The Megabus is an intercity bus service that offers fairs as low as one dollar to select major cites such as New York, Chicago, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh to name a few.
Last week on Saturday I decided to ride the Megabus myself to see what type of bus service Mega Bus provides.
The first thing I did was long to there website www.megabus.com and discovered that I was able to purchase a round trip to Pittsburgh for just 4.50.
On Saturday of the next week,I greeted the Megabus at the corner of high and nationwide were the Megabus stop is located with the Megebus logo.
After the bus driver verified my reservation number I would board a well maintained intercity bus that was single story for this trip.
After waiting about 20 more minutes for more passengers, the bus left the first stop and made a brief stop at the Ohio Union for additional more passenger.
After picking up the last passenger the bus would take Interstate 670 to Interstate 270 to Interstate 70 towards Wheeling W.V.
After a brief 20min rest and meal stop at a truck stop just east of the city of Zanesville the bus would then continue towards Wheeling where the bus took a bypass freeway to continue to Washington PA.
At Washington Pa the bus would get on I79 to Pittsburgh PA.
After the bus rode past the outskirts of Pittsburgh, the bus entered the Fort Pitt tunnel then the Fort Pitt bridge which lead the bus to downtown Pittsburgh.
The bus would finally stop at the David Lawrence Convention Center under neath a tunnel where other meg abuses would stop connecting passenger to bus headed to other cities to such as New York City, Washington DC, and even Cleavland.
While I walked through Pittsburgh I would observe a vibrant downtown that still maintains it retail and restaurants.
As the video will show, Pittsburgh's downtown would leave me questioning the current redevelopment of downtown Columbus, and the current lack of retail components.
After locating and examining the Amtrak station, I would then briefly examine the ornate Pennsylvanian which is an former train station that has been converted in to luxury apartments, I would head back to the convention center to wait for the bus back to Columbus OH.
After a slight delay a double decker bus arrived to begin the return trip to Columbus.
The return trip was similar to the trip to Pittsburgh however at the meal stop two riders would fail to observe the 20minute rest time.
There failed observation would cause the bust to arrive back to Columbus about 20 minutes late since the driver would return to pick up the unobservant riders.
Despite the Slight delays that was also caused by the Pittsburgh Pirates double header that day and the intermittent WiFi on the buses, I found the trip on the Mega Bus to be a reasonable experience.
The main feature of ridding the mega bus was the very low price of $4.50 for a round trip out of town, which is just 50cent more than an all day pass on the local bus line here in Columbus.
For that price All the buses were relatively clean, the drivers were service oriented, and the fellow riders were not the usual riff-raff that can mar a bus trip.
Another point to observe is that even at the regular prices that can be as much a 12 dollars each way (like on holidays like memorial day last month), with the current price of fuel maintaining the high price of three dollars or more dollars a gallon, the Megabus is a valid way to travel affordablaly.
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