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Is Greyhound a safe way to travel?


cave canem
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Yeah, I would suggest the train instead of the bus.

Our teen kids routinely travel 90 minutes on the bus, to visit friends.

They'd get home around 11pm.

But the bus stops are unusual & the crowd is much rougher than the train.

You really need to be able to go to the bathroom--it would be difficult to stay on the bus the whole time.

The driver exits the bus & has an official break, so don't expect help from the driver.

Also the bus schedule is typically running late for a wide variety of reasons.

 

She also needs to be taught how to keep away from weird strangers, and how to befriend the mom with a little kid if need be.

 

But our dd routinely took a 6 hour daytime train ride solo without incident.

The employees on the train are move visible and numerous.

 

Also my daughter & I took the train to Chicago, then the local bus, to the subway, then to OHare.

In the daylight hours, though.  I think that makes a huge difference--you can ask for help more easily.

It is possible to navigate mass transit . . . but it definitely requires confident skills.

 

Best wishes trying to find a way for your daughter to travel.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Beth S
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For a 17 year old girl, and an overnight trip, I would not suggest that.  My DD is 15 1/2 and we could send her on airplanes, from Cali, Colombia to Lubbock, Texas, but I would not want her to be by herself on a Greyhound Bus. Certainly not overnight. If she was 17 years old, I would feel the same way.  

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I took a child to DC via megabus last year.  It was comfortable, but megabus doesn't really stop at bus stops.  They do make some stops at truck stops/gas stations to use the bathroom, but that's not quite the same vibe. 

 

And I'm a grown woman.  I like to think I could have handled it at 17, but probably really not.  I needed a few more years of maturity under my belt.

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Everybody on the bus has paid to be there. Except the bus driver who is paid to be there. I doubt she will get much restful sleep, but I'm assuming you've thought about your options and train won't work. I think she will likely have no troubles and probably no interest in repeating the trip.

 

Keep in mind that Amtrak sometimes uses Greyhound for connections to larger cities, so "taking the train" might not completely avoid using a bus. Additionally, in my neck of the woods, Amtrak often is running 4 to 8 hours behind schedule, sitting idle somewhere waiting for the talks to clear. Busses often have lavs, perhaps gross but functional. It looks like Greyhound buses all have wifi, does she have a device that can run the HangOuts app? Then she could be texting with you during the trip if she wanted.

 

I think it will come down to your dd's confidence level.

Edited by SusanC
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The only bus experience I know is the story a friend told me of his college days.

 

My friend and his friend got on the bus to travel for a couple of days.  There were two seats left when they got on: One at the back of the bus with a bunch of guys who'd been released from prison and one at the front near a little old lady and a kid. 

 

My friend quickly sat with the old lady and the kid and smirked at his friend who had to sit with the prison guys. 

 

By the end of the bus trip, my friend, who'd nabbed the seat with the old lady and the kid, had to endure snoring, drooling, and a puddle of pee rolling around on the floor by his feet.  And the friend who sat in the back was back there getting slightly drunk with the prisoners, singing and listening to/telling jokes and raunchy stories and having the time of his life.

 

That's all I know about buses.  I suppose it could be a quiet trip with a bunch of tired travelers, or there could be prison guys and puddles of pee.  You just never know...

Edited by Garga
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I would take a very close look at the route.  The Greyhound lines that service our area are all overnight but require transfers at "bus stops" in the middle of the night.  These stops are not manned places.  They tend to be parking lots and gas stations.  So one might have to wait for 30 minutes at 3am in a gas station parking lot for the transfer bus.  Alone.  I'm pretty confident about sketchy travel situations but was not at all comfortable waiting alone, in the dark, at 3am, in 10 degree snowy weather.  It was all fine but having done it, I would never let my own dd do it until she is an adult and decides for herself.

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IME, it would depend on the stops. If they were rural and short, no problem at all. If they are in towns and she may need to get off or change buses, no way. My biscuit shop is by a bus "station" where the security is non existent. No way would I let my own daughter off the bus there to change buses. I might not even be comfortable with her staying on the bus while parked there, lol. But I took the bus from eastern Oregon to Salem many times as a teen and was totally fine. But all the stops except for Portland were rural.

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I wouldn't. Never personally heard good experiences. My mom flew to KY and hated flying so she took Greyhound back. A guy kept putting his seat back way too far and she nicely asked him to not recline so far. He said "Ok ma'am." Then he proceeded to take all his weight and slammed his seat backwards. She put her hands up in reflex to stop it and it broke her wrist.

 

They wouldn't move him off the bus and wouldn't let her go to the hospital, even though she knew someone who lived in the town where the next stop was. She had to go from Nashville to Lincoln Nebraska with an obviously broken and quickly swelling wrist. She had to fight tooth and nail to get them to compensate for medical bills after all that. Never again.

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17 is a great age for it. One dd took her first (short, no transfers) Greyhound trip at 12 and another crossed the country at 24. They're 28 and 27 now, so getting a bit old for it, but I'm so glad they got to see the country when they were young and adventurous instead of just flying over it.

 

I think I started at 12 or 13 and stopped when the oldest girl was born so 23.

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If you want to see class stratification in America, go between two major cities on plane, train, and Greyhound.  Each mode of transportation clearly serves a different socio-economic class.

 

As far as safety goes, if your 17yo is relatively street smart, it'd be fine.  If not, proceed with caution.

Edited by Incognito
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Many years ago we had an exchange student coming to stay with us. She was put on a bus on the east coast to travel to the west coast. As she tells the story in later years she had two choices for her long layover in Chicago. One was to go off with the young man who offered to show her around and bring her back to the station or go off with the Moonie! She went with plan A and he actually brought her back. I don't think she told her kids until they were adults. 

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I agree that it depends on the stops and the street savviness & confidence level of the person, and I'd add in their sleeping patterns.

 

One does not really want to fall into a deep sleep on a long bus trip - not that it's the easiest thing to do, but some people can sleep anywhere. 

 

 

 

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I took Greyhound on several trips, by myself, between the age of 15-17. I went to a Washington DC weekend event I wanted to go to, it's how I went to college open days (when my main college goal was getting as far from home as I could), and so on. I had no issues barring once getting stuck for hours in the middle of Alabama in a tiny bus depot because the connection bus broke and we all had to wait for a replacement and I still laugh about that and how my bag was scanned when I left DC - but not when I arrived (and this was still post 9/11). I, then a tiny girl, never felt unsafe and those trips have some of my best memories of my youth - the big bus depot in PA which had great food and pretty much every Greyhound that went remotely that way always stopped on was particularly good fun. 

 

But then I don't drive, always hated driving when my parents tried to teach me, so I may be quite weird in feeling fine with public transportation (which I didn't really use until I was 15 because of my parents' love of their cars). I think it has a worse reputation than the reality. 

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Several of us responding do have experience with the reality, though. 

 

...so was I? My reality of being a 15, 16, 17 year old little thing with very little public transportation experience who went cross country by myself via Greyhound with very few issues multiple times hearing tons of people in my life at the time and to this day call it dangerous because of their reputation rather than reality. I was trying to reassure that lots of people, myself included, have use Greyhounds as teens and quite enjoyed the experience even when we didn't use public transport much before that. In fact, for me, my experiences via Greyhound as a teen is a cherished memory and one of the highlights of my youth. 

 

I wasn't dismissing other's experiences - no mode of transport is perfect and we can spend all day listing horrible things that happen with any of them - but Greyhound or other bus services are as safe as the recommended planes and trains [and with entire states in the US not having access to passenger trains and the issues many have using planes, it is the most accessible option for many even before considering cost] and I think a lot of people in general, not here specifically, dismiss and fear long distance bus transport based on reputation and confirmation bias. 

 

As someone who traveled solo a lot in my teens, I found using Greyhound safer, easier, less stressful and more accessible than trains or planes. I hated having to find a way to leave and get back to a strange airport - I found using taxis solo anxiety inducing as a small young woman and sometimes that was the only way out or back - and I found I got questioned and harassed a lot more when traveling alone via those. With a Greyhound terminal, I could almost always just walk out with little stress and found it far easier to find helpful staff to give me directions in a new place and more people respected the headphones. Others mileage may vary but in general it is a safe way to travel. 

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It would depend upon the kid IMO.  My guys could have easily handled it, but they have always traveled a bit and not always in luxury.  I had no problem in my teens, but that was eons ago.

 

Thinking of kids (gals) at school, there are some I would say "no problem" and others I would suggest finding a different method.  It's all dependent upon their personalities and perhaps experience TBH.

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I think it also depends on the route. Express ones only stop at the really big destinations, which tend to have manned stations, often shared with Amtrak and sometimes local mass transit as well. They tend to be quieter, too. There really isn't a big difference between an express Greyhound/Trailways route and a Megabus. They tend to be pretty nice. Local ones can sometimes end up stopping at unmanned, kind of scary stations in the middle of the night, and to have a lot more noise and chaos as people get on.

 

I've done Greyhound before, but I wouldn't do a local route that stops frequently for an overnight trip, and I would definitely try to time layovers and bus changes for daylight hours if I possibly could. I don't think it's so much a safety thing as a personal comfort thing.

Edited by dmmetler
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It would depend upon the kid IMO.  My guys could have easily handled it, but they have always traveled a bit and not always in luxury.  I had no problem in my teens, but that was eons ago.

 

Thinking of kids (gals) at school, there are some I would say "no problem" and others I would suggest finding a different method.  It's all dependent upon their personalities and perhaps experience TBH.

 

Definitely!

 

Heck at this point I'd let my 14 year old do it.  But my 10 year old...probably no at 14 unless he changes quite a bit.  He is a lot more skittish than my other kid.  So I suspect it'll take him longer to gain that kind of confidence.

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