All Aboard

They have two of the most familiar names in transportation, but for many years they have been battling each other in a business that was going rapidly downhill. Last week the archcompetitors of the open road decided that joining forces might be the best way to survive. Greyhound Lines, the nation's biggest bus company, announced that it would buy rival Trailways for $80 million. If the merger is completed, the U.S. will be down to its last national bus line.

Bus ridership has declined sharply with the growth of car ownership and the burgeoning popularity of air travel. The toughest blow came in 1978, when deregulation of the airline industry spawned a fleet of cut-rate carriers. On some routes plane fares became as cheap as bus tickets. It was no surprise, then, that between 1980 and 1985 total intercity bus travel dropped by 29%, from 27.4 billion passenger miles to 19.5 billion.

Among those travelers who remained loyal to buses, more and more chose small regional lines rather than the two national carriers. In 1986 Greyhound Lines hauled just 30 million passengers, less than half of the 64 million a year that it transported a decade ago. Greyhound earned only about $35 million last year on revenues of $640 million. Forced to tighten its operations, the company since 1983 has eliminated 2,000 towns and cities from its 14,000-stop, 48-state system.

Trailways, which lost $8 million last year, has fared worse. The firm, which serves more than 1,000 communities, has pulled out of entire regions during the past five years, eliminating its New England service and dropping or severely reducing routes in, among other states, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado.

The impetus for the proposed merger came from Fred Currey, a Dallas entrepreneur who bought Greyhound Lines from the Phoenix-based Greyhound Corp. in March. Soon after the purchase, Currey, who had been chief executive of Trailways during the 1970s, began negotiations to acquire his old firm as well. He hopes that the Interstate Commerce Commission will approve the merger on the ground that struggling Trailways might otherwise go out of business. To help gain support for the deal, Currey pledged last week that Greyhound would not abandon some 400 towns, including Albany, Ga., and Fort Polk, La., that are now served exclusively by Trailways.