| On the East Coast, Chinese Buses Give Greyhound a Run - by WSJ |
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| 已发布 by xchen on 2005-01-28 17:22:26 EST |
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BOSTON -- A bus pulled out of South Station terminal on a Friday morning and headed for New York City. Its windshield was cracked, its speedometer motionless. Orange peel graced its seat trays, and its safety warnings consisted of a single sign: "Watch your step."
The driver said not a word until he stopped the bus outside Cheng's Driving School in New York City's Chinatown. Then, as passengers gathered their bags, he stood up and screamed, "No parking here! You get out!"
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The Web is helping. The site most Chinese lines use is IvyMedia.com, launched in 2002 by Jimmy Chen, who came to America from Shanghai (Correction from IvyMedia: a city close to Shanghai) for a computer-science doctorate.
"Our model is Expedia," he says. Like the Internet travel service, he offers tickets for several carriers, and sells no more than the empty seats left in inventory. Though Greyhound also sells online, it doesn't limit the number of seats. If it oversells a route, it keeps reserve buses and drivers to absorb overflow passengers. Mr. Chen sees that "wasteful" policy as the big dog's jugular.
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For full article, please visit Wall Street Journal.
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