If you’re sick of air travel and the many major flight interruptions in recent years, you might be reluctant to fly again, especially shorter distances. Gas prices make long-distance car travel unappealing as well. Fortunately, you have other options.
Recently I booked a bus ticket between Washington, DC and New York City for about $36, which wasn’t even the cheapest bus option. I’ve traveled this route many times by plane and car, usually with much frustration and delay. The bus, I’ve found, has the best balance of convenience, cost, comfort, and departure and arrival times. And with multiple pickup and drop-off points for different bus companies, I can customize my trip by choosing those that take me closest to where I need to be. To drive the same route costs more than twice as much in gas and tolls alone, not to mention the price of a rental car or the hassle of driving. Flying is never as quick as it seems, once you factor in getting to and from the airports and clearing security. From time to time I’ll opt for the train (Amtrak’s Acela is clean and fast but expensive), but for this route, nothing beats the bus.
One of the biggest hurdles to traveling by bus and train, however, is a lack of travel apps that include these modes of transportation, specifically aggregator search and bookings apps like those that find and compare details for a trip. For flights, rental cars, and hotels, there are plenty like Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity, Trivago, and so on.
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A few do exist for bus and rail travel, but there aren’t nearly as many. These are the ones you need for traveling in the US and Canada in particular, listed in the order of how strongly I recommend them:
Best Overall: Wanderu
Wanderu is by far the best app I’ve tested and used for searching and comparing bus and rail tickets. It looks at prices, departure and arrival times, and other factors across Amtrak and multiple bus companies, including FlixBus, Greyhound, Megabus, Peter Pan Lines, Tripper, Vamoose, and others. You can purchase tickets from within the app—though my pro tip is to purchase your ticket directly with the operator when possible because you may get better options if you need to change or refund your ticket (for example, OurBus allows free cancellation with a refund up to 30 minutes before your bus departs). Wanderu has routes in the US and Canada, as well as select parts of Europe.
Compares Bus, Train, Air, and Car Travel: Rome2Rio
Rome2Rio is best when you need to compare not only the prices but the total time for getting from point A to B via different modes of travel. Enter your starting point and destination, and Rome2Rio lists the estimated travel time and cost for going by air, bus, train, car, or sometimes a combination. A good example is the route between Buffalo, NY, and Washington, DC. Going entirely by train can take 12 hours or more, and the bus route is more than 16 hours. But by combining train travel and one flight you can get there in four hours or less for a reasonable starting price of about $134. Rome2Rio isn’t restricted to the US and Canada and works particularly well in Europe; a representative told me it works worldwide. When I tested the app for a route in Canada, the app pushed me to a web page for my ticket purchase.
Ferry Options Included: Omio
Omio, which is owned by the same company as Rome2Rio, looks for train, bus, ferry, and flight routes between two points. During testing the app occasionally didn’t show available bus options; sometimes I had to click an additional button to reveal them. But it does give a quick breakdown of the difference in price between taking the train, bus, or plane. You can book and pay for tickets right in the app. Omio works for routes in the US, Canada, and select countries in Europe.
A Big Travel Aggregator App With Bus and Train: Kiwi
Kiwi is a comparative travel search and booking site that defaults to air travel, but it includes options to add bus and train routes to your search. The trick is to enable these options only after you’ve made an initial search for your starting point, destination, and dates of travel (look for the checkboxes for Bus and Train on the left side of the screen). Kiwi supports train and bus routes between locations in the US, some select cities in Canada, and some parts of Europe.
Save Money With Buses and Trains
Many of the apps mentioned here tell you what services will be aboard your train or bus, such as Wi-Fi (not always reliable even when it’s available) and food and drink services. The better bus companies offer free bottled water and sometimes even snack boxes. Some trains have observation cars with panoramic windows. And just as you can choose a class of service on the train, some bus companies even offer business-class options (Vamoose Gold(Opens in a new window) is one example) with fewer passengers, more room, and premium seats.
Another reason to consider trains and buses is that they have a lower carbon footprint(Opens in a new window) than flying or driving, though for bus versus car, it depends on the number of passengers and type of car. Trains are typically the most efficient. Certainly, the US needs to improve its rail infrastructure overall, but it is slowly getting a little better, with $368 million in federal funding(Opens in a new window) going to improve the system and Amtrak debuting new cars(Opens in a new window) for some of its long-haul routes. Bus companies have done a good job of filling in the gaps that exist in the US rail network, and in my experience, the competition has made them markedly better in service, price, and routes over the last 20 years.
For more on travel tech, check out our story on tourism tech for exploring your own city.
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