Talk:Long-distance bus travel in the United States

Swept in from the pub

Is this marketing material for Greyhound?

Seeing the United States by Greyhound? Shouldn't this page be called "Bus travel in the United States" or something similar?Travelpleb (talk) 13:41, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I kinda like this name because of cultural significance of Greyhound (songs etc.) but maybe it is too promotional. On the other hand we do have American Airlines and others like that. Jjtk (talk) 12:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

This article is (and should be) about long distance bus travel in the U.S.; American Airlines is actually about the airline. Its title unecessarilly restricts the article's scope and makes it just looks like corporate propoganda.Travelpleb (talk) 14:38, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd say right now this article is about Greyhound. Jjtk (talk) 16:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

That is partly my point: the article says "Greyhound" but its information is applicable to pretty much any long distance bus company. Replace the "Greyhound" with "Any bus company" and the article remains true. The article unnecessarily neglects other companies in its description of bus travel. Travelpleb (talk) 07:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Articles about companies

Seeing the United States by Greyhound is a new article. I would like to see it renamed to something less advertising. Has its creation been sanctioned by the consensus required for articles about companies? See also that article's talk page.Travelpleb (talk) 07:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, we have Rail travel in the United States where 90% of the content is about Amtrak (a private, for-profit company, even if heavily government subsidized). The page can be moved to Long-distance bus travel in the United States and information about other inter-city bus services added. AHeneen (talk) 08:10, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

On the topic of company articles, there has been a lot of fuss lately regarding travel topics about airlines. Airlines are money-making companies, and who decides which airlines are notable and popular enough to be entitled to an article? JamesA ^>talk 08:39, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

AHeneen, we have and article called Rail travel in the United States and not "Rail travel in the United States by Amtrak"... that's my point. Plus Greyhound's share of the market is going to be nowhere near Amtrak's effective monopoly. So yes, an article called "Long-distance bus travel in the United States" is good; an article specifying one bus operator is bad.Travelpleb (talk) 08:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Just move it to Long-distance bus travel in the United States and watch it grow to include other companies. The airlines-debate is a bit more complex indeed but this case seems pretty straightforward to me :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 09:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It should be noted that there is already a similar travel topic titled Intercity bus travel in the United States. Eco84 (talk) 01:13, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Well spotted, Eco84. So we need to Merge and Redirect?Travelpleb (talk) 12:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Rename "Long-distance bus travel in the United States"

Discussion at the pub seems to favor renaming this article.Travelpleb (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

List of routes

Hi, everyone. I just deleted a very long list of Greyhound routes. I think such lists are walls of text that are not easy on the reader's eye and inferior to simply linking the Greyhound website and letting potential bus riders use that site to get bus route information. Does anyone disagree? If so, why? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

aggregators

In general our policy is not to link to any aggregators (e.g. flight search sites). However, I can see a ttcf argument for them in the case of buses as they are a) less well known and b) sometimes extremely useful (as on the case of busliniensuche.de for Germany). If I don't misread the article, there is at least one aggregator currently listed. What should we do about that? Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:08, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Discuss it here. Which aggregator is listed? It may or may not be possible to make an exception by consensus. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:25, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

If I am not mistaken busbud.com and the Chinatown bus listing are/contain aggregators Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:43, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with busbud, but I'd suggest keeping the Chinatown Bus listing because I believe many of those companies don't have their own sites, so this is in the interest of the traveler. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:14, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

I just read the description of budbud. I think we should remove the listing as unnecessary and a violation of external links#what not to link to. But before I do that, I thought I'd ask Anyone150: What's your view? Do you agree that there's no compelling ttcf argument to listing busbud, such that we should make an exception to this site's policy against listing consolidators and price comparison sites? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:10, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Somebody had the site BusBud.com put on there so you want to check the logs as to who put it there in the intro. paragraph on the top of the page. I didn't put it there and I didn't feel compelled to delete somebody's contribution either nor do I know anything about BusBud.com. I simply moved it towards the bottom of the list of bus companies to make the top paragraph easier to read and re-word it at the bottom of the bus company list to make it read better. I don't think it's compelling enough to include it especially if there are forum policies against putting in aggregator sites but since you're moderating I will leave that up to you to decide. Most people will most likely use the individual bus company's site for information then use an aggregator to buy bus tickets or look up information. The other aggregator sites (ILikeBus.com) and GoToBus.com) are more of an integral part of the Chinatown buses and the individual companies use those sites as their company website (or part of) too. In fact, Chinatown-bus.org is also linked to GoToBus.com so you almost cannot exclude those. Anyone150 (talk) 11:10, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd like to clarify that I wanted your views because you've been most active in editing this article lately and have a lot of knowledge about buses in the US. I had no thoughts about who inserted the busbud entry, don't know, and don't care. Anyway, I'll remove the busbud entry unless someone objects within a day or so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:02, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ seconded. Please remove! Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:15, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

OK, I will remove the listing. If anyone feels strongly that it should be restored, please make an argument below. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:23, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

To Usable and Guide

What does this article need to be Usable? What should it have to be a Guide, and perhaps a FTT]? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:52, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Name

I realize this is trivial, but in the U.S., I think "intercity" is a lot more common nowadays than "inter-city". In addition, Wikivoyage style is to use periods at the ends of initials for U.S. or U.S.A. In keeping with the format of Rail travel in the United States and Air travel in the United States, I would suggest renaming this article to Intercity buses in the United States. Do I have a second for that proposal? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:24, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I second the motion. Hobbitschuster (talk) 03:46, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

If no-one objects, I plan on making the change tomorrow. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Ikan, I notice that JuliasTravels proposed using the title "Long-distance bus travel in the United States" some time ago. I think this might be an even better choice, as its use of the word "travel" harmonizes the title even more with Rail travel in the United States and Air travel in the United States, and also it seems to me that in the U.S. "long-distance bus" is a somewhat more commonly used wording than "intercity bus". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:22, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I find "Intercity buses" handier and more compact than "long distance bus travel". If either term is likely to give us a SEO benefit, that argument has to be weighed as well. Hobbitschuster (talk) 04:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed on SEO benefit, but AndreCarrotflower's point is well taken: "Long-distance bus" is a more common term in the U.S. than "intercity bus", so now that he mentions it, I would favor that retitling, if all things are otherwise equal. Hobbitschuster, is there a way you could investigate the relative SEO benefits of the different titles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't know of any way to directly measure it... Perhaps we should do a search on startpage and see which term gets less/more hits and which has us at a higher pre-existing ranking. I don't know which to chose then, however... Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Can this be discovered? If not, I think the name change should just go ahead, but I'll wait a day or so to see if anyone has a thought on this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:51, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Well the thing is, it is easy to discover which gets more results on startpage, but it is difficult to chose then. The one with less results, because we are more likely to rank higher among fewer? Or the one with more results because more people will search that? Similarly with pre-existing search engine ranking: Chose the one where we rank higher to rise even higher or the other one to cover more bases. Also, does this article exist on that other site? Maybe we should avoid using the same title as they do. Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:57, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Unless anyone has strong feelings otherwise, I'll move this to Long-distance bus travel in the United States. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:57, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

As in many other cases, we could drop the "travel", and call the page Long-distance buses in the United States. /Yvwv (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

(reindent) Again, why is the supposed overuse of the word "travel" such an issue? This is a travel site, of course you're going to see it used more often than usual. I fail to understand the sudden urge to scrub all our article titles clean of it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Among other reasons, it is a vestige of The Old Site. /Yvwv (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Changed phone numbers

Two edits by IP editors, one of them with a pretty garbled edit summary have changed phone numbers for the companies. Why? Which are the correct numbers? Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Flixbus entered the American market

I think Flixbus should be mentioned here. While their network isn't huge yet, they are expanding rapidly and established a huge network in Europe in relatively short time, and they continue to have deep pockets and a business model that allows for rapid expansion without much investment... Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:40, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

CharterUP

I think CharterUP should be mentioned here. They are a charter bus renting company operating in 49 of 50 states. CharterUP handles the entire bus chartering operation, from identifying buses, pricing, instant booking, real-time availability, day of trip live tracking, day of trip logistics and 24/7 support from real people. Mlevy1010 (talk) 16:55, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Charter operations are outside of the scope of theis travel guide. If they have scheduled routes where individual travellers can buy tickets, it could be included in articles on those routes. Ground Zero (talk) 17:37, 3 February 2023 (UTC)