"Mexican bus" is a loaded term for many people in the U.S. Chances are, their thoughts immediately run in the direction of a light pink 1960’s-era vehicle overcrowded with children and squawking chickens, broken down somewhere in the desert. But this image could not be more wrong.

After I was finished with an HSU summer program in Parras, Coahuila Mexico this summer, I traveled home to Arcata entirely by bus and train, a journey of well over 2,000 miles. Besides being the most climate-friendly way to return home (jet aircraft are among the worst offenders in terms of global warming), it was also an inexpensive way to see beautiful country and meet people.

Instead of the chicken-feather spewing pink stereotype of a Mexican bus, imagine a sparkling vehicle wrapped in tinted windows. On the front of the bus, you’ll often finda Volvo or Mercedes insignia. The entire picture, with the bus’s streamlined mirrors, powerful styling, automatic hydraulic cargo doors, give the impression that the bus might lift off the highway into low-Earth orbit at any time.

Onboard, Mexican buses are air-conditioned, with comfortable, generously-reclinable, reserved-in-advance seats. On ejecutivo (executive-class) buses, seats rival business-class airline seats, and there is a food and beverage service. All this for less than the cost of a greyhound ticket on clase primero (first class) buses, and for just slightly more on executive-class buses. No, I am not being paid by a Mexican tourism bureau to write this; I am only stating an evident truth: traveling on buses is far easier and more pleasant in Mexico than it is in the United States.

Almost all Mexican buses show movies. Their purpose, of course, is entertainment, but that doesn’t stop passengers like me from using them educationally, to learn Spanish, too. Of the films I remember, one was Zathura, where two brothers play a game that sends their house flying into space (my bus, first impressions aside, stayed on the road).

The difference between bus travel in the U.S. and Mexico isn’t just in the buses themselves, but extends to the stations. Don’t expect one Greyhound counter and a solitary delayed bus; each "estacion" has several bus lines serving some of the same and different locations. The larger stations I passed through, like in Chihuahua (didn’t see any of the namesake dogs here) and Torreon, were like airports, with vendors selling tortas, burritos and taco, book and magazine stores, and baggage facilities. At the large stations you can usually walk up to a counter, buy a ticket for a computer-reserved, guaranteed seat, and be on a bus bound for your destination within an hour. At least that was my experience; maybe Quetzalcoatl (the Aztec god) was looking out for this gringo, but I find that unlikely.

Bus travel is far more popular in Mexico than in the United States. Not only is air travel more expensive in Mexico than it is in the United States, but people have less money to spend on airfare. Fewer people own automobiles or choose to drive on longer trips, making bus travel a popular middle-class mode of travel.

The Greyhound bus I rode to leave Mexico and enter the U.S. was the least comfortable of all the buses I rode. But the most striking difference between bus travel in the United States and in Mexico was in the Los Angeles station as compared to Mexican stations. I had never felt unsafe in any Mexican bus station, but at 4am when I arrived in the crowded L.A. Greyhound station, I wanted out of it immediately (and thanks to my L.A. friend’s kindness, I did get a ride to comfort and safety soon enough).

It is imperative that we do something to create better air travel alternatives (read: buses) if we’re going to reverse the course of climate change. After automobile use, air travel is one of the most global-warming intensive modes of travel. Michael Winkler, the 2006 Green Wheels endorsee for Arcata City Council, is sufficiently concerned about the harmful effects of air travel that he has eliminated flying from his transportation use. He writes, "According to the USEIA [United States Energy Information Administration] an airplane with average passenger loading gets approximately 31 passenger-miles per gallon. According to the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] the global warming impact of a gallon of fuel consumed at the altitude planes fly is 2.7 times the impact of a gallon consumed at ground level for an equivalent global warming impact of 11.5 passenger-miles gallon, approximately the impact of a Hummer with one passenger. …The extra impact of airplanes is from nitrous oxides and contrails at airplane altitudes." At my request, Michael posted this comment on my blog. Click here to read the original post and later comments.

The buses are superior in Mexico because more people ride them. The best way for an individual to improve our bus system in the United States is to buy a ticket, ride, and let our bus lines know what you want to see improved here in the U.S. I think a great first step would be to see integrated travel booking sites like Expedia, Travelocity, and others sell tickets for buses and trains alongside flights. When we search for airfares, we don’t go to united.com, then american.com, then horizonair.com, and continue on until we’ve checked all the hundreds of different airlines. Why, then, are bus users so overlooked and underserved that they are forced to check fares separately at the Amtrak and Greyhound websites? The U.S. bus using population must not be treated as an under-class if we are to make U.S. transportation more sustainable.

Links

• You can read more in Aaron’s blog of his Mexico travels.
• Check out the HSU Parras Summer Program in appropriate technology and Spanish language and culture
• HSU Lumberjack article on Greyhound: Cabin fever, sex and violence....
• "Greyhound Attempts to Change Bus Travel's Image" from NPR News
• North Coast Journal: Greyhound cuts service (2004)