Bolt Bus Review: New York City to Baltimore

I live in New York City, and I had to go to Baltimore for a few days for a conference. Since I am an independent consultant, I pay my own way, so I was looking for an inexpensive method of transportation. I found it. And it was a pretty nice trip, too. I went on the bus. More specifically, Bolt Bus.

Bolt Bus goes to several places: Baltimore, Boston, Greenbelt, New York, Cherry Hill, NJ, Philadelphia and Washington. I haven’t been to any of the other places Bolt goes, so I can’t speak about them, but the buses are the same, the ticket buying process is the same, and the experience is probably the same, too, except for travel time and pricing.

Why I chose to travel bus

As I’ve said, I was paying my own way. This is a cheap method of travel! Ticket prices varied by time of day, but my trip from New York to Baltimore was $16 and my trip back was $17. Amtrak would have been about $100 each way. And, at least for this trip, the bus and train came and went from nearly exactly the same place. The bus picked me up near the train station in New York, and left me off near the train station in Baltimore.

Why I chose Bolt over other bus companies

There are a few bus companies that go from New York City to Baltimore. I had heard good things about a couple, but Bolt went right into downtown Baltimore, and right from midtown New York. One other company would have dropped me in a suburb of Baltimore, and since I had to go to the heart of the city, that didn’t make sense.

Buying tickets on Bolt

I bought my tickets online at the Bolt website. It was very much like buying anything else online. I filled out some forms, chose a time to travel, entered my credit card info, and voila. Then I printed out my boarding pass, and I was done. There were lots of choice of time of day, both on Sunday (my trip down to Baltimore) and Wednesday (back to New York City).

The bus itself

The trip down was full, with every seat taken. But it wasn’t overcrowded. I’m an average size guy, more or less, and the person sitting next to me was another average size guy (more or less) and there was room for both of us to sit without bumpig each other, and there was leg room as well.

AC outlets and WiFi were available for free, and worked. The connection wasn’t even that slow. There was a bathroom on the bus, but no sink (they did provide hand sanitizer). No drinks or food were available, but you could bring your own.

The Bolt trip from New York to Baltimore

I left New York on Sunday morning.

The ticket gave very clear instructions on where to board the bus, even identifying the store that was on the corner. Unfortunately, they had two buses going to different places at almost the same time from the same place, which made things a little crowded. And there were no signs saying which way the lines went. But it all worked out without too much chaos. I showed up about 15 minutes before departure time, which was plenty.

It dropped me off, right on time, near the train station in Baltimore, and I got a taxi to my hotel.

The Bolt trip from Baltimore to New York

I came back to New York on Wednesday, late afternoon.

The return ticket also gave me the exact address to go to get on the bus. There were no landmarks, but the cab driver knew where to go. This time there was only one line, and no chaos at all, except for people asking “Is this where to wait for the bus to New York?”. The bus was about half empty, and so I got two seats to myself.

The bottom line on Bolt

I’ll admit that it wasn’t quite as comfortable as the train, which has some food and drink available, but it wasn’t bad at all, it was prompt, and it was very cheap. I will use Bolt again.