USA Coast-to-Coast for under $125
August 13th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Cheap travel deals like Chinatown buses and the cheap advance purchase fares on Megabus make it cheaper than ever to travel across the USA. By combining the cheapest advance purchase point-to-point tickets you can travel coast-to-coast for just $122.25 seeing a lot of America en route.
Sure there are some great flight deals. When I wrote this Southwest Airlines were selling LA-New York flights for $119.80. But most travellers want to see America, not just visit two cities.
Here how you can do it:
- Los Angeles-Tempe $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach
- Tempe-Phoenix $1.75 Valley Metro local bus
- Phoenix-Kansas City $73 (Greyhound) coach
- Kansas City-Chicago $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach
- Chicago-Pittsburg $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach1
- Pittsburgh-Philadephia $32 (Greyhound) coach
- Philadelphia-New York City $12 (Todays Bus) Chinatown bus
That’s a grand total of just $122.25, assuming you book all the Megabus fares at the same time to save on the booking fee.
In most cases you need to book online around one month in advance to get cheapest fare. These are adult fares so you may get it cheaper with a student discount on some sectors.
Some of the fares are dirt cheap. For instance the seven hour bus ride from LA to Tempe is cheaper than the short hop on a local bus between Tempe and Phoenix (both Tempe and Phoenix are in the same metro area).
Three of these sectors can be travelled overnight, which means that you can save on three nights’ accommodation. That’s especially handy if you want to spend a day exploring Kansas City before catching the next overnight bus (you save a lot on accommodation here as there are no hostels in Kansas City).
The $1 Megabus fares are the cheapest fare that you can generally get by booking three to four weeks in advance. You would generally count on paying $8-20 for each segment if you book with shorter advance notice. Megabus fares incur a 50c booking fee, but you should be able to save on this by booking several trips at once.
The two Greyhound segments keep the price for this coast-to-coast jaunt above $100. If Megabus introduce Phoenix-Kansas City and Pittsburgh-Philadephia routes then the whole trip will drop to under $20!
- when I checked there were mostly $8 and $15 fares available on this route [↩]
Leave a Reply