Jesse Rauch is one in a million. Well, about 36 million to be exact.
According to the American Automobile Association, 35.9 million Americans will travel this Thanksgiving, and though the Association does not track the numbers, tens of thousands of those travelers are undoubtedly college students.
As opportunities abound, students like Rauch are besieged by more numerous and vexing travel options every year in magazines, on billboards and in pop-up ads on their computer screens.
Rauch, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, has a complicated 239 miles to go this week. In order to get home to his family in West Islip, N.Y., he’ll hop a bus in Boston, a plane in Providence and a car on Long Island. It’s a ‘surprisingly’ hassle-free trip, he said, and the entire sojourn will cost him about $84 and take three-and-a-half hours.
‘I get to laugh at all the people who go through Logan because I’m home by the time they take off,’ Rauch said, referring to Logan International Airport’s notoriously long delays and unpredictable weather.
The longest stretch of Rauch’s current itinerary is the 90-minute bus ride to Rhode Island, which, incidentally, costs him almost the same amount ($34) as his plane ticket ($49). The flight from TF Green Airport in Providence to West Islip lasts 19 minutes and the ride from the airport to his house only 10.
But if Southwest Airlines has its way, Rauch will be laughing less, as his travel plans get significantly more complex next year. He said the carrier plans to ax the local flight, introducing a train and a ferry to his already intricate travel regime.
He plans to protest to the airline, but his plight highlights the beguiling glut of travel decisions facing college students as they head home: namely, how long will it take, and how much will it cost?
Neighbors with the Massachusetts Turnpike and just a T-ride from South Station and Logan, BU students have several travel options. Add the fiercely competitive prices of bus carriers like Greyhound, who now pick students up on campus, and the university’s own Crystal Transport bus lines, and you’ve given some students a travel headache before they’ve even packed their holiday sweater.
Complicating things further, each faction predictably insists they give students the best mileage out of their dollar.
‘One of the advantages of Greyhound is that we have the ability to go wherever there is a road,’ said Greyhound spokeswoman Kim Plaskett. ‘Rail is restricted to the where the tracks are we’re able to offer more extensive service.’
According to Plaskett, ‘traveling by bus is a more economical mode of transportation,’ which she said is especially important to the cash-strapped college students who comprise 25 percent of Greyhound’s Boston business.
But don’t tell Amtrak.
‘Certainly [buses are] part of our competition,’ said Amtrak spokeswoman Karina VanVeen. ‘But we know students are going to take the train. We offer such regular service. It’s a convenience, and I’m not sure you would find that with a bus.’
VanVeen said Amtrak does not monitor who its passengers are and therefore does not know what percentage of its business comes from students.
According to each company’s online fare estimator, a round-trip Greyhound ticket between Boston and New York for a five-day period straddling Thanksgiving will cost roughly half ($83) the Amtrak fare for a round-trip ticket aboard a regional train ($153). VanVeen said students are less likely to take the faster, more expensive Acela Express trains.
But Greyhound also offers special $40 round-trip student service to New York that leaves from the center of campus. Both companies offer discounts ranging from 10 to 15 percent through a paid-membership program called Student Advantage.
Greyhound’s buses leave almost every half-hour and can take between four-and-a-half and seven-and-a-half hours to rumble into Manhattan. Amtrak dispatches trains on the hour, with a typical glide time between four-and-a-half and five-and-a-half hours. But for cost, convenience and style, a newcomer might have both these old hands licked.
For the second consecutive year, the BU Student Union is sponsoring the BUnited Bus Lines, a cut-rate bus convoy to New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. For $35, $65 and $75, respectively, these round-trip tickets offer students significant discounts within Greyhound and Amtrak’s traditionally lucrative Northeast corridor. They were devised by last year’s Student Union in response to student fears about flying after Sept. 11.
Not only are the prices extremely competitive, but the package includes a pizza-party send-off with a live DJ and buses that are themed with the destination city, Union Senator Erik Dawson said in an interview last month. Dawson is the chairman of the Senate Student Affairs committee, which worked to bring the buses back this year.
Union Vice President of Student Affairs Carl Woog predicted all four buses to New York and the two to Philadelphia will sell out. But Woog said sales for the D.C.-bound bus were lagging, which he attributed to the 11-hour trip and the brevity of Thanksgiving recess.
‘Our goal for this service was not to make a profit,’ said Woog. ‘We were just trying to offer a service to students … to get them home for the holidays safely and economically.’
But at least one major bus company (and competitor) has questioned just how safe these private charter lines are.
‘It would be a little like Peter Pan opening an academic institution,’ said Peter Pan Bus Lines spokesman Mark Shwarz. ‘For a university to open its own transportation is very risky business.’
Shwarz said commercial bus lines like Peter Pan come under fierce regulatory and safety scrutiny and advised parents to investigate who is operating the buses their children are riding.
‘It would be like comparing Harvard to Peter Pan University,’ Shwarz said. ‘There is no comparison.
‘It would be safe to say that you get what you pay for,’ he continued. ‘And if I were the parent of a college student, I would be very curious who is driving my child.’
Woog diffused Shwarz’s accusations, calling them the unfortunate rhetoric of a jealous competitor and affirmed that the BUnited lines were run by a safe and reputable charter service.
‘Licensed professionals are driving the buses,’ Woog said. ‘[Student Union President] Ethan Clay is not driving the bus to Philadelphia.’
Furthermore, Woog said BUnited offers at least one thing Greyhound and Peter Pan cannot: companionship.
‘It’s a spirit event it’s an opportunity for students to come together,’ he said.
BU Assistant Dean Allen Ward agreed that BUnited offers ‘more of a personal touch.’ But allegiances aside, Ward said that more choices make it easier for students to get a better deal.
‘This year there is a lot of competition with Greyhound. But if there are more options, that’s better for the students,’ Ward said.
But maybe all the competition is for naught. According to AAA spokesman John Paul, about 31 million of the 36 million Americans traveling this week will travel by car, a statistic he suspects holds for college students as well.
‘If I had to guess, I’d say that the majority of students who are going to be traveling home this Thanksgiving, provided they don’t live in California, are going to be traveling by car,’ he said.
Bryan Hermannsson, a College of Engineering sophomore, does live in California and he’s not going home at all. His plane ticket to see his friend in Scotland cost him less than it would to fly roughly the same distance back to Redwood City, Calif.
‘There’s no discounts for domestic flights,’ he laments. ‘There’s all kinds of discounts on international flights.’
So, to save himself some cash, Hermannsson will spend Thanksgiving a uniquely American holiday in Europe, much to his parents’ chagrin, he said. But he puts it in simple economic terms: his parents only sent him $300, and his ticket home would cost $400.
‘I’m like, mom, Christmas isn’t that far away,’ he said.
