Across the aisle, Malena Chronholm, 21, an au pair in Columbia, chats with her mother, Jaana, visiting America from their native Sweden. "The price is great," says Rakushin, a college drama major who has ridden Chinese buses before, "but I've learned not to do this on a holiday." Instead, they paid cash for seats on the 9:30 Dragon and are glad to have made that. The two made it to the Baltimore Travel Plaza from their home in Frederick at 7 a.m. He's taking his 11-year-old sister, Jenna Lecompte, to New York for her first Broadway show, Beauty and the Beast. "That's what we care about."īradley Rakushin, 19, busies himself with a crossword puzzle as his bus, a Dragon Coach 55-seater, rolls north on I-95. "They're as safe as Greyhound or Peter Pan," he says with a laugh. Would Grossman send his family on a Chinatown bus? That's another question. "These carriers are absolutely as safe as the traditional motorcoach companies," says Ian Grossman, a spokesman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a government watchdog organization. For the most part, though, as federal regulators have stepped up their oversight of safety, compliance and licensing, the carriers - including Baltimore's four - have withstood scrutiny. New York police have attributed acts of violence, including several fires and a fatal 2003 shooting in Chinatown, to bus-company turf wars. Passengers often hear ticket-takers deride competing carriers, especially when buses are loading side-by-side. The still burgeoning discount market has a Wild West feel. Company representatives say Greyhound still offers more departure times, more reliable refund policies and, of course, service to more cities than the Chinatown buses. Greyhound has flinched, offering a special online New York-to-Boston rate of $18 (as opposed to its usual $35). David Wong, owner of Eastern Travel, has said he expects $3 million in sales this year. Jimmy Chen, president of, a Web site that sells space on the carriers, says he has sold "hundreds of thousands" of e-tickets since 2002. I've never had a problem."Įd James, a Baltimore real estate developer, and his friend Tiana Manley, a model, have taken the buses dozens of time between them, mostly for one-day Big Apple shopping trips. "It's cheaper than Greyhound, you don't have to deal with counters and all that, and it's more fun. "I take the Chinatown bus all the time," says Tom Klender, a Baltimore bike messenger and punk rocker on his way to Boston for Independence Day. They've grown popular with students, immigrants and other travelers looking for a good bargain and, in many cases, a good time. They keep costs low by sticking mainly to word-of-mouth advertising, eschewing traditional terminals (federal authorities call the companies "curbside carriers") and targeting the most trafficked routes. More than 40 similar carriers now operate out of New York's Chinatown, mostly plying the Northeast corridor. Within seven years, his Fung Wah line grew from a three-van shuttle service into a 21-motorcoach link between Boston and New York. According to The Boston Globe, Pei Lin Liang, a deliveryman for a noodle factory in New York, got things rolling when he decided Chinese immigrants with children at Boston colleges needed a cheap transportation option. The Chinatown buses originated in New York City in the mid-1990s. "Thirty-five bucks, and I've been taking Amtrak? Man, this is fun." He jogs off, shaking his head. "I never heard of this bus," McCollum marvels. "Sorry, sorry," he says to no one in particular. A smiling Liu, 34, jokes with the crowd in his broken English, all the while dispensing the crisp, confidential nods that tell the select eight, "You're in." His criteria are unclear.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |