If you’re planning to travel and you’re trying to figure out which travel option is the best one to use, you will find countless reasons outlining the benefits of bus travel. They have comfortable seats, there’s a bathroom on board (usually), there’s no long security line that eats up three hours of your life…. the list goes on and on. But there’s another really important reason why the trips offered by your local charter bus services are most definitely the best travel options available: more than any other vehicle, charter buses (often called coach buses) are the most environmentally-friendly and the most affordable option available.
If you don’t believe it, here are a few statistics from a research study conducted by the American Bus Association (ABA) that might convince you otherwise:
- Even the most efficient new cars have a hard time competing with charter bus companies, whose vehicles often get more than 206 passenger miles per gallon of fuel. For comparison: commuter rail lines and trains get about 92 passenger miles per gallon, domestic airplanes get about 44, and regular single-passenger cars and trucks, like the one you probably own, average about 29.
- If you’re looking at carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, you’ll still find that charter buses are in the lead. Research studies have found that the average charter bus is about three times more efficient than commuter rail lines and about seven times more efficient than the average single-passenger vehicle.
- The charter bus industry, which is comprised of about 3,400 individual charter bus services (94% of them being small businesses and operating fewer than 25 buses) and about 33,400 vehicles, have been more available to Americans in recent years than any other transportation service. Compared to airports, there are five times as many bus terminals across the country; compared to train terminals, there are six times as many for buses.
- All of this amounts to a statistic that’s pretty impressive: within one year, the ABA found that charter bus services provided over 750 million passenger trips. That is a lot of people who continue to choose bus transportation over other travel options!
So now it’s your turn to contribute: Knowing how efficient charter buses are, would you be more likely to choose bus transportation? Be sure to share any questions or comments you have with us!