Megabus.com fares from $1

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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If you have to take the bus, it had better be cheap, right? Newcomer Megabus.com, which launched in spring 2006, takes that attitude seriously. So seriously that it offers a limited number of $1 bus fares on each of its routes.

The company characterizes itself as an express intercity line and serves a number of Midwestern states from its Chicago hub. Megabus.com now serves California, Nevada, and Arizona as well.

I did a quick comparison among Megabus.com, Greyhound, and Green Tortoise between Los Angeles and San Francisco. For a ride next week, Megabus didn’t have any $1 fares left, but the one-way price was $10. Greyhound had tickets for $39, and Green Tortoise—with its lounge area, bunk beds, and stereo system— was $39, but runs only on Sundays and only from L.A. to San Francisco (on the way south, the bus heads from San Francisco to Las Vegas).

At prices competitive with or well below the competitors, it looks like Megabus.com is a good option for travelers looking for the cheapest price, and who don’t mind the longer travel times.

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