Figuring out ways to travel easily in a large group can be a bit of a headache, especially if you need to keep everyone together. Whether it’s for a school or organization trip, for a tour group, or a big family reunion, it’s often easier to take one mode of transportation rather than being spread out and running the risk of getting separated or lost. If you’re facing such a trip, consider looking at charter bus lines for a charter bus rental as a way to solve your transportation woes. There are many benefits to taking motorcoaches that are part of charter bus lines. They offer comfortable, convenient travel, are better for the environment than traveling separately, and can offer an important service to the community. We’ll discuss the benefits of traveling with charter bus lines and why motorcoaches provide such a beneficial service.
What Are Some of the Benefits of Motorcoaches?
Comfortable and Convenient Travel
Motorcoaches provide over 750,000,000 trips every year, responsible for ferrying more people to and from destinations than some commercial airlines do in a year. There are five times as many bus terminals across the country, compared to airports, and six times as many if you compare to intercity rail terminals. Furthermore, for over 14 million United States residents who live rurally, motorcoaches are one of the only available options for public intercity transportation.
Good for Small and Local Businesses
The motorcoach industry itself is made up of almost 3,400 mostly small businesses. The industry fleet is just under 33,500 vehicles and offer charter services, tour and sightseeing services, airport shuttle services, and commuter/other regularly scheduled services. The motorcoach industry also has a ripple effect and ultimately creates jobs for almost 800,000 people. Furthermore, motorcoaches pour tourism dollars into communities. Just one motorcoach stopping overnight at a location can make over $11,000 for that local economy, when you take into account housing, meals, and for fun spending.
Environmentally Friendly
Compared to other types of transportation, motorcoaches give off the least amount of carbon dioxide per passenger mile. They’re three times more efficient than commuter rail and six times more efficient than transit buses.
Every motorcoach that fills up also means that 55 cars could be taken off the highway, cutting down on congestion and traffic, reducing energy use, and decreasing carbon dioxide emissions. They also have over 200 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, which is way better than commuter rail (92 passenger mpg), domestic air carrier (44 passenger mpg), and single passenger automobiles (at an abysmal 27 mpg).
Generating Revenue
The traveler and tourist demand from motorcoaches produces over $55 billion every year in transactions. Furthermore, every $1 invested in a new motorcoach creates $1.65 in spending throughout different sectors of the economy, meaning that over $1.2 billion is spent on tour and travel on an annual basis.
Motorcoaches accomplish all this and only require six cents in federal subsidies per passenger trip, compared to public transit costing 77 cents per trip, $4.32 per trip for commercial air carriers, and $46.06 in taxpayer subsidies when it comes to Amtrak’s per passenger trip rate.
Who’s Taking Motorcoach Transportation?
Interestingly, women tend to dominate the bulk of long-distance bus trips, who take 55% of these trips. Men make up the other 45%. Students and seniors are over half of the passengers in trips that the motorcoach industry provided in 2012 and adults and young adults were just below that. The American Bus Association also reports that bus travel is the fastest growing form of travel in the country. From 2011 to 2012, passenger bus travel went up 7.5%.
So if you elect to rent through charter bus lines, you’ll be in good company on the road. It can be a fun experience to have all your friends or group on the same vehicle instead of having to split up. And it’ll take some of the anxiety about coordinating times and places with a large group out of the experience. Take some of the headache out of your next event when you rent a charter bus!