By Ian Simpson
WASHINGTON, May 11 (Reuters) - Forget the grimy terminals and uncomfortable buses of the past. Discount U.S. carriers are luring a new generation of riders from young tourists to business travelers with amenities such as free Internet and leather seats.
By offering low prices and picking up passengers curbside in hip neighborhoods, discount bus companies have reversed a long decline in ridership and are gaining ground on trains and planes.
The low-cost niche started with companies offering cut-rate fares between the Chinatown sections of New York and Boston. It took off eight years ago when major carriers such as megabus.com, a unit of Britain's Stagecoach Group Plc, arrived, offering online bookings and tickets as a low as $1.
"It's really a whole new mode of transportation. There's been nothing quite like it, and it has been made possible by the Internet," said Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at Chicago's Depaul University.
The number of daily curbside departures in the United States has doubled since 2010 to more than 1,000, a Chaddick Institute study found. Intercity bus ridership overall has been on the rise since 2006, after having declined since 1960, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The newfound popularity is spreading to business class, with upscale services offering non-stop intercity travel to a variety of areas across the United States.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire's C&J bus company launched a once-a-day service to New York three years ago for business travelers. It now runs twice daily, with more than 2,000 passengers a month, owner Jim Jalbert said.
Megabus.com and its rival BoltBus "have created huge new markets and they've also created a competing mode to passenger rail," he said. "You can move a lot of people in a big manner."
COST CUTS
Switching to discount bus travel from planes, trains or private cars saved U.S. consumers an estimated $1.1 billion last year, the Chaddick study found.
The appeal was clear among a group of passengers who boarded a New York-bound discount BestBus on a Washington street last week. A last-minute ticket cost from $30 to $40, well below the price of train and air travel.
"It's considerably less expensive than Amtrak and since I'm not in a rush ... I can take the risk of there being traffic," Jane Dolkart, 66, of Washington, said as she waited to board.
Last year the number of discount intercity bus departures rose 4 percent, outpacing 1.6 percent rises both for airlines and for Amtrak and a 0.6 percent upturn for car driving.