Since I’ve been in Vancouver, I traveled by bus to Seattle three times. The only transportation I knew is Amtrak Cascades train. I still remember the first trip to Seattle which is pretty horrible takes me more than five hours to get to the King Street Station and I was so surprised how could I train wait for the red lights. Getting used to the CRH train which can achieve a-five-hour trip from northern Beijing to southern Shanghai in China, I am disappointed by the speed and overall efficiency of Amtrak Cascades train. For the second time, I chose to make another attempt so that I took the Thruway bus which is faster but has no wifi and table for working on my laptop. From my point of view, Amtrak Cascades do a poor “job” because they have no attention for the customer needs for a trip which is efficiency and entertainment.
Compared to the Amtrak, the later launched Boltbus fix every single problem as possible as they could. Boltbus buses are equipped with electrical outlets and are Wi-Fi-enabled. Each bus has 50 leather seats, each with a more inches of legroom than usual since there is one less row of seating per bus. In addition, every passenger may stow one bag or bike under the bus.
Boltbus operated by Greyhound aimed their customers at college student like myself and young urban professionals who has needs to travel across main cities. Their value proposition is to provide consumers with cheaper efficient and recreational transportations. The general fare for one-way is about 25USD but highly depends on which day of the week and what time of the day of traveling. However, the Amtrak fare is over 40USD, really expensive for the target 
customers as the careless of customer service and experience during the journey.
Another interesting fact about Boltbus is they have a way to hook people with willingness to travel around at the first place. For the first four days operation, a one-dollar-fare promotion is executed. The offer is so attractive that everyone want to get a ticket for “free”. They tried to force a certain portion of customers to experience and then market the service by word-of-mouth since nobody want to take risk to try something new first. After the four day promotion, they found a way to hook customers and expand the size of it by setting a randomly lottery. For each bus, there is a lucky customer who gets a free ride.
Now Boltbus is already a mature alternative for short-distance transportation and has a niche in the market. I have faith in that it will do better because they are aware of the importance of all business canvas segments like value proposition, focus of customers, customers’ jobs, pain relievers etc.
Source:
http://www.straight.com/life/new-boltbus-offers-1-fares-vancouver-seattle-or-portlandwith-luck
