The Orlando

ORLANDO — Winter Park resident Paul Adamson left his car behind recently when he traveled to Gainesville to surprise his fiancee.

Opting out of the two-hour drive, Adamson instead hopped onto a Megabus motor coach from a makeshift bus stop by the side of West Jefferson Street in downtown Orlando. The one-way ticket cost him $12.

Adamson is among a growing number of people, many of them young adults, choosing a new type of intercity bus service over planes, trains and automobiles. These “curbside” motor-coach operators offer better service, with fewer stops and more comfortable seats than conventional buses, plus modern conveniences such as Wi-Fi and power outlets for laptops and smartphones.

Most passengers using these new, express services are traveling 200 to 300 miles, distances “too close to fly and too far to drive,” said Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association, an industry trade group.

Megabus, a discount operator that first appeared in the Northeastern U.S. five years ago, opened a Southeastern hub in Atlanta several months ago that links the Georgia capital with southern locales; it does not serve South Florida. But Greyhound Express — a “premium” service that costs a little more than Greyhound’s regular bus runs — offer service from both Miami and Fort Lauderdale to major cities north of here.

And Miami-based RedCoach offers service to Orlando, Gainesville, Tampa and Tallahassee, marketing itself as luxury transportation that offers passengers the perks of a first-class seat on a domestic plane flight. Amenities include large, leather seats with foot rests, Wi-Fi connections, and flat-screen televisions. Each bus has 27 seats, compared with more than 50 on a conventional motor coach.

Intercity bus service was the only long-distance mode of transportation to grow at a notable rate last year, according to a study commissioned by DePaul University in Chicago. And that growth was due largely to a boom in curbside service.

The federal government doesn’t count motor-coach passengers, but the DePaul study noted that intercity-bus departures rose 7.1 percent last year compared with 2010 — including a 32 percent jump in “curbside” departures. The number of airline passengers, meanwhile, grew 1.8 percent in 2011, while ridership on Amtrak, the nation’s passenger-rail service, rose 5.2 percent, the study found.

“I can’t say we are recession-proof, but we’ve been in pretty good shape compared to other travel industries,” Pantuso said of motor-coach operators.

Curbside bus operators typically pick up their passengers at publicly accessible areas — designated street intersections or parking lots, for example —and have few, if any, stops between major destinations. Because most of these companies don’t maintain fixed terminals, they can easily add or drop routes based on market conditions or passenger demand.

Passengers tend to be young — about half are between 18 and 34 — and about 65 percent are women, say bus companies.

Pantuso said more women and younger travelers are drawn to these new services in part because they have shed the image of intercity coaches and bus travel generally as unclean and unsafe.

“A lot of these companies are providing curbside service instead of an old, rundown terminal in the middle of town,” Pantuso said.

These upscale intercity bus companies compete with airlines and Amtrak by providing similar services at lower prices. RedCoach, Megabus and Greyhound Express provide free Wi-Fi, computer hook-up stations, and extra leg room compared with Greyhound’s regular intercity buses.

“People are self-entertained as they’re traveling,” Pantuso said of the Wi-Fi and USB outlets for use with laptops, tablets, phones and music players. “The environment is a big game-changer.”

Clarisse Carbonell, an Orlando resident with a law practice in Miami, has taken RedCoach between the two cities about once every two weeks for the past year. She said she has tried other bus lines but prefers RedCoach.

“The other people make a lot of stops, and you’re on the bus for an extra hour just waiting for everybody to get dropped off. I don’t like that,” Carbonell said. “This one has some stops, but not that many.”