Boston to New York by Bus

Getting to the Big Apple for the holidays



For years, one of the first BU insider secrets shared with out-of-state students has been the Chinatown bus to New York City. With $15 fares, no advance booking, and buses every hour on the hour, companies like Fung Wah and Lucky Star have become student favorites.

But the Chinatown buses aren’t the only options. Boltbus and Megabus have entered the race, and both offer $1 seats (or at least one $1 seat) and wireless access. And of course, there’s always Greyhound.  

So here’s the skinny—click on each bus line’s logo above for details, line by line.

Kimberly Cornuelle can be reached at kcornuel@bu.edu.

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There are 5 comments on Boston to New York by Bus

  1. CORRECTION: Megabus also offers electric outlets. I’ve taken each brand of bus companies before. My favorites are Bolt Bus and Megabus because they drop you off near Penn Station New York, with easy access to trains. Both companies have plenty of space, legroom, and usually leather or high quality seats. With luck, the $1 fares are accessible. For Thanksgiving break, I only paid $2.50 round trip on Boltbus from Boston to New York. Greyhound is overpriced (flat $28 roundtrip rate if tickets bought in advance online) and does not always have the wifi or outlet. It is impossible to know whether you’ll get the new or the old Greyhound bus until you actually board it. The Chinatown buses can be fine if a good fare is found, but they do not offer wifi, electric outlets, they are crowded. It’s also more difficult to get transportation out of Chinatown than Midtown Manhattan.

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  2. Right, Megabus buses have some table seats on the first level of the bus, and there are power outlets under the table. The problem is that those seats are right above the bus wheels, so they are the most jolty ones in the whole bus, and once you start staring in your laptop screen, the motion sickness is getting you down, if you’re prone to it.

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  4. If you need to come back to Boston on time and don’t like to wait in the cold outside, do not take Megabus. Last year, I went to New York for spring break and took Bolt there and Megabus back. Megabus overbooks their buses so the bus I was supposed to be on said there was no room for me because they had overbooked the bus leaving an hour before and had to give them my seat. I didn’t end up leaving until almost two hours later. The people who work for Megabus also have no idea what is going on, cannot tell you when the bus is coming, and make up rules on who gets to get on their scheduled bus and who gets to wait. The bus itself is nice but the hassle of getting on it is not worth it.

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  5. Megabus have the worst customer service. Fung-wah and Lucky Star are more reliable. I’m a huge fan of Peter Pan, their fares are $10 and 9 times out of 10, they get to New York AHEAD of the scheduled time. If anything, I like getting to my destination early instead of late.

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