Take a train or bus for an inexpensive getaway

Need a good idea for your next vacation? Try taking the bus. Vacations on public transportation are rare in the U.S., where the romance of the road trip has trumped the lure of riding the rails or city buses. In Europe, using public transport for vacations is much more common. Try Norway’s stunning seven-hour train journey from Oslo to Bergen on the North Sea coast and you’ll see why. But gradually, public transport holidays are catching on in the U.S. too, at first thanks in part to higher gas prices—and as the credit crunch forces folks to scrimp on their travel plans, public transport could gain wider popularity.

Some of those curious new riders are people like Jackie Smith, a freelance writer and Seattle resident who recently experimented with her own travel itinerary. “My husband and I decided if public transport can get us to tourist destinations in Europe, why do we keep driving to the same old destinations in our own town?” So using the Seattle Metro Transit’s online trip planner, Smith scheduled four day trips in the Seattle area, where she’s lived for 20 years. They cost her $4 each. “After one trip, I was hooked,” she wrote in an article about her experience in the Seattle Times. She says it allowed her “to save money, see the sights and meet locals along the way,” and she loved it. “When you’re standing at a bus stop, you have a tendency to strike up a conversation,” she says, describing a homeless couple she became acquainted with during her travels, people she otherwise would never have met.

Andi McDaniel

She’s got a ticket to ride