Well, here in Florida the Greyhound bus goes to almost every city on either coast. The problem, however, is that Greyhound buslines is notorious for serious travel problems, from dirty and poorly maintained buses to serious scheduling issues. Last Thanksgiving, I opted to take Greyhound to visit my brother and his family, who live in Melbourne, Florida in a smaller subdivision called Palm Bay, just south of Melbourne. The entire ride, by car, takes roughly 2.5 hours and is a total of 166 miles. The bus with four stops: Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Fort Pierce, and Sabastian should have taken only 4 hours. Due to horrible traffic, bad scheduling, and inept bus drivers, the trip, on my return home, ended up being 14 hours long! I'm not kidding you. I left Melbourne at 9:50a.m. on Sunday, and did not make it home until a few minutes after midnight on Monday morning, and I had to be at work at 7a.m. It was gruesome. This is why I believe high-speed trains are the best way to shuttle people between distances too far to travel by road, yet too close to travel by plane.

For years now, there has been a sort of back-and-forth policy fight between pro-transit and anti-transit legislators for a high-speed rail system. The plan was to build a high speed rail system, similar to Western Europe's TGV, that would connect Miami, Orlando and Tampa in phase one of the project and most other metropolitan areas in Florida in subsequent phases. Of course, the Florida legislature and the governorship are filled with Conservatives (note: with a capital "C") who are completely affront to anything too European in nature. Lol. So, though most Floridians voted "yes" on that initiative, Gov. Jeb Bush struck it down on the grounds that it would have been cost-prohibitive. I suppose spending billions on highways is more profitable for his cronies' contracts and such.

With that said, movement between cities in Florida using mass transport can be grueling.

dah train, dah train.

I love traveling by train. Amtrak and Caltrain have bike racks. Not sure what happens with bikes on Amtrak if there is a bus connection involved. So maybe you could get close to your destination by train and ride your bike the remainder of the distance.

my favorite transit experience is from seattle to bellingham, wa via commuter buses. 510 sound transit to everett, 90X skagit transit to mt vernon, 80X skagit to bellingham. travel time is only about half hour longer than the amtrak trip. since all of a sudden, more people want to ride the buses, the skagit buses can be ridiculously crowded, however. hopefully they'll be adding more service soon!