Book Description

Since the late 1990s, a new type of intercity transportation has transformed travel in many American cities. This new travel option has not come from revolutionary technological innovation, large-scale infrastructure investment, or long-term planning efforts. Rather, the new travel option is the intercity bus, a mode that had been in decline for decades. After roughly fifty years of steady decline in ridership, intercity buses are suddenly the fastest growing intercity mode in the United States. This growth is due to curbside intercity buses, which pick up and drop off passengers on city street corners rather than in bus terminals. This seemingly small change in operations is at the heart of the dramatic growth in intercity bus travel. On the Northeast Corridor alone, intercity bus travel has more than doubled between 1997 and 2007 from three and a half million to over seven million trips. This research looks beyond the growth in ridership to unpack what these changes mean for the passengers on these buses, for the public at large, for competing intercity providers, and for regulators and local transportation planners. This dissertation poses three broad research questions. First, how and why do passengers choose to take curbside buses? Second, who uses curbside buses and how are these buses influencing their travel behavior? Third, how are curbside buses changing both the intercity bus industry and how have city planners responded to the problems associated with an influx of curbside intercity buses on city streets?