(Photo: Dave Jamieson)

It’s a sure sign of a brutal economy when you see Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) climb aboard a Megabus.

This morning D.C.’s congressional delegate took a seat near the front of the blue-and-yellow bus parked at 10th and H streets NW, then stood up and ruminated on the recession for a bit.

“People want to be able to travel here even when times are tough,” Norton said. “They’re looking for alternatives that won’t cost an arm and a leg.”

In fairness, Norton wasn’t one of the thrifty travelers looking for a $20 fare to New York and free Wi-Fi. She was on the bus for a press conference hosted by Megabus, the Coach USA subsidiary which, like competitor BoltBus, is known for running dirt-cheap express lines between cities.

The company is adding ten new cities to what’s now a D.C. hub, some of them more surprising than others: Boston; Buffalo, Charlotte, N.C.; Hampton, Va.; Harrisburg, Penn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Pittsburgh; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond; and Toronto. The D.C. express routes had previously run only to Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Dale Moser, Coach USA president, said they wanted to roll out the new lines in time for holiday travel.

“We’ve already been able to bring over a million people to or from Washington” since starting D.C. service in 2008, Moser said. “We’re going to continue to grow this business and bring more value to tourists and to residents of the greater D.C. area, giving them more affordable travel options than they have today.”

The expansion is good news for any traveler who puts value ahead of time and comfort. The fares are ridiculously cheap when compared to Amtrak, and considerably more convenient than traditional bus lines like Greyhound.

As for how they chose these new routes, Moser said it was mostly from customer feedback. He said there was a high demand in those towns for service to D.C. and, to a lesser degree, demand from D.C.-area residents looking to get to those towns. (Norton and Destination D.C. were there to hype the new routes as a tourism booster.)

Some of the new routes, like D.C. to Knoxville, are about as long as Megabus can efficiently run, Moser told us. It doesn’t have anything to do with gas prices – it’s more about running high-frequency routes on decent timetables. He said one route can’t run much more than 300 to 350 miles, or about eight to ten hours, without gumming up their hub-and-spoke system, he said. So don’t expect any D.C.-to-Chicago routes in the future.

“We think we’ve hit a niche market,” Moser said of the high-volume express lines. “We are not after the kind [of bus] that goes between two cities stopping in every little town along the way.”

Moser said they'll be promoting the new routes by giving out 10,000 free seats for travel between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15. More on that here.