Amtrak, Greyhound Discuss Working Together

After competing bitterly for years, Amtrak and Greyhound Lines Inc. are talking about ways to cooperate in their battles with the airlines for the traveler’s dollar.

Thomas Downs, Amtrak’s chairman and president, and Craig Lentzsch, Greyhound’s president and chief executive, have begun exploring ways to collaborate, such as consolidating terminals and booking tickets jointly. They plan to meet, for a second time, April 27 in Dallas.

“There are tremendous incentives for us to work together to maximize customer convenience and avoid some duplicative costs,” Downs said.

But he and Lentzsch emphasized in interviews that talks are preliminary. “There haven’t been a lot of discussions between our two companies in the past,” Downs said. “We are in the initial phases of figuring out each other’s businesses.”

Dallas-based Greyhound already deploys buses from terminals that house Amtrak trains, Lentzsch said. He said he is the first Greyhound CEO not to oppose Amtrak’s government subsidy.

The American Bus Assn., a trade group, set up meetings earlier this year with Amtrak and several other, smaller bus companies, a group spokeswoman said. The group advocates a seamless network of bus, air and rail travel.

Still, some analysts doubt that Greyhound, the nation’s largest bus company, and Amtrak have much to gain from working together. Greyhound’s publicly traded debt has risen in price by several points in recent weeks as some investors speculate that the bus line will benefit recent Amtrak cutbacks.

Some analysts think this is wishful thinking.

“There is no clear turnaround yet” at Greyhound, said Tom Keller, analyst at Moody’s Investors Service Inc., noting that the summer months will be telling for the company. “If they can save some costs by consolidating, that makes sense. It doesn’t seem like it will move the meter to increase ridership.”