Much of B.C. will soon be without a bus service, and that’s alarming. But should the B.C. government fill the void with a taxpayer-subsidized bus program?
It’s an option currently on the desk of Transportation Minister Claire Trevena and should be carefully considered.
Greyhound Canada is citing dwindling ridership and mounting financial losses as the chief reason for stopping the service.
Greyhound’s announcement came as a shock, but it shouldn’t have been given the company asked some months ago that it be absolved of its responsibility to operate money-losing northern routes.
Hopefully private bus companies sense an opportunity. And some undoubtedly will, but there will inevitably be a number of B.C. communities shut out of this new arrangement.
If so, should the B.C. government step in? There is a persuasive argument that it should.
It’s not like the province isn’t already in the transportation-subsidy game. In this fiscal year, the government will give BC Ferries more than $221 million to subsidize money-losing routes (literally, only a couple are profitable). It will also give B.C. Transit more than $115 million to operate urban bus services in places like Victoria and Kelowna.
The government also spends billions of dollars in Metro Vancouver alone to build transit infrastructure. Its contributions to urban transit systems are gargantuan.
So it’s not a real stretch to think the province might dive in here. And the financial implications of doing so don’t seem particularly daunting.
Greyhound says it is losing about $35,000 a day from its current operations. If the government were to absorb that kind of loss it would amount to almost $13 million annually – almost the same as the subsidy for the inland ferries.
The bus service connects remote communities. I remember my wife being stranded in Regina in the aftermath of 9/11, desperately trying to get home for my father’s death at a time when planes were not flying.
She tells a story of bus passengers bonding and helping each other for days on end. It happens on buses more than on planes.
Folks living in rural communities need that bus just as much as those people living on the coast with their ferry service. The bus is the proverbial lifeline for many people.
Of course, political considerations may be a factor. The NDP is largely shut out of bus-service ridings, but four MLAs (Doug Donaldson, Michelle Mungall, Katrine Conroy and Jennifer Rice) represent rural ridings hurt by the cuts.
I predict Trevena will do the right thing and protect rural communities if the private sector doesn’t step up to the plate.
In other words, she won’t throw them under the bus. Well, here’s hoping.
Keith Baldrey is chief political correspondent for Global BC.
