If you live in New York City and like to get away to Boston, Baltimore or Washington, D.C. every so often, but don’t have a whole lot of money, you’re probably familiar with the phenomenon of the Chinatown bus. You wait on a designated corner and make a mad dash onto the bus when it pulls up to the curb. It’s cheap, it’s…well, it’s cheap. That counts for a lot. And it’s kind of exciting. It reminds me a little bit of bus travel in Central America, except with fewer live chickens on board.

Once the Chinatown bus I was riding home from Boston broke down just north of The Bronx.  The driver didn’t speak English, but we could see the smoke rising from under the carriage, and we gathered from his gestures that we were on our own now, so we collected our bags and followed signs to the city.

I splurged for the train for awhile after that.

Then one sunny day, along came BOLT. Once again, for less than the cost of a cab ride from the East Village to Brooklyn, a bus will take me to Boston, Baltimore or D.C., but this time it’s clean. It’s reliable. And it has free WIFI. A one-way ticket costs $16-$20, depending on peak hours. If you become a member, every eight trips buys you a free one-way ticket. And if you book far enough in advance, a ticket’s just a dollar.

With all the work I get done on board thanks to the free WIFI, sometimes I think it would be worth the commute.