By Jeff Fister
The busy holiday travel season is almost upon us and millions of people are traveling “home,” including students. I have two kids in college and I’m just thankful they attend school near a major highway —and a Megabus or Amtrak route.
Megabus service started in St. Louis about the time my oldest daughter started college in Chicago. At the time, the hype was that you could get bus rides for as low as $1 plus the 50-cent reservation fee on the internet. Megabus, which is owned by a British company called the Stagecoach Group, operates a “no frills” bus line much like discount airlines. They advertise a few super-cheap seats but increase the rates the later you book your seat, especially around holidays. So if you book your bus ride home three months in advance leaving at three a.m., yes, you might get a dollar seat. But if you’re a college student who decides to book a ride home the day before Thanksgiving ON the day before Thanksgiving… good luck.
My daughter, who is now a senior, has taken maybe a dozen Megabus rides either to or from Chicago. About half of them were uneventful, and the fares have ranged from $10 to $25 one-way. The other half?
One of the ways Megabus saves money is that they don’t have a station. While they usually pick up passengers and deposit them near a station, you have to know exactly where they stop — sort of like Harry Potter looking for Platform 9 3/4. In Chicago the place is somewhere near sprawling Union Station downtown in the Loop. In fact, there are signs in the train station that say “restrooms are not for use by Megabus passengers.” I’m not sure how they enforce that, but clearly Megabus isn’t paying any rent there.
My daughter has had several misadventures on Megabus. The first time she took it home from Chicago was at Christmas. The “windy city” was at its best — or worst — and there was a swirling snowstorm. She dragged her luggage around looking for the “station” and finally found a group of passengers huddled on North Clinton Street. The bus was late and then it was overbooked, and she had to wait an hour while they got another bus.
That was not a phone call my wife and I could have imagined. As far as we knew, our self-sufficient daughter had navigated her way to the bus and was on her way home. Instead, she was wandering around downtown Chicago in a blizzard looking for a phantom bus stop.
Another mishap was when a bus that was supposed to leave St. Louis at midnight didn’t leave until 3 a.m., which severely cut into her mother’s sleep that night.
At least the bus didn’t derail.
My daughter’s mass-transit option to Megabus is Amtrak. Maybe it was the “invisible hand” of competition, but around the time Megabus started operating in St. Louis, travel by train suddenly became very competitive price-wise with the bus. And if you’re a passenger, what would you rather do? Ride on an overbooked “discount” bus line squeezed between two people — or the “romance of the rails”? After her first train ride, my daughter clearly preferred the train to Megabus — after all, you could sit and move around comfortably and yes, visit the dining car. The internet was available for her laptop, and being a history major she could look out the window and think about the historic significance of the railroads in our nation’s development. (She could also think about how Chicago trumped St. Louis more than 100 years ago and became a world-class city because it snagged the majority of rail travel but that’s another story).
But all’s not perfect on the train. On one trip back to Chicago, a normally 5 and half hour trip turned into a 10-hour nightmare when a freight train ahead of her Amtrak derailed. My daughter had to get off of the train and waited for hours — for a bus — to get them to Chicago.
But still, having access to these mass-transit options is great. I have a son who just started school this fall in Kansas City, and he’s already used Megabus and the train.
These aren’t the only options. Normally, when our kids start or end school, we drive them to college to haul all of their stuff or pick it up. And more than once I’ve done what I call the “Chicago turn-around,” which is driving my daughter up to school and returning the same day, an 11-hour task. And sometimes they have found rides from other people who live in town.
One thing I do know: while I like Truman State University, it’s not on a train or bus route.
Truman is a popular school in northwest Missouri where my second-oldest son graduated. By automobile, it’s about a three-and-a-half-mile drive. Basically, you go west on I-70 to Columbia and then drive north for another hour or so. Located in Kirksville, a farming town, Truman is a former state teacher’s college turned into a small liberal arts school offering a great education at a state-school price. About one-third of the students come from the St. Louis area.
But getting there other than by car is problematic. Once, when my son wanted to get home from Truman and he couldn’t find a ride, I checked Amtrak and their schedule said it would cost $100 and take 13 hours. Basically, he’d have to take a train from La Plata, a town south of Kirksville, all the way to Chicago, and then switch to a train to St. Louis. And Megabus? No way.
So, whether it’s by train, bus or automobile, my older kids will make it home for the holidays. But I still have four more kids to go to college.
While I hope the school they attend has good academics… it better be near a train line.







