Decline of Greyhound service mirrors rural Canada's plight
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Can't say it is the best of memories, but pretty profound ones. It was my future wife (then a good friend) who met me at the bus station off Dundas Street.
I'm sometimes nostalgic for the trees, rocks, lakes, etc. No concerns other than my discman running out of batteries or running out of change for drinks at bus stop vending machines.
edit: Remembering now that toward the end I had an iPod mini. That would have been 2008. The problem with the iPod was that you couldn't swap batteries.
I think it was the nostalgia for endless travel that led me to book a 7-day rail pass in Japan a few years ago, and spend the entire week just catching trains to nowhere, staying a few hours, and catching them back - spending the entire trip just staring out the window as the countryside flew past at 300kph. In many ways I can't remember ever feeling more relaxed.
I imagine it was really something to arrive at that terminal downtown and step out to a meeting like that.
Toronto, Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta is about 3300 km (under $100 then)
So I think this was a comment on the huge increase in fare prices.
Funny enough I had a similar experience going to Calgary—but I came back some time ago.
When I planned to book a similar trip a decade later, I found that airlines were not only cheaper but Greyhound was more expensive (even after factoring in traveling to one airport and from the other). I was sad, but moved on.
A few years after that, I was planning a true cross country trip, only to discover that it was impossible since Quebec and the Atlantic provinces were served by other companies (which drives up the cost considerably). Again, sadness.
There is something else that this article neglects to mention: Greyhound also provided courier services. I wonder how this is going to impact towns where they were the only alternative to Canada Post.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-northern-...
It could make sense for the government to step in here with a publicly owned transit service if there is a real market failure here in that it's not at all profitable to serve the sparsely populated North.
"'This is an interim solution to cover the loss of Greyhound while we work with communities,' said Transportation Minister Claire Trevena, who said B.C. Transit would be spending $2 million to operate the service starting June 4."
I'm kind of surprised they aren't making it permanent though - $2 million seems pretty cheap, and making it government-run ensures it won't be taken away again.
It only ensures that it won't be taken away again until the next time the province elects a majority Tory government.
Government programs start small like a foot in the door. Then they start to grow due to their very nature (provide a service with no regard for cost or return, if town B has a service then town D is also entitled to one, etc) and the argument is always that their service is indispensible.
Then of course the interests of those working for the state-controlled company also play a role, and the existence of the service starts to become a political sticking point that syphons millions each year and piles o millions more in debt.
If its unprofitable, maybe its a bad idea to have unused transportation. While a few buses seem like negligible damage to the environment, I imagine this greater plan is to grow these locations that are in unfavorable geographic locations. Isnt this environmentally irresponsible?
Having unsustainably small communities is probably less environmentally friendly than growing them to a size where not all services / materials need to be individually imported.
What's the point of money if we're only going to use it to make more of it?
It's a fair question. If the attendance is truly low, maybe a subsidized taxi service would be a better replacement, for example.
Rural areas should be designated for food production and tourism.
I doubt that. Especially combined with home insurance.
For instance having it be closer to a taxi service with small vehicles when there's low usage and only run big buses on commuting hours or other high usage time, for instance.
Cost and environment impact are legitimate questions, I think there are decent solutions.
Remember that something like 80% of global pollution comes from industry. Focusing too hard on individual vehicles is a smokescreen--even if every driver in the world switched to electric cars/trucks/buses tomorrow, it wouldn't make much difference by itself.
I’ve been on a government bus in Thailand. The seat reclines into almost laying position, comes with built in massager, video games and stewardess service. The cost of non-stop 9 hour ride was $20.
I don't think this is salient to the discussion specifically of Greyhound shuttering service in rural Canada. There are no train lines that operate connecting most of the outposts described in the article to urban areas.
The availability of hugely subsidised gas and automobiles has seen people hoodwinked into taking their lives in their hands by driving insanely long distances in frequently dangerous weather. It is all part of costs being displaced onto individuals (who often welcome the displacement as they believe it increases their freedom). Some of those costs are of course also externalized into environmental impacts.
If you have access to gasoline through hours and hours of wilderness (hint: no gas stations).
If the roads are passable.
If you have a safe place to stop and sleep during your trip (hint: you don't).
I mean, you don't need to think about them for very long, but you do want to have a plan for being stuck for hours, or having to turn around in the middle of Nowhere, BC.
In any case, I'm pretty sure a bus needs the roads to be passable as well.
I know that's not true, at least. I got the best prices and wifi on Greyhound Express buses ~5 years ago.
Naturally there will be huge differences in what is cost-effective for these two very different countries.
It obviously doesn’t make sense to run the buses from/to areas where there’s little ridership.
It’s like any other utility. They probably have a septic tank instead of sewer. Slow satellite internet. Pump your own water. Now also lack of bus.
The trend is people moving to the cities. It’s undeniable.
Obviously, rural vs urban and local prevailing wages would mean this varies between locations - but I doubt Canadian wages are much different to those in the UK.
[1] http://www.tas.uk.net/content/images/Session4-Costs-SteveWar... page 13
The business logic for this made sense in a way - GM like to sell lots of cars that have to be replaced every few years rather than a small quantity of buses/coaches that are engineered to provide years of reliable service.
Once the market had been nobbled this way the passenger numbers dropped meaning that no capital was available for better buses/coaches. So there may be reasons from fifty years ago that led to your observation.
Maybe Greyhound elsewhere is different, but for me the entire experience was a nightmare. I took greyhound instead of a plane to save a little money, but I would gladly pay $100 extra just to avoid the whole mess of getting signed in and on the bus.
It may have been an isolated incident, but the Greyhound bus driver I had the last time seemed to have a really sour attitude and was not helpful at all.
They don't have 'hostesses' because we don't have cheap labour.
This is more about plentiful cars, and expensive gas.
40 years ago not everyone had a car, now they do.
Gas was cheap, now it's more expensive driving the prices up somewhat.
Also, the economies in those areas have not kept up meaning it's difficult for them to keep up the demand.
It's an extremely low margin business any one piece fails, and it's up.
In these rural parts of Canada, it's not that the average person is traveling less, it's more that there are fewer people there and more of those who remain have their own transportation.
A legit company has to expend money on maintenance, etc, while the quasi-legal busses are fairly unsafe and fuel all sorts of illegal and quasi-legal activity.
Then again, I have no idea how well they maintain their buses.
'Cause that could be quite the difference - Greyhound bus on the side of the road, because the brakes are shot.
No-name bus merrily running down the road, the brakes are shot.
Li was charged with second-degree murder, but was found not criminally responsible for his actions. Li is a schizophrenic, but had not been taking his medication.
He has since received a full discharge from the mental hospital in Selkirk, Man., where he was being held
Hmm
pure anecdotal but I tried greyhound awhile back. I wanted to go pick up a motorcycle in another state and figured, why not go by bus.
first rule I found out is, never go through a hub and never on a route you have to switch buses. in one of their largest hubs they overbooked and they did this regularly. which meant we had to wait for another bus to arrive. well not knowing the game I missed that one and had to wait for the third and then fourth. except the fourth was not but half full so they would not send it till the next scheduled morning run. seriously, they trapped half of us at the station because they unloaded us which means fight your way to the front.
talking to some long term bus riders and it was evident this is how the company operates. after loss of their only real competition they had no reason to change because more of their customers are too poor to have alternatives or complain.
I ended up doing a one way rental which oddly was less in cost than a bus drive and this included paying my gas and rental costs.
It might be doable between a few close urban cities like Megabus did, but buses in general aren't going to be a big opportunity for making money simply because too many of the the customers don't have money.
[1] https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grants/formula-grants-ru...
Frontier? This isn't 1827. If Canada has a frontier it is The North, not Alberta.
Canada has significant problems when it comes to servicing small rural communities. Take the 82 year-old "cattle and grain farmer from Langenburg, Saskatchewan" who lives 11 hours outside Edmonton. Getting him health care is a huge problem, a much greater issue than him visiting relatives in the city. Greyhound didn't just disconnect small towns. It disconnected Vancouver form Kamloops, two large urban areas. It just disconnected Vancouver from Whistler. Those two cities hosted the 2010 winter games. If that link cannot be made profitable, there is no hope for connecting Langenburg.
(I took the Vancouver-Whistler route many times as a kid. It was horrible. Four hours in a bus station and then a horrible bus to complete a journey that could be done in an hour by car. When I turned 16 I bought a car and never looked back.)
But oh man were the greyhound staff ever rude and because the first driver on the way out half tore my return ticket i had to beg the driver in whistler in let me on the bus with the ticket i had. He was really close to making me go buy a new ticket even after explaining. There was also only 2 or 3 departure times both ways.
I personally saw this behavior in greyhound lines, and it wasn't even an outlier, it seemed to be the modus operandi. I thought it was horrible at the time and made me never want to ride the bus again. In fact, I avoided it as best I could.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greyhound-bus-routes-flixbu...
It's unfortunate that there's a decline in the lifestyle choices that will offer you opportunities and much of a future.
In the past, the city, the suburbs, and the rural areas were all viable options for making a good living and being in a healthy community.
[1] https://www.greyhound.com/en/help-and-info/ticket-info/cardh...
There really isn't any other way to travel across Canada at a fair price anymore.
We subsidize almost all forms of transportation, from the tiny GO railway system in the GTA at $2/ride, to VIA rail's cross-country treks at hundreds of dollars per ride.
Perhaps the numbers are really that dismal that subsidies didn't even make sense?
There's the question!
I also wonder if it isn't a chicken-egg problem. Or maybe I should call it a Field of Dreams problem (if you build it, they will come).
It would be a boon to living in this country if it were easier to travel without spending large amounts on flights. I'd certainly see more of it, myself.
The fact that travel is so expensive or prohibitive can be pretty isolating. My own family lives but two hours away (in rural ON) and I see some of them maybe three times a year. My girlfriend's family is in Victoria (BC) and she sees them more often than that these days...
I missed my bus, and ended up booking a Megabus, 6 hours later. It was a 5 hour trip, my lower back took a beating sitting over a wheel well. Never again.
If you're rich and want to check your privilege, and have a lower class, "Coming to America", kind of experience. Try taking a Greyhound Bus in Chicago. Highly recommend it for that purpose.
Sad story heard in a lot of towns around the US as well. What can a town do when all manufacturing/blue collar work was offshored a decade ago? And people think Russian Facebook ads are what propelled Trump to the whitehouse.
It's not just "legal" ads that helped Trump. The bigger problem was the Russian propaganda and lies that (still) get spread virally over Facebook.
You'd be surprised how appealing BC looks to some of us here. Mind you, it (BC) looks bloody gorgeous all the time but as you say Brexit has nothing to do with the big country.
Just one example, as I'm not very successful at searching for them.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/24/meet-the-brexi...
If I picked up any agenda it was just that of being resigned to rural decline as the world changes.
<speculation:>
I assume operating such a bus line is not all that expensive, and costs shouldn't have been rising because fuel is still cheap.
So ridership must have been dropping.
So apparently they didn't need it all that much, otherwise enough people would have continued riding so that it would have stayed profitable.
That's the morale I guess: if you value something use it more often.
People who live in these places do absolutely use these buses, and some people do need them, but (while I'm not sure about service cost) the prices go up regularly, many buses are packed, slow, and chronically late, and the population is in fact falling dramatically in rural Canada as the elderly move to care homes in the cities where their children already live -- it's not necessarily about choice, but about demographic and geographic change over decades.
If there is a moral here it is not "use it or lose it". Perhaps instead it is merely that we won't be able to rely on even the services we feel are essential, as the world changes around us over time.
Perhaps I'm wrong but its clear you are not right either.
That's why, sometimes governments operate services, even at a loss, as a benefit, to their citizens.