What’s the deal with those cheap buses?

For years now, the cheap Chinese-owned buses have been whisking white-knuckled passengers between the Chinatowns of the Northeast. And cheap they are, in price, and just maybe for a few other reasons.

But while the mainstays of the genre, Fung Wah and Lucky Star Bus, do offer some big savings, they’re not the only ways to hop between the nearby big cities for less than the price of last-minute airfare. NYCheapskate.com, a listings site for deals and saving around NY, has a useful article on the gamut of cheap ways to travel around the region by bus. The piece gives the ins and outs of getting the lowest fare on new services like Bolt Bus and Megabus (book early and you could get those coveted $1 tickets), and it offers a partial price comparison between buses, Amtrak and the least expensive major airlines. Not an end-all resource, but a great place to start your research.