AP Photo/Courtesy of Emily Hendrix Passengers take their seats with the satisfaction of a cheap ride.

All aboard!

It's hard to know what to expect when you're going from Milwaukee to Chicago on a bus ticket that costs as little as $1 each way.

Yes, that's roundtrip for less than the price of a gallon of gas on a new bus line in the Midwest called Megabus.com.

To put it in perspective, taking the same 180-mile roundtrip in my Toyota Camry — which gets about 30 miles for each $3 gallon of gas — would have cost about $18. And that's not including parking (upward of $15-$20) or hassle.

In short, Megabus.com offers a pretty good deal.

Since April, Megabus.com has been taking curious riders throughout the Midwest, from its hub in Chicago to St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Indianapolis — nine cities in all. A subsidiary of bus line Coach USA, Megabus.com has carried 247,000 passengers and amassed $3.4 million in sales in its eight months of existence.

It's also just started turning a profit, said Dale Moser, president and chief operating officer of Coach USA. Moser compares Megabus's ticket-selling approach to that of Southwest Airlines: They set aside a few inexpensive tickets for each trip and charge more as the departure date nears. So not every trip for every person can cost a dollar. But if you book early enough, chances are you can get it. Or come pretty close.

But the system is still working out some kinks — namely, what happens when there simply aren't enough riders to turn a profit. On my trip to Chicago (with 14 passengers total) and coming back (seven), the buses were well short of both their 56-passenger capacity and the company's target of at least 35 riders per trip.

ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS

When I told Moser about our less than full bus, he wasn't thrilled: "That was not a good journey. But what we've done is, we've established the relationship."

It's the relationship — introducing riders to Megabus.com — that's key to success, he said. Hopefully the riders' experience on the standard bathroom-equipped coaches will make them want to come back, and possibly pay more for their ticket, Moser said. Prices go up for longer rides. A one-way ticket from Chicago to Cleveland (about 350 miles) costs between $15 and $25 a few weeks in advance, and as much as $40 a week before. By comparison, a one-way Greyhound ticket on the same route costs about $45 a week ahead.

Megabus.com's business model does work, Moser says, pointing to the success of a three-year-old line by the same name in the United Kingdom, operated by Coach USA's parent company Stagecoach Group.

It didn't take a big influx of cash to start up Megabus.com, he said, because Coach USA — which operates buses from the Midwest to the East Coast — already had drivers and buses. But they did have to ramp up marketing to spread the word about the new brand, Moser said.

"You can't just build it and they will come. You've got to start marketing the product, operate it and continue to market the product," Moser said.

Megabus.com now has 12 buses operating daily and six spares. It has 70 employees, from drivers to mechanics to customer service agents.

As for getting 35 riders or more for each trip, Moser said the target isn't hard to hit on peak days, such as Thursdays, Fridays, Saturday and Mondays. And unlike airlines, which are locked into schedules well in advance, Megabus.com can add vehicles on the fly when popular routes fill up.

ATTRACTING BARGAIN HUNTERS

Megabus.com has been gathering a following of bargain-hunting travelers who have heard about the deals on the Internet. Some people (like me) first noticed the bright yellow and blue buses emblazoned with the $1 ticket along the highway.

Riders can reserve tickets through the Web site or a toll-free number up to 45 days in advance, pay for them plus a 50 cent reservation fee, get a code to show the driver and off you go.

Pickups are at bus or train terminals mostly, such as Union Station in Chicago. And the bus does not make frequent stops, Moser said, because they want it to be an "express service." The service is geared toward leisure travelers, not commuters, Moser said.

Our trip to Chicago from Milwaukee took exactly 2 hours, slightly longer than scheduled, but we were going into one of the most congested cities in America during rush hour. Plus, we weren't driving, so how could we mind?

Aboard the bus, Barb Burja told me she and her friend paid $10 total for their daytrip to see the musical "Wicked."

"You can't beat it. To try it out, it's worth it," Burja said.

Emily Fredrix is an AP Business writer in Milwaukee and curious traveler to Chicago.

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