All Over Albany

Megabus Saratoga Springs

The Megabus will be offering service from Saratoga to both New York City and Burlington, starting April 2. The currently posted schedule has Saratoga > NYC trips leaving at 7 pm, and Saratoga > Burlington trips leaving at noon. Tickets are currently $4 (as with all Megabus trips, that price will go up as date gets closer).

The Megabus website doesn't have a confirmed stop for Saratoga yet -- it says booked customer will get an email. The stop in Burlington is near the UVM campus. (Its website also says its departure stop in NYC will be moving mid-February.)

Megabus doesn't currently offer service between Albany and Burlington, so that's a new local connection on the bus line's map. And as Matthew Loiacono point out today, you can now tour the Northeast from here on Megabus (see his comment).

[via Saratogian]

Earlier on AOA: The last time we ran through all the options for getting to/from New York City, Megabus was one of the best.

NY City Bus -- competition for the MegaBus?

A new bus service between Albany and NYC started up today. The aptly-named NY City Bus is selling one-way rides to/from the city for $10.

That's cheap -- even cheaper than the MegaBus in many cases. A round trip ride on the MegaBus this week will cost you $60 if you bought now. (You can get it for as little as $18 if you book the same ride for a month from now.)

We had never heard of NY City Bus until recently, so we did a little bit of poking around -- and it looks like the bus line has a lot of similarities to the DragonDeluxe line. There are so many similarities that we wonder if it's connected to the Dragon. It shares the same pick-up (91 Colvin Avenue and 102 Central Ave in Albany) and drop-off (26 Canal Street and near Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan). And the two services seem to use one of the same operators (All State). The NY City Bus corporation was registered this past March and the listed address in Chinatown in Manhattan is different from that of the company that runs Dragon Deluxe, according to the listing on file with the state.

The Dragon Deluxe fare is roundtrip fare is more expensive -- $40 vs. $20. The NY City Bus site doesn't list the $20 fare as a promotion or sale or anything like that.

The NY City Bus lists a handful of routes around the country. Has anyone ridden it before? Anyone have the scoop?

Earlier on AOA: We broke down the travel options between Albany and NYC by price, time and ease.

image: NY City Bus

The best way to get from Albany to NYC?

The Megabus wasn't an option the last time we did the math on this.

To New York City and back is a pretty common trip for people in the Capital Region. So... what's the fastest way? What's the cheapest? What's the best?

We ran the numbers almost two years ago -- but things change. So we did the math again, this time with even more detail.

The full breakdown after the jump.

(there's more)

Take that, Megabus!

Stop. Before you book that Megabus trip to the Big Apple, you might want to check out the fares at Greyhound.com. It looks like Greyhound is trying to compete with the low, low Megabus fares.

(there's more)

Riding the Megabus

The Megabus started up service between Albany and NYC last month with the promise of (a few) one dollar fares. So how is it? Matthew Loiacono recently tried it out -- and it sounds like it went OK. From his account:

If you are looking for precise arrival times to NYC, this option may not be what you're looking for. For the trip down, the departure was exactly on time: 2:30PM, however the arrival to Penn Station was more like 5:45 instead of the expected 5:15PM. The traffic at that hour was insane, so I'd say it was in no fault to the company or the driver... more of typical NYC travel woes. The ride home was approximately 15 minutes late arriving to the Amtrak station, but one could chalk that up to the fairly inclement weather that dropped upon the northeast that weekend. It's not an exact science yet, so be prepared for a little wiggle-room on the arrivals.

If you're interested in taking the Mega, be sure to read Matthew's whole post -- he has a bunch of tips about taking it.

photo: Flickr user Andrew Ciscel

The Megabus arrives

A Megabus in Chicago.

Check it out: a new-to-here bus company is starting up service between the Rensselaer train station and NYC.

And the lowest fares are $1. Yep, just $1

(there's more)