Leave the Driving to Whom?

Leave the Driving to Whom?

In the days of GPS, Greyhound has to invest!You have got to be kidding me. This is the only reaction I can have. Here is the story. My wife and I travel quite a bit. From time to time, it is nice to take public transportation (i.e. planes, trains and busses) and “leave the driving to…” others. Last weekend we decided to travel to New York on Greyhound.

What happened next seemed funny at the time. The bus driver, a very nice woman, hops on the bus and says “I need to let you all know I have never driven to New York before. I have been driving a bus for 10 years, but I haven’t every driven into New York. Does anyone know how to get there?” Now I am thinking, either she is kidding, which would be pretty funny or she is just giving us a heads up that there may be a slight delay. I am thinking, we are on a bus… to New York… I have to assume other people on the bus know how to get to New York. Sure enough, someone on the bus proclaims they know how to get to New York and so she asks them to sit in the front of the bus and help her with the written directions given to her from her manager at Greyhound. I have to believe we are all set here.

We begin the journey with out much difficulty and for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes, things seem to be okay. Then it happened. We missed an exit. We ended up crossing the Tapanze Bridge in New Jersey having passed our exit about 30 minutes earlier. Now the chaos starts.
The bus driver beings shouting loudly, out her side window, at the toll takers asking for directions to the Port Authority in New York. Not a way to make your passengers feel safe or that everything is under control. It gets worse, too many people decide they know how to get us to New York and come to the front of the bus to help. Now there are four people in the front of the bus, barking directions, one guy is on his cell phone talking with a friend in New Jersey trying to give direction from where we were (very hard to explain) to the highway back to the city. The bus driver is not listening to the people on the bus, but now shouting at people in cars next to us while at red lights asking for directions. When asked of the bus driver, “…don’t you have a cell phone and a manager to call to ask for help?” she replied, “The battery died.”

At this point, I have to share with you that I am sitting near the front of the bus reading my new book, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. The book describes how technology, off shoring, outsourcing and a number of other technological advances have helped us to reach around the globe and bring people closer. The book speaks to how a number of culminations, including technology has not just flattened the world but brought it closer together and easier to communicate, share ideas and be closer to one another, I guess Greyhound could lean something here and apply it to their business. It is funny, we can move information anywhere in the world form point A to point B, but we can’t do it with people? And to think motorized transportation came way before the computer, have we left people behind and moved data up the “human” food chain? Here I am on a bus, driven by a major bus carrier, Greyhound, and they can’t seem to get a bus from Boston, MA to New York, NY. I find this very ironic.

We finally pull over and are able to ask directions of a taxi driver who somewhat know the region and between getting us on the right highway into the city and my wife with her trusty map, we make it to New York, 6 ½ hours later. Ouch.

I will say with all the heat coming from the passagengers, some who decided to get on their cell phones and bark “…well this stupid driver has us lost…”, that our driver remained pretty calm and collected. Moreover, was it really her fault? She was pretty honest with us up front, Greyhound sent her into the unknowing abyss.

My only question is, in today’s technology world, why hasn’t Greyhound invested in GPS technology? I have to believe it would be a huge win for them and these devices are cheap, the hand held ones (even that cover multiple cities) are less than $500. The ability to track buses, help them along routes with potential detour information if there is too much traffic. The ability to find vehicles that are lost (yes this happens, even a bus) and help new drivers get from point A to point B without too much hassle. Greyhound could then put any driver on any route without too much concern or training. I also know it would increase customer satisfaction.

The irony, even after that trip, we decided to take the bus home. Not bad though, 4 hours on the dot.