desecration of desert ecosystems and feedlots heaving with antibiotic-infused cattle.

I've traveled all over the USA and I don't think any of the above would match my expectations before setting out. It seems like she already had her mind set on looking for the negatives.

It’s the Guardian

> I expected the poisoning of rivers, the desecration of desert ecosystems and feedlots heaving with antibiotic-infused cattle.

Other than the vast herds in central california, moved from Corona california (due to climate), I've never thought "hey I might run into..." any of these things.

If you go from Seattle to Minneapolis, you don't see any of this, afaik.

In fairness to her, I went into a US Greyhound trip expecting it to be like long distance Australian coaches and got a similar impression to hers.

Crumbling mouldy stations. Buses that were four hours late with no announcement, and staff that literally laughed and said "it's Greyhound" when asked how late the bus would be. Weird invasive disempowering things, like bag checks because someone was seen flicking a knife shut in the station, or getting kicked out of the station to wait. Every other passenger was hostile at needing to run the Greyhound gauntlet, with the exception of the meth addict from Arizona who was absolutely lovely and had a nice chat with me, and I couldn't blame them for it.

It's hard to describe because it sounds like the kind of problems that apply to any bus system. They are, but for some reason they happen every trip with Greyhound, and they're all dialled up to 11. Anyone who's ridden one has the most godawful stories about it.

The effect of living in a city all your life and reading about the countryside through the news

At least she acknowledged her bias in knowing about "the negatives". Imagine the unacknowledged biases of those who refuse to see "the negatives".

I am a white European and took a greyhound bus on a 12 hour night journey approximately 20 years ago. It was an experience to put it mildly. The words 'prison transport' and 'LSD' spring to mind.

Inhumane, degrading, uncomfortable and totally weird. For some god unknown reason I decided the bus would be a perfectly good alternative to a short flight, my was I wrong. As the journey started the driver made a short announcement to the seated passengers -

"If you smoke crack I throw you off the bus. If you have sex I throw you off the bus. If you drink alcohol I throw you off the bus. If you take off your shoes I throw you off the bus. No toilet!"

With that strange welcome we were off.

The seats had no padding so it was impossible to get comfortable. It was cold. We were in late October just before winter. It was bloody cold to be clear, in fact the air conditioning was seriously blowing. Maybe it was colder inside than out.

Non of this made any sense to me. As we continued through the darkened landscape stopping occasionally to pick up, drop off and 'toilet' I decided to ask the driver if maybe he could turn off the chill air blast and maybe turn on some heat. I politely presented this request to which his reply was simply a shout:

'NO!'. "No?" I am freezing to death I told him. "What do you mean no?" "The smell" he said. "The smell. Any more trouble and I throw you off the bus."

At one place we stopped for about 40 minutes. It was some sort of downtown bus station. I witnessed a huge black dude walk through the seating area masturbating with his pants down around his ankles, otherwise fully clothed. He sort of shuffled past lost in a world entirely of his own.

USA is one strange place..

I really love it when foreigners visit this country and pick the absolute worst possible traveling conditions imaginable. Presumably so they can go back home and share their "authentic" American experience with whoever is stupid enough to listen. It's like they enjoy wearing this badge of honor that they witnessed the misery that is America or whatever.

Were you expecting something better because you're a "white European"? I don't really get why that prefaced the story. I'm not white and I've never had such a bad experience as you in any country, let alone America, am I doing something wrong?

How would it be if I visited wherever you're from and proud of, and intentionally stayed in a terrible part of town and got around by bullock cart, and then went back to America and bitched incessantly about your shithole of a country?

Heads-up: You might want to email dang as your account seems to be shadow-banned. Your recent comments of the last couple of hours show as [dead] (logout and see).

Actually as explained it was simply lack of knowledge about your country. I had no idea basic services could be so bad. The history of the Greyhound coach service is actually very interesting.

I prefaced with 'white European' because that is what I am. I considered it relevant to set my frame of reference. I have no idea what you are doing but I recommend more international travel. The world is full of amazing experiences, good, bad, indifferent but all valuable.

It would be fine. If you commented about it I would suggest better alternatives. I never suggested America was a shithole. In my experience it is incredibly diverse. You have the whole gamut of experiences there from amazing to terrible!

The thing about Greyhound is that it is genuinely unbelievable to people who haven't experienced it and for whom functioning public transport is like gravity or air. "Unbelievable" as in "if someone tells you about Greyhound, you won't believe them". It's not merely bad, it's worse than literally any other form of travel in a developed country, probably including hitchhiking.

Americans probably know this, but for the rest of us it's sort of like being told a bar serves bad drinks, then when you get there it's a dude pouring shots of wood alcohol into used specimen jars.

This was a pretty good read, if somewhat depressing.

One optimistic thing I've noticed with respect to cheap (close-distance) travel is that personal electric scooters and bikes are becoming more noticeable on streets and sidewalks. I own a scooter and have considered consolidating vehicles with my wife, since I ride my scooter to work (winters are the main drawback).

Transportation is called out specifically as a reason for dread in this terrific article https://www.residentcontrarian.com/i/32348260/transportation Hopefully small electric transport can help.

>> personal electric scooters and bikes are becoming more noticeable on streets and sidewalks

How long does it take to get from Detroit to LA on a personal electric scooter?

This sounds like the beginning to an excellent Youtube series!

These fellows did it in sixty-two days:

* https://electrek.co/2020/08/27/segway-teases-new-electric-mo...

* https://web.archive.org/web/20230507093230/https://riderguid...

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw_PSH8MBTc

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAmerica_Bicycle_Trail

That was going a max of 18.6 mi/h (30 km/h); there are ones that can go >90 km/h:

* https://escooternerds.com/fastest-electric-scooters/

  swapping out scooters as each battery was depleted to avoid waiting around while the scooters charged.

That doesn't seem feasible for a regular journey.

Connect a solar panel?

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sZJqynNhOk

In Taiwan my buddy combined the extensive battery swap electric scooter infrastructure with a huandao, which means around the island trip. It took him like a month. He said it was interesting but tedious, needing to stop sometimes every hour if he was riding hard in the mountains. I think the big scooters can go something like 120km flat on a double battery stack.

That same ride can be done comfortably in a week on a gas motorcycle or overnight in a car if you can change drivers. In a train it can be done in just under a day.

I just don't think personal vehicles are the path forward for moving humans.

You can ride around Taiwan in less than a week on a regular pedal bicycle (I've done the twin ride around Shikoku).

Yeah but it sucks lol. I could do it in 24 hours on my motorcycle but it would be miserable.

I enjoyed it a lot, shrug.

Well, for the physical exertion of it, sure.

I didn't state my point well though, if you've been to Taiwan you can see firsthand what it looks like when a society goes with the "small personal vehicle option" as a primary people mover. Even with the fantastic MRT and really good bus system, the sidewalks of Taipei are choking to death on illegally parked scooters.

  personal electric scooters and bikes are becoming more noticeable on streets and sidewalks

Electric scooters on sidewalks are a hazard to pedestrians, at least the way they are typically ridden in San Francisco.

They would be great in bike lanes. If you can replace some cars with electric scooters that will likely help traffic.

Author should do the same trip by train now. Seems like more people are taking advantage of the long distance Amtrak trains and thankfully there's been funding to keep those around.

Long distance trains are much more expensive and you get a very different clientele - retirees, those unable to fly due to medical reasons, fear, etc, and random train nuts.

The conductors also don’t have any truck with disruptive behavior.

So out of touch.

If you're wealthy, want to avoid the hoi polloi but still travel by bus, there's an option for you [1].

I've only taken short bus rides in the US (Trailways mainly) but have traveled long distance on Amtrak. The rolling stock is horrendously out of date but they are spacious, the staff are always amazing and you meet super interesting people from all walks of life in the dining car - where you are forced to sit with strangers - never something I'm eager to do but always something I'm grateful for afterwards.

[1] - https://thejet.coach/features-amenities/

What is the point of this story? To show how broken the US is by choosing the cheapest, dirtiest possible options in the worst cities in the US?

Sounds like there’s an opportunity for some enterprising person to make an alternative to what sounds like another quasi-monopoly

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