5 ms·

Well I have no experience with greyhound since I'm European but I do absolutely hate flixbus. Awful experience every time I've used them. Never again.

ultrasandwich 9y ago
Your impression is possibly why the bar gets nudged pretty high for mass transit providers in Germany.
robert_foss 9y ago
To put Greyhound into context for you, the driver sits in a box made out of bullet proof glass. So no matter how unpleasant Flixbus may be, I doubt that it's a life or death situation.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Hey, just out of curiosity, where in the country is that? I've ridden Greyhound in the Pacific Northwest and New England, and never saw that.
  - raisspen 9y ago
    It is most likely in the "I need to make up something outrageous" part of the country. I have used Greyhound to go out of downtown LA and SF which are both situated in some of the worst places of their respective cities which are still accessible and saw nothing of the sort. The LA one was definitely very sketchy, but the Greyhound experience for me wasn't much different than the experience using long haul bus travel here in Europe. Yea the facilities are more run down, but the bus rides are much more fun since people actually talk to each other.
    - duckwheat 9y ago
      Not very nice to accuse the guy of just making things up. I've seen them in the southeast. Was able to find this picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/95851032@N07/14628233183/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/95851032@N07/14628233183/
      - ecshafer 9y ago
        That doesn't look like bulletproof glass, that looks like plexiglass.
        raisspen 9y ago
        Agreed, it looks like the dividers that a lot of public buses will use.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > To put Greyhound into context for you, the driver sits in a box made out of bullet proof glass. I've used Greyhound many times over years, and I don't recall ever seeing that.
norlys 9y ago
I travelled with Flixbus multiple times when the sector was still booming about two years ago. I don't understand the complains. Flixbus has comfortable seats, you can charge your phone and they have very fair prices for snacks and drinks. Of course, you do not have infinite space if you have long legs (but more than in a common bus) and the Wifi could be laggy sometimes. But hey, they had free wifi before the Deutsche Bahn was even thinking about it! And a online media center with quite a variety of films free to watch. They really made an effort to provide good service and offer a comfortable ride, so my experience. I switched to ride sharing (not like Uber - but a in a way where someone who is taking a certain route anyway fills up their empty seats) since Flixbus got more expensive when their competition died out.
- bauerd 9y ago
  I travelled with Flixbus lots of times over the last couple of years and their WiFi is either broken or completely overloaded. Toilets commonly didn't have toilet paper or were downright unusable. Even more fun was that the Bundespolizei used to conduct random checks in Munich and pull out one or two passengers who then had their luggage searched for no good reason.
  - tspike 9y ago
    Your complaints are likely valid and still irrelevant to how much of an improvement almost anything would be over Greyhound.
drpgq 9y ago
Really? I split my time between Canada and Germany and Flixbus was always reasonable (a bit late once though). Way cheaper than DB.
wongarsu 9y ago
As a German, Flixbus is quite ok. Comfortable buses, and most trips have electric outlets, wifi and a working toilet. Compared to the train, their toilets are unreliable, they experience way worse delays (30m-1h delay is not unusual from my experience, very understandable since traffic varies), provide fewer routes and have a pretty bad experience at the bus station (small stations are ok, big stations are always chaotic, nobody knows anything, personnel has no announcement system or even megaphones and is trying to herd people around by shouting information). But Flixbus is usually significantly cheaper than taking the train, making them a popular choice among students and other price-conscious travelers with flexible schedules.
woodpanel 9y ago
I think as a German that has been using different forms of transit in the US, I think you - unknowingly - are comparing apples with oranges: Flixbus is bad, yes - but only for German standards. Inner-american travel comes with much less "classiness". I don't know why; I'd like it to be because of more price competitiveness, since more access for poor people is a good thing. But i dunno. Just that inner-US flights have the flair of an european subway-commute. Anyways: Riding the bus in Germany was always only chosen by those who couldn't afford train or plane. This is why I loathe Flixbus! City-to-city bus rides were prohibited* in Germany until Flixbus basically "uber"-ed the prohibition away. But their network of busses, drivers and subcontractors are basically the same of what the market offered before. Personally I'd never expected ICE-train quality standards for for a fraction of the price. [*] = to be exact, the Deutsche Bundesbahn (state owned railway) had the only license to operate inter-town bus-rides, which - being a town-connecting railway company - they "just happened" to under develop.
- psergeant 9y ago
  Interesting. Public transport in America seems to be considered primarily just for poor people outside of a couple of east coast cities, where in most of Western Europe it’s a way of life. I was also going to point to a much bigger hangover from class divide in Anglo-Saxon countries, but actually that doesn’t hold true in the UK — coach services in the UK tend to be pretty good for shorter journeys, perhaps because of strong competition? The Oxford London coach route is exceptional, with free food being given out in the mornings at one point, free WiFi, comfortable buses, and generally just a nice way to travel.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    > Public transport in America seems to be considered primarily just for poor people outsid Except the one mode of public transport that is most environmentally unsustainable and has a ~2.7x multiplier effect (vs just the fuel's CO2 emissions) to global warming [1]. [1] TLDR: http://co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/RFI.html http://co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/RFI.html - source: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=64 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=6...

ultrasandwich 9y ago

Your impression is possibly why the bar gets nudged pretty high for mass transit providers in Germany.

robert_foss 9y ago

To put Greyhound into context for you, the driver sits in a box made out of bullet proof glass. So no matter how unpleasant Flixbus may be, I doubt that it's a life or death situation.

Frondo 9y ago
Hey, just out of curiosity, where in the country is that? I've ridden Greyhound in the Pacific Northwest and New England, and never saw that.
- raisspen 9y ago
  It is most likely in the "I need to make up something outrageous" part of the country. I have used Greyhound to go out of downtown LA and SF which are both situated in some of the worst places of their respective cities which are still accessible and saw nothing of the sort. The LA one was definitely very sketchy, but the Greyhound experience for me wasn't much different than the experience using long haul bus travel here in Europe. Yea the facilities are more run down, but the bus rides are much more fun since people actually talk to each other.
  - duckwheat 9y ago
    Not very nice to accuse the guy of just making things up. I've seen them in the southeast. Was able to find this picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/95851032@N07/14628233183/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/95851032@N07/14628233183/
    - ecshafer 9y ago
      That doesn't look like bulletproof glass, that looks like plexiglass.
      - raisspen 9y ago
        Agreed, it looks like the dividers that a lot of public buses will use.
forapurpose 9y ago
> To put Greyhound into context for you, the driver sits in a box made out of bullet proof glass. I've used Greyhound many times over years, and I don't recall ever seeing that.

norlys 9y ago

I travelled with Flixbus multiple times when the sector was still booming about two years ago. I don't understand the complains. Flixbus has comfortable seats, you can charge your phone and they have very fair prices for snacks and drinks. Of course, you do not have infinite space if you have long legs (but more than in a common bus) and the Wifi could be laggy sometimes. But hey, they had free wifi before the Deutsche Bahn was even thinking about it! And a online media center with quite a variety of films free to watch. They really made an effort to provide good service and offer a comfortable ride, so my experience. I switched to ride sharing (not like Uber - but a in a way where someone who is taking a certain route anyway fills up their empty seats) since Flixbus got more expensive when their competition died out.

bauerd 9y ago
I travelled with Flixbus lots of times over the last couple of years and their WiFi is either broken or completely overloaded. Toilets commonly didn't have toilet paper or were downright unusable. Even more fun was that the Bundespolizei used to conduct random checks in Munich and pull out one or two passengers who then had their luggage searched for no good reason.
- tspike 9y ago
  Your complaints are likely valid and still irrelevant to how much of an improvement almost anything would be over Greyhound.

drpgq 9y ago

Really? I split my time between Canada and Germany and Flixbus was always reasonable (a bit late once though). Way cheaper than DB.

wongarsu 9y ago

As a German, Flixbus is quite ok. Comfortable buses, and most trips have electric outlets, wifi and a working toilet. Compared to the train, their toilets are unreliable, they experience way worse delays (30m-1h delay is not unusual from my experience, very understandable since traffic varies), provide fewer routes and have a pretty bad experience at the bus station (small stations are ok, big stations are always chaotic, nobody knows anything, personnel has no announcement system or even megaphones and is trying to herd people around by shouting information). But Flixbus is usually significantly cheaper than taking the train, making them a popular choice among students and other price-conscious travelers with flexible schedules.

woodpanel 9y ago

I think as a German that has been using different forms of transit in the US, I think you - unknowingly - are comparing apples with oranges: Flixbus is bad, yes - but only for German standards. Inner-american travel comes with much less "classiness". I don't know why; I'd like it to be because of more price competitiveness, since more access for poor people is a good thing. But i dunno. Just that inner-US flights have the flair of an european subway-commute. Anyways: Riding the bus in Germany was always only chosen by those who couldn't afford train or plane. This is why I loathe Flixbus! City-to-city bus rides were prohibited* in Germany until Flixbus basically "uber"-ed the prohibition away. But their network of busses, drivers and subcontractors are basically the same of what the market offered before. Personally I'd never expected ICE-train quality standards for for a fraction of the price. [*] = to be exact, the Deutsche Bundesbahn (state owned railway) had the only license to operate inter-town bus-rides, which - being a town-connecting railway company - they "just happened" to under develop.

psergeant 9y ago
Interesting. Public transport in America seems to be considered primarily just for poor people outside of a couple of east coast cities, where in most of Western Europe it’s a way of life. I was also going to point to a much bigger hangover from class divide in Anglo-Saxon countries, but actually that doesn’t hold true in the UK — coach services in the UK tend to be pretty good for shorter journeys, perhaps because of strong competition? The Oxford London coach route is exceptional, with free food being given out in the mornings at one point, free WiFi, comfortable buses, and generally just a nice way to travel.
- fulafel 9y ago
  > Public transport in America seems to be considered primarily just for poor people outsid Except the one mode of public transport that is most environmentally unsustainable and has a ~2.7x multiplier effect (vs just the fuel's CO2 emissions) to global warming [1]. [1] TLDR: http://co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/RFI.html http://co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/RFI.html - source: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=64 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=6...