As a rule I don’t go out of my way to ride a bus.  Nothing against them, but they just don’t move me in quite the same way that trains do.

With that said, I was intrigued when I read not long ago that Megabus had come back to California.  They dipped their toe in the water here in 2007-2008 and then withdrew, but reentered the market in late 2012.  The British company has been successful on the East Coast and elsewhere in the U.S. so I wanted to see how it worked from a passenger’s perspective as well as compare it with Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor service which I’ve used many times.

The closest route to where I live in Chico is the one between Sacramento and San Francisco.  Flipping back and forth between Megabus schedules and Amtrak schedules I put together an itinerary that, if everything worked as planned, would get me from Chico to San Francisco and back, in about 10 hours.  (And qualify me for being institutionalized, some people may think.)

Guess what?  The tight schedule I planned worked well.  I’ll summarize the journey below, and if you want more details please click on the link at the end of the post.

Bus – Amtrak 3714 – Chico to Sacramento

leave 7:50 am – arrive 9:55 am

Bus – Megabus – Sacramento to San Francisco

leave 10:50 am – arrive 12:45 pm

(BART from San Francisco to Richmond)

Rail – Amtrak 532 – Richmond to Sacramento

leave 1:47 pm – arrive 3:28 pm

Bus – Amtrak 3713 – Sacramento to Chico

leave 3:40 pm – arrive 5:35 pm

Now for the details.  Click here to go over to my other blog to read all about it if you dare.