Unleashing the Greyhounds - The Bus Regulatory Reform Act of 1982

Ships have launched a thousand tales and the railroad train has inspired nostalgia, romance, mystery, folk song and melodrama. Even the over-the-road truck has given birth to the entire genre of country and western ballad. No movie of life among the glamorous rich would be complete without the obligatory scenes of dashing jet planes and handsome crews. No comparable literary tribute has arisen to the intercity bus, despite the fact of its ubiquity in modern life.

Buses serve more communities than airplanes and Amtrak combined, are part of the national experience (everyone has been, if not an intercity bus passenger, at least a rider on a school charter) and are often the only link a small city has with the outside world. Perhaps a certain amount of opprobrium has attached to what has become regarded as the poor man's intercity transportation, and so its literary celebration is limited.