page_title: Chinatown bus lines
section_title: Increasing scope
hierarchical_section_title: Chinatown bus lines / History / Increasing scope
caption_attribution_description: English: Eastern Shuttle #51104, re-labeled from its prior duty as a Megabus coach, loads customers in New York City's Chinatown for Philadelphia.
context_page_description: Chinatown bus lines are discount intercity bus services, often run by Chinese Americans and Chinese Canadians, that have been established primarily in the Chinatown communities of the East Coast of the United States and Central Canada since 1998, although similar services have cropped up on the West Coast. They operate in 24 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces. The vast majority of Chinatown bus lines are based out of the Northeast U.S.
  The buses have been subject to controversy because of safety issues, with several fatal incidents having happened over the years. Some companies have been shut down either temporarily or permanently by regulatory authorities, while others continue to operate subject to increased safety checks. The low-overhead, low-fare services have been popular, helping to drive down the prices of competing services such as Greyhound, Megabus and BoltBus.
context_section_description: Some bus lines are used to transport large groups of mainly Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants to and from casinos such as Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, which are located in Connecticut.  These gambling buses built upon the popularity of older bus routes to Atlantic City that also targeted Asian American customers. Similarly in Canada, several bus lines such as Safeway Tours operate between Toronto and the casinos of Niagara Falls, Ontario.
  Increasing popularity has also led to increasing regulatory interest. For example, in September 2004, the city of Boston required all regularly scheduled intercity bus services to operate exclusively to and from the South Station transportation terminal. Steven Bailey of The Boston Globe suggested that the move was motivated by Peter Pan's and Greyhound's interest in maintaining their monopoly on the New York-Boston bus route, and Timothy Shevlin, executive director of the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy, said, "The big dog out there, Peter Pan, is dead set against Chinatown bus lines. They don't want that kind of competition." A complication with this arrangement was that the South Station bus terminal has only 25 gates (along with two departure gates), all of which were used at the time until other companies left.
caption: Eastern Shuttle MCI 102DL3 coach boarding customers in Chinatown, Manhattan.
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