Spencer Hostetter and his wife Carol have lived in Decatur, an Atlanta suburb, their entire lives without once visiting Nashville, though they’d talked about it. I met them on Nashville’s new express bus service, Megabus, as they were heading to Music City for a night out.

At $2 each for their round-fare bus trip, they said, “Why not?”

“This Megabus thing came up, and Carol looked at me and said, ‘This is too good to pass up. We’ve got to go somewhere.’ We thought, we’ve never been to Nashville, so let’s go to Nashville,” recalls Hostetter, a certified public accountant.

Could Nashville’s new express bus service be our answer to light rail — without the rail — but at the cost of a jar of marinara sauce? Some experts say we don’t have the density to support light rail. But I like to travel, so I decide to book a one-day trip to Chattanooga to see a friend. At these prices, to echo the Hostetters, ‘Why not?’

One reason for the low cost is the lack of terminals, as Greyhound has. I have to book the ticket online, where I learn:

• Cost ($1 for a one-way ticket)

• What it would cost to change my reservation (also $1)

• Where I would board the bus (wear warm clothes in the winter)

• I could not bring a pet unless it was a “service” animal.

• I could take one piece of luggage to not exceed 62 inches (length + width + height) or anything over 50 pounds, and that I could bring one small carry-on bag.

The cheap bus service does start at an unbelievable $1 for a one-way trip and goes up as the travel date gets closer and seats fill up. But the maximum price is still about $25 for same-day service, though that max has not yet been set for the Nashville-to-Chattanooga route.

Earlier this week, one could book same day to Chattanooga or Atlanta for $1.

Megabus launched its Nashville-to-Chattanooga-to-Atlanta-and-back hub Nov. 16. The service began in Europe in 2003, came to the U.S. in 2006 and is one of the fastest-growing, inter-city express services in the country. It failed in Los Angeles and San Francisco but has flourished on the East Coast and in the Midwest and appears to be doing well with its established routes in the South.

My boyfriend drops me off at the downtown pick-up spot – a parking lot on Commerce St. between 4th and 5th avenues – at 7:30 a.m. The bus is scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. Megabus’ other Nashville pick-up location is the Ramada Inn at 303 Interstate Drive in East Nashville. Two buses leave Nashville daily, one at 8 a.m. and another at 4:30 p.m. The Chattanooga route takes 2.5 hours. Nashville to Atlanta takes 4 hours, 50 minutes.

In line, everyone is talking about the prices. The sleepy kid in the bandana who was soon to take a seat in back of me says that going to Birmingham for $6 is “crazy.” Freddie Taylor, our friendly and officious driver, is on time. I take a seat near the front and spread out my laptop and Kindle. Thankfully, the early shuttle isn’t so full. The trip back, carrying the majority from Atlanta, is packed.

Martha Redo, an attorney who splits time between Nashville and New York, is heading to Atlanta. From there, she and her cousin will be driving to New York for the holidays.

Redo, who is familiar with express buses in New York, tells me when we part company that the ride was pleasant and generally easier than driving.

“The buses are comfortable,” she says. “I have taken other buses elsewhere before, and this was perfectly in line with them. I’ve driven down to Atlanta alone, which is fine, but to be honest, this way was better, and the way I am coming back will make it easier, because I don’t have to worry about leaving my car for a length of time.”

The business model, I find out, is called “yield management,” so talk on the bus that the pricing “had to be introductory” was just rumor. This I actually tell the few folks around me a little later, “Yield management is an approach to maximizing profits when a business has a fixed, “perishable” resource (as in seats) and can offer varying rates to customers willing to pay different prices for the same product.” Pretty much everyone is asleep at this point.

On the way out, I look up Greyhound’s website – via Megabus’ free wifi connection – to see how they’d responded to what must have been an enormous shock even when the service simply crossed the pond in 2003.

Greyhound actually has a version of Megabus called BoltBus, but only in the Northeast. It does have “Greyhound Express,” but not from Nashville. I inquire about traveling from Atlanta to Birmingham on their express service. The cost, $44, still better than the $96.50 it would cost me to go from Nashville to Atlanta same week on their regular service.

Megabus general manager John Emberson says there can be glitches with any service that uses roads and is subject to weather. There have been complaints on some forums about scheduling.

“Generally speaking, we do OK, but weather and traffic conditions and accidents can, obviously, delay a bus,” he says.

I pick up emails and tool around on Facebook. There seem to be no problems getting, and staying, online. Then, just to be sure, I download a book from Amazon. Drawbacks? Even at 5-foot-2, my knees hit the seat in front of me, which does not “sit well” with the college-aged woman using that seat to watch a movie on her laptop.

We do a smooth and steady speed limit, and the bus seems “all window” so the view, when one presents itself, is pretty spectacular, particularly crossing the Tennessee River. The bathroom, basically an “indentation” similar to ones on airplanes, is efficient and clean. The rails are there for a reason. Jets usually go in a straight line; buses do not.

Emberson says the business model is not new.

“[Yield management] is just a tool,” he explains. “It’s what hotels and airlines do to maximize utilization by providing discounts during volume periods with the hope of keeping our volumes high, and that will allow us to keep our prices low.”

Does he think the new Atlanta hub will be a winner?

“Megabus should work in most major urban markets, and we are pretty confident that it is going to work out of our Atlanta-to-Nashville hub. It looks strong right now,” Emberson adds.

The company is now servicing a Memphis-to-Birmingham-to-Atlanta route and is considering attaching a route for those wanting to go from Nashville to Memphis and back.

“That is a plan that we will be looking at early in the new year,” Emberson says.

Why did it take so long to include Nashville? Emberson says the company wanted to make sure the established routes were of “good quality.”

“We are very careful to grow. We want to keep quality at foremost,” he adds. “I think we have a good feel for what we are doing at this point in time both in terms of service and in pricing.”

Megabus sells connections “separately.” Going from Nashville to Atlanta then on to another city in the region such as Birmingham or Montgomery requires a separate booking. There would not necessarily be tickets available, particularly at low prices.

It’s strange to get dropped by a bus at the outskirts of a theater parking lot in an unfamiliar city, but as the weather permits, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. I take a cab to Chattanooga’s Riverfront to meet my buddy, who later drives me back to the lot for my return trip.

I hunker down for the ride home. The Hostetters tell me they are simply planning a night at The Ryman. The woman next to me recounts some drama from earlier on her way out of Atlanta on Megabus’ maiden voyage. Apparently, someone was late and the bus was beginning to pull away when the driver of the car blocked the bus. A stand-off ensued, but not for long; The Big Blue Bus waits for no one, and the person or persons who booked a cheap ride had to turn and go home. Note: Don’t be late.

The Hostetters got more than they bargained for in Music City. We are nothing if not an entertaining town.

“We had a great time. I tell you we honky-tonked all the way around,” Spencer Hostetter tells me later in a phone call. “We stayed at the Union Station hotel, which was just phenomenal. It was right in the center of everything we wanted to do. We went over to Vanderbilt and toured all around the city and went down Second Avenue and then we went to The Ryman. We felt like we did Nashville.”

I think of all the people who will be able to come to Nashville, spending the money here they saved by not purchasing gas for the drive.

Later, I book a trip on Megabus from Nashville to Atlanta mid-January. The cost is $2 round trip if I take the early service, which I plan to do because my aim is to visit Ikea … just because.