On Taking the Bolt Bus to Portland

We’ve had Bolt Bus service in the Pacific Northwest for a little over a year now. The line runs nonstop to Portland from Seattle, making it possibly the most efficient way to visit our hipster neighbors to the south. It’s cheap, comfortable, fast, and has some nice amenities. There’s a toilet cabinet at the back of the bus, outlets at most of the seats, and wifi that worked well enough for me to register a new domain, answer a bunch of emails, and stream some This American Life podcasts over the course of the three hour trip.

I’m not a big fan of the bus as a means of longer haul transportation, but for runs like this that I’d normally do in the car, I’m making the jump. Bolt runs up to Vancouver, Canada too — for a miniscule 12 dollars, can that be right? The clincher is that on our usual adventures to Portland or  Vancouver, we typically ditch the car and spend our time using public transit or walking everywhere. For this pleasure, we can pay as much as 35 dollars a day in parking alone. The Portland hotels we stayed in on our last trip down charged 28 dollars a night for parking. Our costs were waived — I was on a press junket — but we’re in those cities on our own dime more often than not. Freeing up that money for coffee and baked goods is a wise move, especially since we don’t use the car once we’ve arrived.

There’s some math worth doing to figure out if it’s worth it. Solo, it cost me 32 dollars round trip.  I’d have spent 50 bucks on gas if I’d driven.  For two people, it starts to make a bit more sense to drive — but only if you’re not going to pay to park the car, as soon as you throw in parking for as little as one night, you pass the break even mark. Include the detours to get coffee for the driver — who’s driving instead of napping — and the bus starts to look better and better. And if you can score one of those elusive one dollar fares, well, you can’t argue with addition.

I’m a sucker for the train, it’s my first choice for this kind of trip. But the lowest Amtrak fare I could find on the same day was 33 dollars each way. Sure, I’d rather wander down to the cafe car and get mediocre coffee, I’d rather look out the window at the rail yards. Train stations are glorious places from which to depart and arrive, bus stops are just, well, bus stops. But the Bolt Bus was a screaming deal and you know what? I went to have dinner and a sleepover with a friend in Portland on a whim. It was so easy. I’m totally doing it again.

I described all of this to the husband over a Chinese food — the Seattle bus stop is in Chinatown.

“Hey, we should do this for Vancouver!”  he said.  I’m in.

Counterpoint: I posted this write-up to Twitter and my friend CvN said, “#### that bus, it’s slippery seats, the driver that braked hard when we passed a cop, & having to stand in the cold waiting. I’m sticking to cars and planes.” So, YMMV, you know. I stand by my experience, but clearly, not everyone loves the Bolt.