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Greyhound bus to launch in London with £1 fares to coast
Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor19.08.09
It is one of the most evocative names in transport, conjuring images of epic journeys under huge American skies.
Now the Greyhound bus is coming to Britain for the first time in its 95-year history — although it will serve rather more prosaic routes between Victoria and the south coast.
FirstGroup, the British company that has owned Greyhound for the past two years, has decided to take on National Express and Stagecoach.
Hourly services between central London and Portsmouth and Southampton will start next month with prices starting from £1 plus a 50p booking fee. They will run from 5am to 9.30pm with a pick-up point just behind Victoria railway station.
Although the buses will not have the classic sleek aluminium lines of a vintage “Silverside” Greyhound — they will be refurbished Skania coaches — the operators promise a service to rival the train at a fraction of the price.
They also claim the vehicles will be more environmentally friendly than driving, with emissions per passengers more than 75 per cent less than a car.
The coaches will have extra leg-room, a power socket at each of the 41 seats, and wi-fi to allow commuters to work.
FirstGroup said the vast majority of seats on the two routes would be sold for under £10 one way, even at peak times, with a centre-to-centre journey time estimated at two hours. In the first months of operation about 10 to 15 per cent of tickets will be sold at £1.
If the Portsmouth and Southampton routes are successful a national Greyhound network is planned with longer distance London to Scotland services to rival the 317-mile New York to Pittsburgh journey — which was the subject of Simon & Garfunkel's soulful ballad America.
The brand is being launched as coach and bus travel booms. Stagecoach already runs the discount Megabus.
Greyhound, known popularly as The Dog, reached its zenith of popularity in 1934 with the Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert movie It Happened One Night, which was set on an overnight bus. The fleet still carries about 25 million passengers a year in America and Canada but has suffered a reputation as the “losers' mode of transport” in recent years.
Greyhound is the second famous US transport brand to be brought over from the US by FirstGroup. It also owns the Yellow Bus now being tested for schoolchildren here. First Group also runs the First Great Western rail franchise.
Reader views (4)
If the coaches are disabled access it will be fantastatic, as I am on the route
- Jock Murray, Waterlooville Hants England
Ross from London,
Maybe they could provide lie-flat seats like they do on long haul plane routes for the 11 hours to LA or Hong Kong but these Greyhounds are only going to Portsmouth and Southampton. Besides a lie-flat seat normally costs 8 to 10 times the price with a First Class air ticket. Nice grub on first class though.....
Isn't it a shame though that Portsmouth and Southampton don't have the natural beauty of the "Arizona Landscape"
I used a Greyhound pass on my first trip to the USA as well as using Amtrak and it was handy for taking some good photo's
- Frank, London
I wish our national coaches had first class seats available, which were big, had lots of leg room, perhaps could even be collapsed into flat beds like on the planes. There would be a demand for them and the double decker coaches could easily accommodate them. Even I would consider using them!
- Ross, London, UK
Lets hope that they run the new bus service better than they run some of their other bus services, or the First Great Western rail franchise. That should have been removed from them the same as Connex lost their two rail franchises.
- Mark H, London England
