Mega Bus for Business Travel in California

Being tired of flying on a crowded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and it is the cold and flu season when being crowded in a small jetliner may be risky.  I decided to try out a new method of getting from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles Metro Area called Mega Bus. 

OK, it is new to the West Coast of the USA.  Europe and the East Coast of the USA can hardly consider this method of travel all that new.  USA West Coast Service is a currently limited to San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Las Vegas, Reno, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. 

I took Amtrak up to the San Francisco Bay Area from Claremont CA (Los Angeles County) which I will write about in a latter blog posting. 

My Mega Bus ticket was a bit less than $4 USA and I got to put it on my expensive report since it was business travel.  No, the bus ticket is not normally that cheap; but I got a really especial discount.

Not an option if you  have a lot of luggage as one is limited to one small checked bag and one small carry on bag.  I left from the San Francisco Caltrain Station and arrived in Los Angeles Union Station with only one stop in San Jose for passenger pickup and one stop at ButtonWillow CA near Baskersfield CA for a bus driver switch. 

The bus was very empty with about 21 passengers.  I left San Francisco at about 7:10 PM and arrived Los Angeles around 2:30 AM.

The free WiFi on the bus is good for email but not much else.  It appears to work best with my Apple iPod Touch and not well at all for my laptop computer.

Seating is comfortable and it is possible to sleep on the bus even in a very windy situation.  There is a restroom on the bus.  It is a double deck bus as the photo shows.

I highly recommend Mega Bus for cheap business or vacation travel.