Discount bus company now offering service to/from Atlanta

Discount bus company now offering service to/from Atlanta
October 24, 2011
Jill Nolin
Montgomery Advertiser

Starting next month, there will be a new -- and much, much cheaper -- way for Montgomery residents to get to Atlanta.

Megabus.com, which started in Chicago in 2006, announced today that it has expanded its reach in the South by adding Atlanta as its seventh transportation hub.

From Atlanta, Megabus.com bus riders will be able to get to Montgomery, Birmingham and Mobile in Alabama, Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee; and Gainesville, Orlando and Jacksonville in Florida.

Megabus.com, which only sells tickets online, operates other hubs in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Toronto. The company offers free wi-fi, power outlets and fares as low as $1.

Daily service, which will include three trips to Atlanta and three trips back to Montgomery, will begin Nov. 16. The company will use single-deck buses initially, but add double-decker buses to the routes later.

While the buses to Atlanta from Montgomery are likely to find willing riders, Chad Emerson, who is the city's director of development, hopes the buses from Atlanta to Montgomery also will be filled with more than just Montgomerians making a return trip.

"Anything that allows people to visit Montgomery more easily is a good thing, especially from places like Atlanta," Emerson said Monday.

The company is at least providing the opportunity for that to happen. There will be between 60,000 and 80,000 seats available from Atlanta to Montgomery on an annual basis, according to Dale Moser, president and COO of megabus.com.

Moser said the decision was made to add Atlanta as a hub with the 11 new routes after receiving a "significant amount" of requests over the past five years. Those pleadings, of course, came in the form of emails, blog posts, tweets and other types of Internet activity, Moser said. That demand was then confirmed through a market study.

The new web of routes also follows the company's business strategy. Using Atlanta as the destination city, the spokes of the hub lead to the metro areas of the surrounding states. Megabus.com, which is a subsidiary of Paramus, N.J.-based Coach USA, does not take travelers across the country.

And if the $1 fare does not captivate a would-be rider's attention, the company will offer 10,000 free rides during the first four weeks of service as a promotion to drum up future business. (The promotional code is ATL10K).

"We get people out of their automobile. That's where the largest percentage of our customers come from," Moser said. "That's a large, unlimited market throughout North America."

Megabus.com, which does not make stops along the route, will pick up and drop off riders in Montgomery at the Red Roof Inn at 5606 Carmichael Road.

The Atlanta stop is on the street level of MARTA's Civic Center station in downtown. This curbside bus stop is south of the intersection of West Peachtree Street NW and Pine Street NE and on the north side of West Peachtree Street NW.

While Megabus.com has been expanding its influence on travel in the U.S., it also has been working to overcome a fatal accident that happened last year when one of its double-decker buses ran into a low bridge in the state of New York as riders traveled from Philadelphia to Toronto.

Moser said that the full investigation found that the company had done everything it could in that situation and attributed the accident, which killed four people, to driver errors and issues with the bridge. The company goes beyond federal requirements, such as having seatbelts even though they are not mandatory, to ensure the safest ride possible, Moser said.

"We think we set the standard," he added.