Greyhound buses go A-list

First Southwest Airlines, the Greyhound of the skies, went A-list last week, with priority seating for customers who pay a few more dollars. Now Greyhound itself is going A-list. By plunking down $5 extra at the ticket counter, you can choose your seat and board before the peons on about a dozen popular routes, including Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

What’s next? Fork over $2 for a window seat at McDonald’s? Slip a fiver to a Home Depot clerk for first place in the checkout line? Or … how about paying a $2 surcharge so you don’t have to squeeze into the back seat of the airport shuttle? Hey, I might do that one. I’m not sure where A-listing will lead us, but it’s certainly not making travel any cheaper.

Of course, Greyhound Lines Inc., which has just finished spending $60 million to upgrade its terminals and buses, says it’s doing all this for us. “Greyhound heard our customers’ desire to board the bus early and go to a specific seat,” Dave Leach, president and chief executive, said Monday in announcing the “priority seating” program. And in a test started last month on two routes, rider response was “overwhelmingly positive,” Greyhound spokesman Dustin Clark told me Monday. He offered no numbers, but he did say that priority seating is most popular with groups and weekend riders.

Although you can buy Greyhound tickets on its website, you can’t buy priority seating that way. Instead you must go to the ticket counter at the bus terminal any time between 30 days and 45 minutes before departure and pay the extra $5 fee per one-way trip. Clark said the company, which hopes to debut a revamped website this week, is looking into eventually moving the priority option online.

— Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times Assistant Travel Editor

[Photo: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 12:07 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Las Vegas, Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Insider. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.