Those looking to travel outside of the Iowa City area now have more transportation options available after intercity bus routes were expanded.

Megabus, one of the largest bus companies in North America, announced its plans to partner with Burlington Trailways on March 20. Burlington Trailways is a motor coach corporation based in the Midwest. The partnership will expand the number of locations served on its Chicago, Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Saint Louis, and Iowa City routes.

Megabus customers can use previously established Burlington Trailways stops and vice versa, allowing the two bus services to make connections between Iowa City and 20 cities.

RELATED: MegaBus to Return to Iowa City

Coach USA Director of Marketing Meghan O’Hare wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan that the partnership will open new routes for customers to explore.

“Someone in Iowa City can travel to Chicago and have a myriad of possible opportunities for connections to the full Megabus network which includes more than 400 cities in North America,” O’Hare wrote. “Our hope is that this partnership will provide new and exciting travel options to customers in the Midwest.”

The Iowa City Burlington Trailways stop, located at 170 E. Court St., will offer rides to areas throughout Illinois, with stops at Chicago, La Salle, and Quincy.

Stops will also be offered to four cities in Missouri, including St. Louis, and to Omaha, Nebraska. The new routes will serve locations in Iowa, including Burlington, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines, Fort Madison, Keokuk, Mt. Pleasant, and Waterloo.

Megabus previously operated in Iowa City from 2010 until 2015 when it moved its terminal from the Court Street Transportation Center to the Coralville Transit Intermodal Facility. Less than two years later in January 2017, Megabus discontinued its service to Iowa, but later returned in March 2017 following a partnership with Windstar Lines.

While the Coralville Transit Intermodal Facility still offers Megabus routes, reintroducing the bus line back to Iowa City offers easier access to the nearby University of Iowa population.

Taylor Bell, a University of Iowa graduate student, said she appreciated the bus services available in the area. A native of Cedar Rapids, Bell said she primarily takes the 380 Express Bus for her commute to avoid paying for parking on campus.

“I feel better about riding the bus,” Bell said. “I don’t have to pay to park here. I think that’s mostly the biggest issue. It’s expensive.”

Despite living in the state, Bell said she thought extending the locations of the bus routes would help students who are not local to Iowa City.

“Iowa City, being a state school, brings in so many international students and students from out of state, so if they want to go home on holidays or whatever, I think it’s just a good hub for people to transfer in and out,” Bell said.

Angela Mrksic, a third-year UI student who was traveling to Chicago by a Burlington Bus on Friday, said she thought it would be helpful for Iowa City transportation to expand its out-of-state travel locations.

“A lot of people are from the Chicago suburbs,” Mrksic said. “It seems like it’s going to be really helpful, because I think it’s hard to get back and forth for a lot of students, especially out-of-state people.”

According to the UI’s Office of the Registrar, of the nearly 13,000 nonresident full and part-time students of all levels attending the university in fall 2022, 25.5 percent come from states adjoining Iowa and 5,840 of those students come from Illinois.

 UI third-year student Maura Mickunas said she thought expanding peoples’ access to long-distance transportation was more important than ever after the pandemic.

“We understand now what it’s like to be apart from people,” Mickunas said. “It’s important that people get to see their friends and family.”

Mickunas added she appreciated having more bus stops available because she could quickly buy a ticket to a location of her choice when needed.

“If something comes up in a different state, and I want to travel on short notice and not have to take an airplane. It’s just really convenient,” she said.

Mickunas said traveling can be difficult without owning a car.

“I feel like if you don’t have a car, you’re disadvantaged,” Mickunas said. “I think we should make it more accessible and affordable for people to take transportation that’s not a personal vehicle.”

Mickunas said she thought her roundtrip Burlington Trailways ticket for $70 was reasonably priced for a last-minute buy, but that transportation costs could always be lowered for those traveling out of state.

Diate Jackson, a passenger who was headed on a Burlington Trailways bus to Cedar Rapids, said in the time he’s been using Burlington for the past five years, he thought the service was affordably priced. Jackson said he thought adding more locations of Burlington stops would only benefit the community.

“I think that’s one thing that Burlington Trailways is trying to fix, is to find more times and routes,” Jackson said. “We can’t get everywhere with Burlington Trailways. You have to go to one city and another way from that city to get where you’re going.”

Jackson said he had heard of Megabus but didn’t use its service when he was at the Iowa City Transportation Center on Friday.

“It was cheaper than Burlington; I was looking,” Jackson said. “It just didn’t go to a lot of the places I wanted to go.”