Taking a bus to Philadelphia in 1927 for $1.50


I'm enjoying looking at this billboard, which I found this morning on the Duke University site, which is advertising taking a bus from Trenton, New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $1.50.

My first thought of course, since I live in the 21st Century, is that a buck-fifty isn't much, but now I'm pondering what it was like to spend that amount in 1927. Prices of things change over time of course, but it's all relative to income. I'm not a very mathematical person, and I tend to think of a haircut being twenty-five cents "back in the day" - you know, "shave-and-a-haircut, two bits!" but now I'm really curious about that bus trip in 1927. Hang on, I'm going to go see if I can look it up on an inflation calculator.

OK, I just looked it up and the site I visited said that it would be about twenty-three dollars today. And that sounds very inexpensive for a bus ride, so I think I'll check the distance from Trenton to Philly. OK, I just learned something, it's only about thirty miles. I live in Arizona, and you can go over thirty miles in the Phoenix area and still be in the Phoenix area. So it sounds more reasonable now. To be fair, it does say "local service". I've never lived on the east coast, and it looks like the distances between states, and cities, is pretty small compared to the wide open spaces where I live.


I gotta admit that I really like the frame of the billboard, and those gooseneck lamps, which had become illegal for billboards by the time I started designing them in Tempe in the 1980s. And I really love that cartoon bus!


Looking closer at it, I see that the telephone numbers only had four digits, which is a real blast from the past. And apparently the Trenton bus terminal also served Lambertville.


I'm still confused by the abbreviations, which always seem to baffle me. I suppose people at the time knew what it meant. There's the P.R.T. Bus, and also the symbol there on the left that says RPR. Or is it PRR? Pennsylvania Railroad? Maybe the Mitten Management could answer my questions for me. What was that number?

Hello operator? Get me 4501, please. Oh hello, Darlene! Pardon me, what's that you said? No, I'm just going on an imaginary journey, I'm actually from the 21st Century. Hello? Hello?

Image from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
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