I’ve been meaning to mention Greyhound’s arrival in the UK for some time now. First Bus own Greyhound buses in the US and are introducing the brand into the UK starting with the Portsmouth and Southampton to London routes. And at virtually the same time Megabus are abandoning the routes! Not that Megabus would have been any threat to Greyhound anymore than they were to National Express. Megabus started these routes promisingly with 3 trips per day in each direction. Although relatively infrequent the service was heavily booked and despite running double-decker buses, each with a capacity of around 90 passengers, duplicate buses had to run quite frequently. Then Megabus cut this back to 1 bus per day in each direction. Passenger numbers fell dramatically but at least the one up and one back each day were timed to allow a day trip to London. However, further ‘tinkering’ with the timetable ended up with a day trip only giving you from 12:40 until 16:00 in London – pretty useless. Now the last Megabus run to London from the South coast is on Sunday 4 October. The problem with Megabus has always been Megatrain! It seems that Megatrain is the preferred operation of Stagecoach PLC and that Megabus is restrained from competing with Megatrain where the routes clash. Megatrain offer cheap TRAIN fares, that’s for certain. But a cheap train fare is much more expensive than a COACH fare! For example a return to London from Southampton is GBP22.00 with Megatrain on 14 September, whilst National Express is GBP8.00 using the same departure times. As I observe it Megatrain pick up those travellers who are looking for budget rail fares whilst those who wont pay Megatrain prices use National Express because there has been no viable Megabus alternative. It’s this illogical type of management decision which has made me purchase shares in First Group rather than the company I work for :-(

Greyhound, however, seem to be entering the market in a much more positive way with the service to London being run hourly in each direction. They’ve certainly provoked a response from National Express! My bet is that they’re going to be very successful. This is based on the premise that unless you want to get to Heathrow Airport the Greyhound bus will be much quicker. Quicker because it’s not having to go into the airport to drop off and pickup but even more importantly when the top of the M3, M25 or M4 snarls up the options into Central London are numerous compared with being forced to Heathrow first. For example it only adds about 20-25 minutes to the Southampton – Victoria journey time by missing the M3, M25, M4 totally and going via Guildford and then in on the A3 and into London from the South over Vauxhall Bridge. If the M3 is OK but the problem is on the M25 or M4 then just take the A316 from the end of the M3. Lots and lots of alternatives not open to a coach which must call at Heathrow before going into London.

The only problem I see for Greyhound at the moment is how potential travelers will find the site and be able to book. Do a Google using terms such as “book a Greyhound coach to London” brings up 217,000 results but www.greyhounduk.com doesn’t even make in the first 5 pages. National Express comes in on page 1 in 4th place for this search! I found www.greyhounduk by going to www.firstgroup.com and finding the link there. I don’t think many potential bookers will think of going to the First Group site in order to get a booking link. Either the Press Releases Greyhound sent out omitted the website address or those writing about the service all chose to omit the web site URL :-(