Fighting a Doggy Image

For many travelers, a bus journey of any distance is an ordeal to be avoided, a dreary succession of tacky terminals, long lines and cramped rides in coaches that are often too hot or too cold. In recent years. Greyhound Lines, intercity busing's top dog, has made a modest effort to expunge this mangy image and reinstate the bus as a prime passenger carrier. Now, under a 40-year-old president and a group of young vice presidents, some still in their 30s, the race for improvement is being speeded up.

A sense of hustle became evident last May when Gerald Trautman, chairman of Greyhound Corp., the conglomerate that owns the bus company, named the line's new president: James L. Kerrigan, who had joined the firm at 17 as a clerk. Kerrigan, the father of seven children, is eager to attract more young passengers. As part of this drive, Greyhound sponsored a concert tour by Rock Singer Mason Williams, part of which was made into a NET television show. The company has begun direct service linking a dozen colleges with major cities and has hired student representatives on campus to promote Greyhound. Kerrigan claims that many students see the bus as a sort of folk symbol--a metaphor for reality, a part of the new open-road mystique--and that they refer to travelers who take planes as "plastic people." In the last year, references to Greyhound or bus have bounced up in several popular songs, notably the country music hit Thank God and Greyhound. Sample lyric:

Now we're here at the station and you're getting on, And all I can think of is--thank God and Greyhound you're gone.

While railroads and some airlines are dropping short-haul routes, Kerrigan plans to pile on more nonstop runs of 200 to 300 miles. In a "Greyhound Savings Time" ad campaign, the line is stressing the difference in fares between air and bus travel. It notes that a round-trip ticket between Chicago and Detroit is $27 cheaper by bus than by air. Other sample savings: $17 between Sacramento and San Francisco, and $25 between New York and Washington.

Greyhound also wants to bring more affluent passengers to the bus. Kerrigan is expanding a VIP service, which at some terminals enables riders to check their baggage at the ticket counter, leave their coats with a steward, travel nonstop for up to 200 miles and arrive at their destination with nearly the speed of air travel (counting the drive to and from the airport). To save suburbanites the trouble of traveling into the city to catch a bus, Greyhound built satellite terminals near mass transit systems on the edges of Chicago and Cleveland--an idea that it plans to extend to other cities. As a lure for passengers from abroad, Greyhound sells a $99 foreign-tour ticket that allows non-Americans to travel anywhere on the system for up to 30 days. Meanwhile, the line has started to serve foreigners where they live. It launched a subsidiary in Korea last spring and another in Nigeria last month.

The company is also polishing up its U.S. facilities. In the last few years it has built 27 terminals and spent $100 million for new buses, including some wide-bodied "supercruisers." A turbine-engine bus is scheduled to go into service on some routes next year. It will significantly cut noise and vibration, last twice as long as a diesel engine, and run without a cooling system, which overheats and now accounts for almost half of the engine failures.

The bus company reported earnings of $30 million last year, up 6.2% from 1968, but the need for improvement is clear. Passenger volume, which amounted to $326 million last year, no longer covers operating costs. Only a steep rise in the line's package express service made the bus operation profitable. The parent company, Greyhound Corp., has a great deal riding on the carrier's improvement. Though it is now in such varied fields as meat packing (Armour) and computer leasing, almost half of its earnings come from its transportation companies, of which the line is much the largest.

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