Actually, Trailways and Greyhound are just different names - you buy a ticket from Greyhound, but the bus can have a Greyhound or a Trailways name on it, and you use the Greyhound facilities.
I think that the Trailways buses are in a bit better shape - a bit cleaner and better maintained, but the station service (Greyhound) is absolutely atrocious. It brings the worst memories from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
As far as the cost of trip is concerned, Baltimore - Harrisburg round trip is $37 and I can get a weekend car rental special from Enterprise for $35. Washington-Baltimore fare on Greyhound is $11 o on Amtrak it is $15 and for $4 I get a faster service, no lines (I can purchase the ticket from ticket machines or on line), no crowded facilities, no stinking toilets, and no rude station agents - worth every cent of it and more. I would love to take Amtrak to Harrisburg but there is no direct connection - I need to go to Philly and then change trains to Hburg - which takes about 5 hours.
What is more $.20/mile is pretty expensive for a bus - a taxi is about $1 /mile - not to mention the fact that the first class train service in Europe is far less than that - last year I paid 50 Euro for an Acela express- like service 1st class from Lisbon to Porto round trip.
I understand that many of Greyhound's (and Amtrak's) problems are called the United Stated and its truly asinine attitude toward public transportation (and any public service for that matter) - but that does not explain the rude and uninformed staff, the stinking toilet, or the unavailability of ticket machines.
It is quite obvious to me that the US approach to service is the social class of the customers - the crappier the service and the higher the cost. Since Greyhound customers tend to be lower social class they get the crappy service - no matter what the cost of that service. All that econo-babble about costs and profitability is a bunch of horseshit to cover up the caste structure of the American business.
Wojtek