Students in the Maritimes won't be busing home for Christmas this year.
Acadian Lines announced today they will no longer be operating in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island, as of November 30.
In a statement published on August 7, Acadian VP Denis Gallant said overall, popular routes are unable to compensate for less popular routes, and so Maritime operations are always losing money.
This comes on the heels of a 5-month labour dispute which cancelled service for the winter in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Acadian Lines is the only intercity bus service in the Maritimes. Train service is sparse and slower, and even if you fly, you need to get home from the airport somehow.
Do you use Acadian Lines to get around? What will you do now? Do you have a car? Does your friend have a car? Send her number and your stories to Theresa@rabble.ca.
Photo: An Acadian Lines bus parked in Antigonish, N.S. Richard MacKenzie via The Casket
Funny how something like the cancellation of a bus route takes on a whole new meaning in a neo-con capitalist society. First they cancelled the passenger trains (and even today if you go to New Brunswick from Quebec your passenger train is shuttled off to a side track sometimes for hours to let the freight trains get through or for hook-ups to other cars) and now the buses. I guess the message from the capitalists is once again, "we don't give a sh-t about people unless they happen to be shareholders or rich fellow neocons.
Now that the capitalists have gotten rid of the wheat board and destroyed the fishing industry, I guess the trains aren't necessary any more.
The only reason they don't get rid of the rest of us is because we buy all their crap.
Hi Theresa,
Thank you for this article. I grew up in Nova Scotia in the 1960s and 1970s and return there regularly. Our family lived in Windsor for three years. We would watch from our back door the passenger Budd car going to and from Halifax and Yarmouth, several times per day if I recall correctly. This is unbelievable that the governments of the region are presiding over the decline of rail and now bus passenger service. Those buses are essential for students and other lower income peoole. And I shake my head every time I walk along the railway cut into downtown Halifax, used only by the occasional freight train (oh, and the neglected VIA Rail once per day), and ponder the rush-hour traffic stupidity that chokes the peninsua twice per day.
But since these governments are what they are, perhaps the bigger question now is what progressive society will do about this? Sounds like a propitious moment to have a mass campaign for public transportation, not just for Halifax but for the Maritime region. Get off your asses, governments! Oh, you don't want to? Then we'll push you down from your thrones.
This neglect of public transportation by governments is paralleled by their neglect of agriculture. I am disturbed every time I travel in rural Nova Scotia and see the abandoned farms. Then walk into Sobeys and see the food for sale from all over the world, except from the Maritimes (yes, I know, there are a few exceptions of items here and there). And fossil fuel-based urban settlement spreading out like a spider web from Charlottetown onto some of the richest farmland in the world? Don't get me started.
Roger Annis
Vancouver BC