Fung Wah Isn't the Only Way to Die

While the MA Pike has been turned into the Fung Wah Autobahn, a high speed corridor where two competing Chinese bus companies hurtle buses full of passengers back and forth between New York at blazing speeds, New York is also seeing a discount bus battle of its own. But these buses don’t depart from Chinatown:

“Vamoose and Washington Deluxe are owned by competing Hasidic entrepreneurs from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Washington Deluxe, which predates Vamoose by two years, obtained a settlement from a rabbinical court in 2004 prohibiting Vamoose from operating on the same New York-to-Washington routes. The religious court’s ruling was upheld in June by Justice Lawrence S. Knipel of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Andrew Citron, a lawyer for Washington Deluxe, said he served Vamoose with legal papers resulting from the justice’s ruling in mid-August, leading to the company’s recent temporary shutdown. Via the NY Times.

Both the Vamoose and Washington Deluxe lines were started in response to the Fung Wah phenomenon. After all, the problems with the Chinese carriers are well documented :

“In August 2005, a bus operated by Fung Wah Bus Transportation, one of the original Chinatown lines, caught fire only moments after its driver pulled off Interstate 91 in Meriden, Conn., forcing 45 passengers to flee. On Aug. 15 of this year, a bus operated by the Shun Fa line crashed on its route to Pittsburgh from New York and five passengers required hospital treatment. On Tuesday, a discount bus operated by Fung Wah heading to Boston from Chinatown tipped over on a Massachusetts highway, injuring 34 people. The driver was cited for speeding.” Via the same NY Times article.

But what about the Hasidic carriers? There have been some complaints. We’ve never ridden them, so we asked one of our associates who actually has and asked him for his take. Did he have any horror stories? This is his reply:

“No problems really, except every time I opened my window, the driver would get on his microphone and yell "Is there a draft in here? Did someone just crack a window? Whadaya wanna give us all a fever? Come up and get a sweater if you’re so cold.”