11 Av & W 36 ST — Local services in New York

If I could give -0 stars I would. I am presently on this bus, and I urge people who are seeing this post to TO NOT TAKE BOLT unless they are suicidal. First, the bus left like 40 minutes late. Even though I called repeatedly and was given a different excuse each time, including how "the bus was en route and on its way" because it was in CT (honey, if you're at South Station, Boston and you're being told it's in CT that is NOT 15 minutes away unless you're flying). Let alone the bus was out front and everyone could see it, they said that wasn't the bus. Obviously there were mechanical problems and that bus should never have left. 2 times it pulled over, then the 3rd time we were in the middle of the highway, where we were told the bus was going out of service and that there will be another bus pulling up shortly who will take only 15 people, seniors and children first. Having a medical condition I told the bus driver I need to be on that bus as well, explaining that I have a medical condition. I told him in addition to my already existent stress, that dehydration, heat and exhaustion are seizure triggers. It's a good thing I looked outside because he was letting others board. He forgot. Now this bus, the 2:30 stopped for 10 minutes but this AC is barely working, so he opened the sunroof, and people complained how much hotter it is with it on, so supposedly he has the AC on high. This is ridiculous. It's almost 100 degrees outside. Including myself, they're putting people's health at risk. Every time I called customer service today I was given a different excuse each time for things. This is unacceptable and not only do I expect a full refund and then some, I will never ever take this company again. If you look up Bolt Bus reviews on Yelp, you'll see the same thing happened last week! Never thought I'd see the day I wish I'd taken a...

Well, now we know firsthand how this bus got its name - the minute you board this bus, you want to bolt down the street. In all fairness, the bus to Baltimore wasn't so bad - especially in comparison to the return trip. The leg room was pretty much non-existent though, and my daughter and I are very short. The backs of the seats were so pilled that they looked like they had a skin disease.

The bus back to NYC was horrific. Every single seat was cracked and the padding on the arm rests was stripped off to the bare foam. My daughter came back from the bathroom and announced that the light was broken and there was an IV bag hanging from the wall. She is really silly - upon having to go a second time, she realized it was an empty hand sanitizer sack. Luckily my bladder was like a camel on this particular journey, so I did not have to use this wretched outhouse of a potty.

The trip back got really gnarly as we approached the Lincoln Tunnel, crawling through this god awful stretch at a break neck pace of like 10 MPH. A block before we arrived at the bus stop, the rather enormous driver decided he needed to take a dump and went back to the bathroom. He didn't even help anyone retrieve their suitcases from the compartment on the side of the bus. Our suitcase had slid practically to the back so I literally had to climb inside the damn thing. By now my bladder was nearly bursting and there was horrible traffic, so the taxi ride home...

I took the Bolt Bus from Boston to New York City. It was a horror show. First, the driver had a hard time getting the bus door to close before we left. I should have gotten off the bus at that point. The bathroom on the bus was incredibly dirty. It began to rain during the trip - by the time we left CT, the driver's side windshield wiper had fallen apart. There was a little bit left that pretty ineffectively pushed water around but in the driving rain it was bloody useless. The driver had to use his cell phone to contact the dispatcher and he kept picking up the phone to look at the GPS while driving. By the time we hit 125th Street the whole windshield wiper fell off. The driver continued driving 20 blocks in the torrential rain without a windshield wiper. The people on the bus basically had to loudly demand to be let off (no one wanted to continue riding in those conditions) and it took a while to convince the driver and dispatcher that this was appropriate.

It doesn't seem that Bolt Bus has radios for their drivers (at least not on this bus) and the drivers have to use cell phones to communicate with dispatch and other buses. This isn't safe and forces the drivers to break NYS law. I also wonder how long the shifts are that the drivers have to work. I feel that this had more to do with the mismanagement by the company and poor upkeep on the bus that it did...