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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Obama Inauguration Might Cause Coach Bus Shortage
Produced by Ben Calhoun on Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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Photo by Stephen Rees |
President elect Barack Obama’s January inauguration is a couple months away. Still several Chicago companies say they’re already seeing signs of what could be a region-wide shortage of coach buses. And they say groups looking to book a bus to take them to D.C. should probably get a move on.
It’s been well reported that hotel rooms for the January 20th inauguration are already scarce.
In fact, lodging in D.C. during that week is in such high demand that some people are trying rent their apartments on houses online for tens thousands of dollars.
Airfares aren’t quite so bad—but they’re not good.
One Chicago travel agent said there’s still availability, but flights the day before the inauguration are pretty well booked—especially the cheap seats.
Given that, it’s understandable that people—especially larger groups—might turn to the trusty old coach bus.
BERG: Good afternoon. Pioneer Coach.
Vanessa Berg works at Pioneer Coach in Chicago. She says she’s seen an spike in the number of requests the company is getting for inauguration week.
BERG: Oh definitely.
Berg says even with the inauguration still months off, the company is already on its way to scheduling its whole fleet.
BERG: I would say right now, out of our 52 coaches, we probably have 8 that would be available to go to the inaugural.
Berg says at this point it doesn’t just look like Chicago coach buses are on their way to booking up completely.
She’s getting calls from hundreds of miles away.
BERG: We’re getting requests for quotes as far as St. Louis and Indianapolis because apparently those companies are booked.
Another company said they’ve started getting calls from Michigan where people are having trouble getting buses.
One person I talked with said he’d estimate interest in coach buses for that week is 5-7 times what it would normally be.
RECORDING: That you for calling American Coach Limosine. Calls may be monitored for quality assurance.
Mike Akhtar is at American Coach Limosine in Chicago.
AKHTAR: Well there’s definitely a lack of availability starting. I can tell you that.
Akhtar says at this point, he’s still got coaches for hire, but people shouldn’t procrasinate.
AKHTAR: That’s the last thing people worry about is transportation. They tend to leave that until the end when they get everything else situated. Their plans for the day. If people are coming from out of state—a group is getting together. They wait until they get all that planned out and do the transportation at the end.
Akhtar says he expects the wave to really hit in the coming weeks.
In fact, his company is expecting such a rush, that they’re holding all their buses that week for regular customers.
AKHTAR: From the end of this month to the beginning of next month, that’s when it will really start taking off.
Like others in Chicago, Akhtar says he has no doubt his buses will be completely spoken for come inauguration week.
At this point it’s only a question of how soon.
I’m Ben Calhoun, Chicago Public Radio.
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