My BB Bus Review: The New Chinatown Bus (And Why That’s a Compliment)

There’s a certain mythology around the old Chinatown buses among longtime New Yorkers. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, you could walk to a curbside in lower Manhattan, hand someone cash, and be in Boston for $10.

Companies like Fung Wah Bus and Dragon Coach cut fares as low as they could go. How? They had no stations, no agents, and no infrastructure. They had a bus, a driver, and a price that made no sense (until you took the bus and felt “oh, that’s why it was $10”).

Most of those original Chinatown bus companies are gone now. Fung Wah shut down in 2013 after federal inspectors found cracked frames and declared the fleet an imminent hazard (Lol).

BB Bus carries that same spirit forward, minus the hazard. It’s a budget price, has no station, moves fast, and gets you there. It’s the stripped-down, point-A-to-point-B intercity bus that extends the Chinatown bus era, now running routes up and down the East Coast. I took it overnight from Norfolk/Virginia Beach to New York City, and here’s everything I can tell you about what to expect.

Booking a BB Bus

Booking was easy.

BB Bus’s app and website are clean and well-designed, not the clunky nightmare you might expect from a budget carrier.

I had my QR code pulled up and ready when I walked up to board.

If only the rest of the experience communicated as clearly.

The Pickup: A Strip Mall in Suburban Norfolk

This is where things got tense.

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 11:40pm.

The address brought us to a random strip mall. We pulled up about 20 minutes early. The parking lot was dark. There were no signs. No BB Bus branding, no “bus stop here” marker, nothing. Just a suburban strip mall at night. We were visiting friends, so they drove us off in their car and we waited for the bus together. But if we had to call an Uber, it would’ve been a bit sketchy.

I’m not asking BB Bus to staff a terminal. It’s a budget operation. I get that.

But a confirmation email that says “your bus picks you up at this address, look for the bus in the parking lot” would have gone a long way. Or a physical sign. Or even just a line on their website that says: our stops are curbside, no signage to look for.

I called their emergency customer service number. Voicemail. Called again. Voicemail again. Why call it an emergency number?

I can be an anxious traveler, so of course I second-guessed whether the bus would come.

I Googled “BB Bus stop Virginia Beach,” and the top result gave me the address of a different strip mall, about a six-minute drive away.

So now I was standing in one sketchy parking lot at midnight, wondering whether I was at the right sketchy parking lot or whether I needed to be at a different sketchy parking lot.

A few other passengers were waiting nearby, which helped. I went up and asked. “Bus to New York?” They nodded, but looked as sure as me. But how could I really know we weren’t all being collectively duped?

At 11:38, the bus pulled up. They loaded us fast, and we were rolling at 11:40.

A tip I’d give myself: Before you leave for your pickup, open the BB Bus app and check where the bus is originating from. There’s no way to see the bus status, so you have to try different routes to find it.

If the bus is starting its route in a different city and is still in transit, it may not show up until close to departure time or a couple of minutes after, with no prior indication. Knowing that context ahead of time would have saved me a solid 20 minutes of low-grade panic.

The Bus Itself

Once you’re on, it’s fine. It’s not luxurious and it’s not terrible. It’s functional. I’ve been on much worse intercity buses, and I’ve been on better ones.

This is somewhere in the middle, closer to the good end of budget.

The bus had:

• USB-C charging port at each seat
• Adjustable overhead fan
• Slow WiFi (It worked, but don’t count on it)
• A working bathroom, stocked with toilet paper and hand sanitizer
• Overhead storage
• Luggage storage under the bus

What it did not have:

• Seat-back pockets (bring a bag that sits in your lap or at your feet)

I’ve been on dozens of intercity buses. Even with the same company, these amenities can vary by bus. BB Bus, like most budget carriers, runs a mixed fleet. I wouldn’t bank on every feature being available every time. Charge your devices before you board, bring your own hand sanitizer regardless, and adjust your expectations for the wifi accordingly.

The Speed (This Is Not a Complaint)

Our bus arrived in New York City 20 minutes early.

BB Bus runs regional routes, which means fewer stops, shorter distances, and less opportunity for delays to compound. On longer Greyhound routes, a problem in one leg can ripple through the whole schedule. BB Bus doesn’t have that problem. It just drives. Also, the driver drives really fast. This dude was passing cars on the highway.

If you want a comfortable, station-to-station journey with a lot of hand-holding, this isn’t your bus. If you want to leave Norfolk and wake up in New York City, having spent a fraction of what a plane costs, BB Bus is your bus. The speed is a feature.

Like the old Chinatown buses, BB Bus gets you there fast.

The Drop-Off: East Broadway, No Station

We got off on East Broadway, on the edge of Two Bridges and Chinatown. As in Virginia, it wasn’t a covered waiting area. It was just a street corner.

From there, the East Broadway F train station is a few minutes’ walk. If you’re arriving with luggage or need to connect to another line, factor in that you’re just materializing on a sidewalk in lower Manhattan with no amenities whatsoever. It’s a great neighborhood to land in, and the F train gets you most places you need to go.

BB Bus vs. Greyhound (and FlixBus)

I’ve written before about Greyhound and FlixBus, and it’s worth comparing them directly, since FlixBus now owns Greyhound and the two are essentially the same network.

Where BB Bus wins: The onboard experience is slightly better than most Greyhounds in my experience. The key difference is BB Bus’s fleet has more legroom. For my overnight bus, I was happy with this.

BB Bus has a much, much better on-time performance.

First, BB Bus runs shorter, regional routes. There are fewer variables that can cause delays. BB Buses don’t stop as much either. Ours had just two stops all the way to NYC, and the last one was in Dover, DE. It’s more “express.” Greyhound tends to stop in all major cities.

Greyhound’s national network means delays accumulate. Our BB Bus pulled up early.

Where Greyhound/Flix wins: The network itself. More routes mean more flexibility to rebook, more options if you miss a bus, and more physical infrastructure. And while Greyhound has increasingly shifted toward curbside pickups in strip malls (a real downgrade from the station era), they at least tend to have some signage.

A sign on a pole is more than it sounds like when you’re standing in a dark parking lot at midnight.

If my route is available on BB Bus, I’d choose it over Greyhound/Flix.

If you’re not sure what other buses may be available, I like to use Busbud as an aggregator tool.

The Sad Reality of Why We’re All Standing in Strip Malls

As I do, I also try to look at the systemic pictures: bus and train travel in the U.S. is just nowhere near as good as it should be. The strip mall experience is the trend in U.S. bus travel.

In Europe, intercity buses mostly depart from train stations. You show up at the main station, find the bus platform, and that’s that. The infrastructure exists because governments have invested in it as a public good.

In the U.S., budget bus operators are running on thin margins in a car-centric country that has spent the last 100 years sabotaging mass transit. These private operators can’t afford terminal space, partly because proper terminals barely exist in most American cities. So they stop in strip malls. Strip malls are cheap. Strip malls are everywhere. And strip malls are where the buses stop.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The U.S. built its infrastructure around highways, private vehicles, and airports, which means that non-car travel is chronically underfunded and physically uncomfortable in ways that have nothing to do with the quality of the bus.

If we invested in intercity bus infrastructure the way we’ve invested in interstates and airports, BB Bus wouldn’t need to pick people up in strip malls.

I’ve written more about what this actually costs us in The Hidden Costs of Cars and about what it looks like to live without a car in the U.S. The short version: the math on car dependence is worse than most people think, and the infrastructure choices we’ve made keep locking us into it. Our tax money disproportionately goes to make driving cheaper (and it’s still more expensive).

BB Bus Will Get You There, Just Like Its Chinatown Predecessors

BB Bus will get you there. It will probably get you there on time, possibly early. The bus is functional. The booking is simple. The price is hard to beat.

The trade-off is that you have to do a little homework. Confirm the pickup address directly from the app, check where the bus originates so you know when to expect it, and don’t count on a callback if your phone rings out to voicemail at 11:30pm. BB Bus is budget transit, and budget transit asks something of you in return.

For the overnight run from Norfolk/Virginia Beach to New York City, I’d take it again. Next time I’d be more prepared. It showed up, it moved fast, and it cost a fraction of any alternative. That’s exactly what the Chinatown bus did for a generation of New Yorkers who needed to get somewhere without spending a lot of money.

BB Bus works. In 2026, that’s worth something. Have you ridden the BB Bus? Do you have any questions about it? Leave a comment with your experience or questions.