PARLOR CARS: "Shaq-sized reclining seats, computer terminals, sound systems and cable TV. They are designed to haul business types between the two cities with the ease and comfort that disappeared on airlines about the time the last Pan Am Clipper went out of service." A description of a parlor car?

For those of you born after the moon landing, a parlor car offers larger seats, an attendant to keep your highball glass filled, and preboarding at major stations. The railroads used to offer this service on day trains: usually the parlor car was separated from the masses riding up front in coach by the dining car, and sometimes the parlor car provided a stunning view through large picture windows as shown here. (The beauty shown in the middle used to offer riders a view of Chicago receding in the horizon at 100 mph, whirling toward Milwaukee in 75 minutes, behind a steam locomotive riding on jointed rails and protected by semaphore signals and alert men in the towers, but that's a rant for another day.) What Amtrak calls its Pacific Parlour Car is more properly called the first-class lounge, and serious overnight trains have one in order that the carriage trade does not have to occupy the lounge provided for the coach passengers.

The parlor car described in the first paragraph, however, is a bus. There are some bus operators who call their service parlor car service, and the concept has caught on as a way to deal with airport hassles. InstaPundit linked to a Brock Yates column that discovers bus operators eating the airlines' lunch on shorter trips. More comfortable, no security hassles, often faster door-to-door.

Now if someone would connect the dots between deregulating bus transportation (which means Greyhound cannot protest the startup of new services) and the emergence of these services. Perhaps there's an economics research topic or six here.