Megabus Service LA to SF, OAK, SJ, Reno, Riverside, LV $1 each way
 

http://us.megabus.com/.aspx
Daily express, city-to-city bus service with free Wi-Fi from $1
All seats for travel during Dec.12-19 to/from newest cities will be $1
Company returns to West Coast based on customer demand

NEW YORK, NY (November 28, 2012) – Megabus.com, the first city-to-city, express bus company with fares from $1, today announced expansion to California and Nevada. California and Nevada residents can now travel express to/from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Riverside, Calif., Las Vegas, Sparks/Reno, Nev., Sacramento, Calif., and San Jose, Calif. for as low as $1. Frequent daily service will begin Dec. 12, and customers can begin booking travel at www.megabus.com today.
Fares start as low as $1 every day and increase gradually as the traveling date gets closer. Customers are encouraged to book early to secure $1 fares.

“Express bus service from new hubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles is another way megabus.com keeps Americans connected,” said Mike Alvich, megabus.com’s vice president of marketing and public relations. "As California and Nevada residents continue to look for ways to stretch their dollar, megabus.com is committed to safe, affordable travel during this holiday season and beyond.”

To celebrate the new service, during first week of travel Dec. 12-19, all tickets will be $1. Megabus.com always offers fares as low as $1, with many other affordable fares on all of its services.

I searched thru any dates in Dec and it seems like all the routes are $1. Total price is $2.50 RT YMMV.

Megabus is back in California??

I used them a few times years ago, but they shut down their west coast operations. Glad to see them back!

Tofu Vic

Holy crap that is awesome. Might use this to go snowboarding up north.

I was thinking the same thing!

Nice find! Thanks OP!

what snowboarding places are up north?

Now if only the Metrolink was as efficient and ran as frequently as BART :(


Seriously? One word: Tahoe

Welcome back, Megabus!

How long are the rides anyways? Does it say anywhere?

It varies from your location to your destination, of course. A trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles obviously won't take as long as from San Francisco to Sacramento. =P

From San Francisco to Los Angeles, it takes approximately 7 hours and 40 minutes.

Hope this helps,
Tofu Vic

Thats a long ride, was hoping it could be faster, I keep forgetting its a bus and not a train. Would have been nice to get there in 3 hours or so....beats driving I guess.

3 hours? I don't think we have implemented that technology in California yet!

Tofu Vic

I heard theres talks of an express train that goes from SF to LA to SD to VEGAS. Just engineering lingo...heard it from my boss. :D

In 2008, California voters approved of Proposition 1A, and this pass summer, Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill to start the initial construction. Once completed, a high-speed train will be able to bring passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

It won't be $1 each way like this deal though!
Tofu Vic

Can't wait!!! Love to go up north to watch my Giants play! I'd pay less than airfare of course, $75 roundtrip sounds good and I don't have to be up in the air!!! When is this high speed train happening!!!!! :bounce:

Initial construction is just taking place now for a nearly 1,000-mile train track. This is going to take a long time. Trust that if I tell you the year, you'll be severely disappointed.

wow this is cheaper than my local transit bus fare $2

learn about the high speed rail here :)

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/

And the scheduled completion date is now in the year 2030...that is of course not considering any more construction delays or legal challenges, which it will most certainly will.

This will be the slickdeals bus! All aboard!!

Haha, I'm still wondering where we're getting the money for this :P Oh, I guess this means higher taxes :(

lol... yeah:

Lloyd Christmas: That's as good as money, sir. Those are I.O.U.'s. Go ahead and add it up, every cent's accounted for. Look, see this? That's a car. 275 thou. Might wanna hang onto that one.

Again? Remember when they did this like 10 years ago. It only lasted a couple of months before they retreated from California. I guess they have to match Greyhound who has been running $1 specials.

That's what baffles me about the US now. The metro "subway" line in SF will take about 20 years to build as well. China built like 5 new subway lines in Shanghai in 2 years. They will build another 11 in the next 7-8 years. If China was to build the rail system for us, it would take 1-2 years and be under budget and on time. They offered to. Our pride got in the way and we declined. So instead of having a highspeed train in a couple of years, we'll have to wait 20 years if not much much more.

There was a time we were a "can do" country. We used to finish skyscrapers in a year back in the day. I remember those times. Now it takes us 10 years just to break ground.

I think a big part of it is political matters, and another part is safety.

When I visited Asia, someone I knew in the southeast said they completed a 38-story hotel within two months - from a hole in the ground. How safe is it? Not very. Fortunately for the builders and the hotel, even when parts of the hotel broke and hurt people, they couldn't be sued due to no such legal system.

Tofu Vic

This has been going on since the 70s in CA. I'm still doubtful it will be implemented even after all these bond measures have passed.

seems like i may have to cancel my southwest flights and take megabus instead..

Gives me a reason to go to Las Vegas.

Edit: dang it. from SF only lets me go to Sparks, NV.

It has nothing to do with can do attitude and more to do with regulations, landowners rights, and legal challenges. China is basically what the US was back in the 1800's and the industrial revolution, you want to build it, everybody whose in the way of a development must move. Forget about the environment, forget about building the most safest structure, we need to build it ASAP even if safety is ignored. If there was a Chinese company that tried to build it they would face the same type of regulations here in the US. Not to mention a huge part of the delays is also in implementing the latest seismic safety standards so that the thing won't just fall apart in the event of an earthquake. I would hate to be in one of those Chinese buildings in China when the big one happens.

Wow, never thought I'd be caught dead in a bus, yet here we are.

There has been talk for 30 years about an express train to Vegas from LA. It will never happen. The last thing California wants to do is spend billions of dollars building a more efficient and quicker way to send Californian money to Nevada. Even if Las Vegas and Nevada put up all the money for it I would bet that California would fight it. T'ain't gonna happen.:shake:

Yes, I agree. The Chinese government will literally uproot whole villages & blow apart mountains to get its infrastructure, dams, and rail way constructed. For the U.S., it's the way it is because of all of the environmentalists, critics, and various groups that file law suits to stop it's advancement. So, it costs even more to build the same technology here. The argument that the U.S. is too expansive for high speed rail is already proven false since China is able to do it and it is a very large country, but I also wouldn't trust shoddy construction in China.

S. Korea on the other hand is very advanced in construction and safety. High speed rail in S. Korea took about 12 years (completed in 2004) and it's worked wonders in boosting businesses along its line. It's viable for people to commute to and from work from farther away. However, a side effect is that it has left a dozen local air ports as virtual ghost towns.

How do they make money?!

huh, you might have to wait a little while, say like 20 years if everything goes as scheduled which they never do. My guess is more like 30 years if it ever gets finished, most likely they will spend a couple of billion dollars only to cancel the project in about 12-15 years. Of course a few individuals will get filthy rich off of it before the tax payers get completely fed up with it.


Volume! Volume! Volume!:D

Not to get too far off track, but China also had a huge crash with their HSR line and basically dug a whole next to the track, burned it and buried it, paying restitution of a few thousand dollars to family members of the lost.
IMO, high speed rail trains in CA will be built by foreigners (many from asia), no domestic firm meet the cut and I think there is one US based firm that made the 5 finalist for initiating the construction of the rail lines themselves. This train at best will be a slow speed diesel in the next two decades, a trip of under 3 hrs SF to LA would require over $100B (when voters approved $20B) and has no funding source in site.
As far as the topic, buses will probably be the cheapest form of transportation between SF and LA for decades to come.

How much are their usual rates? (Say from San Francisco to Sacramento or Sparks)

I realize that their prices go up closer to the date, but let's say I want to go to Sacramento tomorrow. What's a ballpark estimate for the rates I could expect?

The XpressWest [xpresswest.com] LA-Vegas rail line is set to open an interim line next year but is not that fast or cheap

One last question before I pull the trigger. Do these buses have outlets?

If so, I'd have no trouble grinding away on my games for 8 hours per trip.

What's the business plan here? I mean how is $1 fares going to work. Is it just for a very limited time?

One note. Luggage is very limited, but for $1 who cares. http://us.megabus.com/luggage-allowance.aspx

you can always go on the party train next year.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/201...77646.html

I bought a bus ticket to vegas earlier in the morning and already a lot of the times are sold out..

When Megabus was running a couple years back, I took it a few times. It never took that long to get there. One time, the driver was super scary and drove 80+ while swerving around to pass slower cars. Our break at Burger King was really short (I was afraid he drove off a few passengers short), and we made it from SJ to LA in less than 4 hours. Hope they hire that guy back:-D.

*edit* Oh yeah, and when I took it, it cost about $30 or so a ride. Very reasonable, but never $1. This deal is sweet.

Do you normally see a house in the middle of highway [inquisitr.com]in US?

Time to take a shopping trip from Sac to SF. Saves $40 gas, toll fees, and parking. :woot:

Thanks!

Will the infrastructure supporting wifi be back up?

THEY NEED TO COME BACK TO SAN DIEGO TOO. Come onnnnn!

does it smell in the bus?

Well just bit $4.50 for 2 going from LA to SF through weekend doesnt seem that shabby. If I have to cancel, I guess I lose $4.50. Thx OP!

just booked a weekend trip for 2 for LA to LV for $4.50. worst case scenario, i lose $4.50.

The Vietnamese buses charge $45 or so each way so I'm curious how this company charges only $1-3.

I've discussed this at length before in other rail threads. People often point out the crashes on Chinese rail. I can counter with all the crashes on Amtrak. Crashes happen.

Same! Used it a few years ago to go OAK to LA and they closed off the lines shortly after I last used it. Good to hear they are back and improved too!

I would be happy to be in a Chinese building when the big one happens. Just depends on the building. There are old and new buildings in China. And when I say old, I mean older by a few factors then the age of the US. I've stayed in buildings that are a thousand years old. The new buildings in China are on par with the new buildings in the US. The old buildings in the US are no better than the old buildings in China. Look what happened in SF during the last big one. Many buildings in China make those look brand spanking new. I was in Chengdu about a week after the big one there. It was not as bad as the press made it out to be. I was also in SF during loma prieta. If anything, I saw more destruction there than in Chengdu. At least their elevate highways stayed up.

How has anyone been able to get through? I have been trying all afternoon to no avail.

So did the hotel fall down?

I haven't seen anything like that in China. I spent plenty of time there during the building boom right before the olympics in Beijing. They were adding about a floor a week. Which is the same pace they are building the Freedom Tower at. Which is downright slow when you compare it to the almost 2 floors a week pace they set for the Empire State Building.

I've used Megabus a few times in the past to go to NYC and Chicago. Cheap, courteous drivers, the double decker buses are nice especially with the power outlets, other passengers are generally younger people/college students traveling alone, you don't really see families, older people, etc. Disadvantages: wifi doesn't always work (I have a wifi hotspot on my phone though so at least I have a backup), pickup points are outdoors so if it's hot/cold/rainy/snowy/whatever this may bother you. Wish they would reinstate the Columbus>Pittsburgh service so I could catch the Pittsburgh>NYC bus and not have to deal with parking in Manhattan anymore!

Thanks! Just purchased a trip from LA to Vegas (roundtrip) on Jan. 11-13 for $2.50.

Amtrak crashes are like nuclear reactor fallout incidents and shark attacks. They're rare occurrences, not as likely to occur as often as people believe. It's in the few instances they occur the media blows them out of proportion and causes them to become salient in our minds.

You're more likely to die in a car accident. But the average California isn't too chickenshit to get behind the wheel.

If anything, we should be focusing on how to make HSR more efficient. I agree with other posters whatever HSR that gets approved in California won't be nearly as fast and efficient as HSR we see in Japan. But that's an entirely separate issue.

its only a one week promotion.

Riverside!!!

THis one, it's a hub for PeterPan and Greyhound.

http://www.gotobus.com/busstation/215028.html

You gotta love the ignorance in this thread. Americans are so quick to conveniently ignore their crumbling infrastructure. Upon even hearing about cheap Mattel toys "Made in China," they're quick to make generalizations about construction and engineering in China.

When someone like you who's actually spent time in China and has bothered to read up on the comparisons rebuts these commenters, they're suddenly silent. I wonder why.

Never mind that a visiting Chinese student in Berkeley was quoted by a newspaper as saying that the city was "Beautiful, yet dirty."

:shake:

One-time thing really. It's probably one of the cheapest way to market their service. Have people like me bragging about the awesome savings we incurred through January rides.

Airplanes? Counting the mandatory TSA grope session 3 hours sounds about right.

The reviews don't look so promising. So I'll pass unless there service is better from SF to LA.

http://megabus.pissedconsumer.com/

Upon further investigation I discovered that if you buy tickets weeks in advance to get them for close to a dollar the sooner you are to the actual date the more expensive it gets. So it seems its not a promotion but how megabus works

They had $1 deals back then, too. Of course, it was given to only the first few people who booked for each bus.

I think I paid $18 for one trip, around $26 for another, and around $30 for a few other ones.

All the drivers I met then were super nice.

Tofu Vic

The point is more how they handled it, not that crashes are inevitable.

Weeks in advance, eh. In that case, I'll hold off on buying the January ticket for another week or two. Not even clear on whether the trip's happening.

Because we're broke!

How come SF to LV travel duration shows <4 Hrs???
 

Is this fake?

Agreed. Traffic accidents kill more people than any other form of transport. If that amount of people died in rail or air transport those systems would be shutdown in a second. But it's the same in China which doesn't keep people from pointing to a few crashes and deeming the system unfit. Crashes happen. If anything, Germany probably has a less fit rail system than China. It's scandalous over there now.

We are in no position to pretend to be on the high road for "handling things". The whole pretense for the Iraq war is enough proof of that. It's clear that they reason why we went in there is bogus. It's been clear for years. Yet we still haven't stepped up have we? The people responsbile are still talking themselves blue to defend it.

Glitch maybe? It wont even show sf to lv for me. Even sj to lv. Not possible. I would have to do two bookings. And hope timing lines up from sj to la and la to lv

I booked 15 tix from LA to vegas on a friday in december, returning sunday

Great deal, I booked these earlier this morning around 9 am when I got the travelzoo email...

$30.50 round trip for 15 people!

PROTIP - It works for ANY day in december for $1, not just until the 19th!

I don't see any service from Nor Cal to LV at all... I wonder if I can book a bus ride from SJ to LA, then LA to NV....

I have a free stay in LV too! choices choices...

Right, because America's political leaders and CEOs always handle natural disasters, accidents, and engineered wars flawlessly, amirite?

All this contrast between wasteful pork barrel spending in America (Exhibit A: See bridge to nowhere) and ambitious public works projects generating economic growth in China, and we still have people in the US of A pointing fingers and denying the shithole we've dug ourselves into.

Pssst, I'll let you in on a tip. We'll have the moral high ground for evaluating the actions and decisions of others when we ourselves have our ducks in order.

:rolleye2:

Here's another stubborn hold out:

http://now.msn.com/nail-houses-ar...to-gallery

It takes about 13 hours going from San Francisco to Las Vegas for $2 in total.

I'm sorry, did you mean the virtually empty cities (ghost towns) and malls China keeps building or the 16% inflation?

This doesn't mean that the people in the USA are any better off, our real inflation is well above the official figure, most of our infrastructure is 30+ years old and starting to fall apart, we've been at war(s) for what, 9 years now, etc.

I saw it as well this morning via the travelzoo email

I am so tempted to grab "two tickets" each way from LAX-LAS in January 2013

Just travelling alone but as the "FAQ" section states if you think you may have extra luggage- buy another ticket

So this will cost me a whopping $5.00 for two tickets

would like to know this as well

Yes, and your point for the most part supports mine. It's kind of pointless to be laying judgment on another country's decisions when CNN is constantly plastered with allegations of some US politician accepting kickbacks for useless projects. When was the last time we mobilized enough political will or the funds for something like this? [wikipedia.org] Hate to bring us back to reality, but those wars have been all for naught.

Yes, some of the Chinese government's investments have gone to waste. That's kind of inevitable with any project involving hundreds of billions of dollars. Check out the stimulus from 3 years ago. Mixed results galore! The fact that hundreds of Chinese citizens are being lifted out of poverty has resulted in global poverty actually plummeting. I'd say China's 5-year programs are working. You know things are going well there when the US news goes batshit over some Chinese company acquiring an American asset.

does this deal expire? I kinda want to take a trip soon, just dont know when..

The first few tickets (two or three) go for $1 each. The other buckets I see are $3 (the next few tickets), and then it jumps to $25, $30, or $35 depending on the date. In their past incarnation the "walk up" rate was closer to $70.

Since it is only $1 to change a reservation book the $1 rate for a trip you might take and change it for another date.

I think that six trips from LA to the Bay Area on Megabus a day is going to be unsustainable. With Megabus there will now be a combined 33 ground trips a day between the Bay Area and Los Angeles - https://docs.google.com/spreadshe...2T1E#gid=0 - not to mention the flights. At least the Amtrak serves intermediate destinations, so they will keep that market.

Sitting in a double decker Megabus between New York City and Washington DC was pretty painful. The double decker bus is not that comfortable because of the low ceiling and on the top level, the stopping and starting in traffic made it hard to read anything to take advantage of the wi-fi and they ban streaming so I couldn't listen to Pandora or Internet radio. On the other hand, even with the longer time of the train, I get a lot of work done between Bakersfield and the East Bay when I take the San Joaquin, and by using points the cost comes out to about $30 - but that's any time, even an hour before departure, whereas on some Friday nights, you might pay $70 to cram into a double decker bus with way too many people on it. I'll do Megabus on weekdays, but not during crowded periods when every pair of seats is taken.

What do people do when they have to go to the restroom? Hold it till the next stop?

Just checked L.A to Vegas New Years Eve, $6 one way. About the price of a gallon of gas in L.A! awesome deal!

Clearly I missed the part where we were collectively laying any sort of judgement against China, and skipped over into why is China any less screwed up than the USA.

I consider the fact that CNN is constantly plastered with kickback allegations a good thing, at least in terms of this fun thing called free speech. If China had some of that you might hear a bit more about their own massive pork barrel spending, some concerns about why rivers are polluted so badly they're literally catching on fire, how they've solved the social security problem by giving everyone cancer by age 50, or perhaps the 1.2 million people displaced by that particular dam project.

Stimulus spending for useful infrastructure projects is a good thing, but beyond that you'd probably have better results loading B-52s with cash and air-dropping it over major cities.

:lmao:I wouldn't trumpet America as being the paragon of free speech, especially when our elections aren't anywhere close to being "free" anymore. There are so many instances of election fraud that the DOJ isn't even able to handle every single one. The news media doesn't care anymore. Free speech my ass--the media doesn't hold our politicians or people on wall street responsible for their actions anymore. You're arguing from the standpoint of democracy as an ideal. I can assure you the reality is far from the ideal.

Now, I'm not saying things in China are better per se. Before we go even more off-topic with discussions of comparative governments, note we started out with discussions of infrastructure and the impropriety of laying judgment on other countries before it veered off.

:nod:

And of course China has higher level of pollution, they're a developing country for crying out loud! You couldn't possibly comparing the dude at the finish line with the dude who just got to the race late! That wasn't even the point of our discussion!

:no1:

And I wasn't referring to China's stimulus spending (lol). I was referring to Obama's stimulus bill from 2009. Or is another war in the Middle East your idea of an ideal stimulus? Apparently, some Americans think so!

Thus--you might wanna propose the B-52 idea to Congress. :lmao:

on the back of the new tickets it says something to the effect they are not liable for any crashes resulting in death and/or property loss.

There is a bathroom in the back. Not that I would use it when the bus is going full speed.

can someone comment on their experience with megabus? never been on. thinking about using the one in LA to SF.

My experience from 2007 were all very positive.

Firstly, I should point out that I was in a long distance relationship then, and rode on Greyhound for about a year and a half - and there wasn't a single time when I could say I was satisfied with the rides. Some noteworthy bad experiences involved having a drunken, nearly passed-out person lying directly under my seat, sometimes touching my legs.

When I found Megabus, I quickly switched over. The service was excellent (I even told the first driver that I appreciated his attitude and that not a single driver from Greyhound was as good as him), the fares were cheap (the prices are less than half the Greyhound prices, and that's considering that I look for Greyhound deals almost every time I travel), the rides were pleasant (faster than Greyhound), and the buses were clean.

Most of the riders seemed to be college students - none of whom seemed drunk or high, fortunately.

Hope this helps,
Tofu Vic

@TofuVic, you meant fortunately, right?

too bad I bought an overpriced plane ticket for Christmas travel already from OC to SF or this would have been great. That will show ya for planning ahead too early. Then again, I would have to find a ride from OC to LA to take the bus.

How long does the trip actually take to go from LA to SJ?

I did mean fortunately, unless my subconscious actually enjoyed the drunken and high riders interrupting my transportation... haha.

lol, some really funny reviews: http://megabus.pissedconsumer.com/

Metrolink!

i don't get why this is so cheap damnnnnn

Promotions and marketing.

I was able to figure this out all on my own because I took a few business classes =P
Tofu Vic

It's actually called variable pricing, the same as the airlines. You can see how many tickets are available at a given price point relatively easily through the software - pick a random weekday far in advance. On the LA-SF run, there are 25 $1 seats on the weekday, perhaps 10 seats for $3, and then every seat beyond that is $25, $30, or $35 depending on the date. There does not appear to be higher buckets, because once you exceed the capacity of the bus it just shuts off rather than charging more.

If Jerry Brown is involved you can just bend over.....enough said!:lmao:

won't let me even put in the date....?

I have 6 round trip tickets from SF to LA - leaving the 14th and returning the 17th in December (departing 12:30pm). I can't make the trip now but if anyone wants them for super cheap - let me know.

Can anyone confirm if megabus tickets are transferable? I had purchased LA to Vegas and not going to use it. Thought of passing on to someone who may be able to use it.

Do they check photo id or just reservation code / confirmation email is enough?

Does anyone know about this? Will appreciate any response. Thanks.

don't bother calling their customer service, very rude