Greyhound buses from Austin? Are they OK? (San Antonio, Howe: car rental, to rent)

[southdown]

Wondering about using Greyhound buses for family who are visiting - are they OK, safe, reliable, etc? My 60 year-old aunt and her well-traveled daughter want to go to San Antonio and (as I previously posted) the train times won't work, but the buses would!

Thanks!

[MJinAustin]

At the risk of sounding snobby, have you seen the people who ride the buses? They are sometimes unwashed, sometimes a little strange, sometimes just out of prison, and sometimes psychotic (like the guy in Canada who murdered his seatmate). What about a car rental? It's the quickest way between the two points and really there's not much to see between here and there.

[TexasHorseLady]

My daughter rode Greyhound up to Oklahoma and back some years back, when she was in her late teens. She didn't have any problems. Yes, some of the people riding it were not the same as her, but she took it as an opportunity to learn about other kinds of people.

As for the sad occurrence in Canada, how often does one hear of that kind of thing happening? I've only heard of it once.

However, if they want to go to San Antonio, unless there's someone there to meet them who has a vehicle, in order to see much of anything except the bus station, they likely are going to want a car, anyway, so renting would seem to be the best solution.

[MJinAustin]

Well, I'm just saying that riding the Greyhound is probably not a "nice" bus tour type of experience that you want on a vacation. Greyhound stations always seem to be located in the seedy parts of town, thus it's a bit scary to walk around that area.

[love roses]

I've taken greyhound before, and besides the bus station, it wasn't bad at all. Our bus driver even gave us a little geography lesson while we were going to our destination (this was in Idaho).

[Mckellyb]

To me, this is akin to asking if Billy Ray sells quality meth.... The context of the question negates any positive answer several times over.

Neither my wife nor I are sheltered, and we agreed, we'd hitchhike rather than take Greyhound. She rode from Denver to Austin, and back, about a decade ago, against every argument I made, and she hated every single second of it. I was against it, but in order for her to visit her father in Lake Buchanan, she'd have had to rent a car for a week if she'd flown, which she didn't want to do. Her father wasn't about to drive to Austin and pick her up at the airport, he was ill. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough vacation time to go with her, and I couldn't quite justify driving her down, then going back to get her in a week's time. I regret not taking this last option.