Bus-ting a Move

A short, plump Asian man zips up his brown leather coat, looks up and down Chinatown’s Beach St., stomps out the end of his Marlboro Red on the cold pavement and hops onto the small bus. The bus, labeled with vibrant Chinese characters proclaiming “Travel to New York,” has slowly filled with a mixture of Chinese young people gabbing away in Mandarin on their cell phones and students looking forward to a four-hour interstate journey. This is “go” time for the 11:30 p.m. Chinatown shuttle from Boston to New York City. The Chinatown shuttle, which costs from $10 to $25 one way, depending on departure time, is a unique cultural experience. But it now has competition from the much less culturally enlightening shuttle that runs from the Pound Hall to Manhattan’s Penn Station for only $20 one way.

The shuttle is a project of Harvard Law School’s social organization HLCentral, which boasts on its website that students can now “travel to New York for less than the price of a cab to Logan!” The organizers say they always wanted to offer shuttle service to New York but made it a priority this year because of the post-Sept. 11 increase in airline delays.

David P. Harkin, a first-year HLS student, happily took advantage of the new service. “It’s a great value,” he says. “It leaves about 20 yards from where I live. It’s convenient and cheap.” The drawback to any bus trip over flying, of course, is the added travel time. But that wasn’t a problem for Harkin. “We saw a bad movie—The Legend of Zorro, I think,” he says. “It made the trip much, much quicker.” Harkin, who traveled to Manhattan to visit friends for the weekend, looked into the Chinatown option but chose convenience over saving $10. “It just seemed a little sketchy, so I avoided it,” he says.

The Boston-NYC bus market is getting even more crowded, though. For the traveler who eschews both convenience and culture, there is now the standard corporate offering. Late last year Greyhound introduced a $20 one-way fare from Boston to New York on popular routes. These so called “penny fares” are being used on a trial basis, according to a Greyhound spokesperson. This representative denied the new fares were an attempt to rival the Chinatown shuttle or any other cheaper option offered in the Boston area.

Time is money, though, and even three cut-rate busing options don’t entice Michael B. Blumberg ’05. “The Greyhound and Chinatown shuttles are cheap,” he says, “but the four to five hours of travel and the lack of guaranteed seating are why I much prefer to spend a few extra bucks for the Delta shuttle.”