Greyhound Canada To End

Misfit wrote:

Your universal healthcare was fought for by the people of rural Saskatchewan. Without rural Saskatchewan fighting for universal healthcare you would be dependent on the private health insurance companies just like the Americans today. 

Interesting is that rural Saskatchewan supported and used a publicly run regional bus service for over 60 years successfully. I don’t know if any other rural area of Canada that had a provincial crown corporation providing such a service to remote communities. 

Saskatchewan has been the leader in Canada in creating government programs for its people. Many of the ideas you take for granted were fought for and started right here in Saskatchewan.  Saskatchewan is the birthplace of social democratic governments in Canada. There are many things that you today only dream about that we have already had.

people did not vote to remove these services but they did elect right wing governments who did take these services away even though they did not campaign on removing these services. So your saying that rural Saskatchewan voted to remove these services is not true. Not is your saying true that rural Saskatchewan wants to remove unversal healthcare when it was in fact rural Saskatchewan that fought to bring it in. It was Saskatchewan that had the doctor’s strike to fight the implementation of universal healthcare. Universal healthcare is a gift from Saskatchewan to you.

now kindly quit telling me what rural Saskatchewan wants and votes for when voting did not take place to remove these public transportation services. The people voted for nothing. And Saskatchewan has proven for over 60 years that STC could provide that service to the residents of rural Saskatchewan. And it is not up to someone from Ottawa to tell people in Saskatchewan where they should live or what services they should have.

Apart from telling me stuff I already know -- you miss the fact that the ideology that brought in medicare appears to have collapsed in its birthplace. So speaking about the pasat for present decisions is just a distraction.

Second, I have no sympathy for buyers remorse when it comes to electing conservatives. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the notion that the conservatives did not run on any particular slash and burn proposal. Not one fricken bit.  Many people do not vote. Those who do vote have all the information needed to know what conservatives do. The issue of public transit service in Saskatchewan was in the last election there: the NDP brought it up repeatedly. They wanted to expand it and warned that the SP were a threat to it. The NDP lost the argument and not by a little bit.

Like I said, I call bullshit on voters of right wing parties pretending to be in favor of universal healthcare. If you can't hear the dog whistles then it is not as if they are not blowing loudly enough. 72% decided to trust the Sask Party in rural Saskatchewan. The rest of Canada does not owe you anything you need to look at your neighbours. In that case of healthcare we have a federal mandate to ensure universality so I expect it to be imposed at federal cost on places that do not support it. Not so much for transit even though I wish we had that universal mandate. We need that before we spend dollars in Saskatchewan to make up what you got rid of.

Here in my province my neighbours elected the Ford government. Those who voted for it are not a majority but a minority (unlike rural Saskatchewan). Each Conservative voter is responsible for all that is happening and I do not care that Ford did not promise anything -- they ran a no-platform campaign. I will fight them here but I sure am not expecting the BC taxpayers to make up the difference of anything that Ford gets rid of. That's on us.

But without your eastern funding for interprovincial transportation, how do low income Canadians travel from Toronto or Ottawa to Vancouver to visit family? The bus system let eastern Canadians from Ottawa travel west.

and as for people voting in the Saskatchewan Party, I don’t think that most Canadians have the sophistication or awareness to really know that a right-wing government is going to dismantle or privatize their public services. You know the difference and I know that this is what right-wing governments do but I do not think that the majority of Canadians are that ideologically sophisticated to know any better. Many right-wingers are aware but the majority of Canadians are just plain ignorant when it comes to matters of the state.

Misfit wrote:

But without your eastern funding for interprovincial transportation, how do low income Canadians travel from Toronto or Ottawa to Vancouver to visit family? The bus system let eastern Canadians from Ottawa travel west.

and as for people voting in the Saskatchewan Party, I don’t think that most Canadians have the sophistication or awareness to really know that a right-wing government is going to dismantle or privatize their public services. You know the difference and I know that this is what right-wing governments do but I do not think that the majority of Canadians are that ideologically sophisticated to know any better. Many right-wingers are aware but the majority of Canadians are just plain ignorant when it comes to matters of the state.

I disagree if you want to claim that voters are so ignorant as to be unaware of this totally predictable trait in every single Conservative government that gets elected in Canada ever.

I also do not want to play games with you about what the average Canadian knows. You are right a majority don't know. Let's start by taking non voters and adding them to those who are not eligble to vote and there you will get your majority. As for a majority of those who go out and vote Conservative I call bullshit.

BTW another point: You want to know about people who invented medicare and were on the left in rural Saskatchewan -- we can talk about them here. Many left your province and now live here.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Misfit wrote:

Since Blakeney on, the Saskatchewan NDP has not been a rural party. They have catered to the urban vote and trashed the rural areas for years. Purple gas, the school taxation plan, the cutting of agricultural programs etc. The NDP is not a farmers party at all. Now the majority of seats are rural and they don’t stand a chance of forming government.

The Saskatchewan NDP had quite a great deal of support in rural areas in the 1971, 1991, and 1995 general elections.

Indeed, that is the vote that deserted the NDP and is keeping the SP in power -- correct?

All this said a real national transportation policy that does assert a right to transit and the ability to live without a car would be an excellent national policy. An investment in the infrastructure of electric self driving vehicles and technology and funding to make sure that al parts of Canada are covered. This would certainly help with climate change.

Timebandit wrote:

First off - Wait, rural conservatives are voting against their own interests for ideological reasons??? Say it ain’t so. Ow, damn, rolled my eyes so hard I’ve got a brain sprain...

Leaving the sarcasm aside, this is a normal thing for the row prairies. They routinely will vote in the conservatives for ideological reasons and then wonder why the conservative government that they voted for overwhelmingly takes away things that they really shouldn’t. Why do they do this? I have no idea. There is simply no rational reason for them to do this.

It’s an unfortunate truth that the left in Saskatchewan  has died out in a lot of real places. Part of the reason is that the generation that brought us Medicare and cooperatives and so many other socialist institutions has largely died out. Their children have been largely comfortable ever cents and don’t see the need for those structures anymore and quite the same way that their parents and grandparents did. The demographics have simply changed. There are times that I really mourn for the Saskatchewan that I grew up in and for the people on the left that were Huge influence is for me but the fact is that it’s changed and it’s not going back anytime soon.

I was not joking when I said they are here. Many people on the left in Saskatchewan simply left the province. During the period since medicare there were two trends:

1) Sask losing people

2) Urbanization, with the rural areas losing people

In 1971, they voted out the Liberals and voted for Allen Blakeney.

in 1991, they voted out Grant Devine who nearly bankrupted the province and ruined the PC name for good so that they had to rename themselves the Saskatchewan Party.

1995, Roy Romanov had implemented drastic cuts to try to turn our debt situation down and moved us from horrible credit rating to a stable one. 

After that the NDP has been doomed in rural areas. The school tax was a big sore spot for rural Saskatchewan that eventually got them turfed for good.

and yes I too mourn for the old Saskatchewan.

Sean, I do not appreciate you saying that people voted to have these programs turfed. And I do not appreciate you suggesting that Saskatchewan is asking for handouts from you. None of this is true.

Misfit, a lot of people did vote conservative knowing what they proposed to do and continued in support of those cuts. It wasn’t everyone, but it was a significant number. 

You also had an episode of epic self-destruction by the SKNDP in Saskatchewan in 2009-2011, which it still hasn’t recovered from. That left very little viable opposition to a number of cuts in a lot of areas, where in the SP’s first term there was at least some opposition. After the 2011 election they had a massive majority and could do things with impunity - and have. 

Timebandit wrote:

Misfit, a lot of people did vote conservative knowing what they proposed to do and continued in support of those cuts. It wasn’t everyone, but it was a significant number.

Or they voted conservative because they fel it very important to retain the definition of marriage between a man and a woman and that public policy be guided by a certain interpretation of what the Bible says.

I think SK is more right wing than Alberta right now. Certainly as much. 

A24, combination of that factor and an attitude of “why should I have to subsidize poor people with my tax dollars”. Among others. It’s basically “I’ve got mine, Jack, and I don’t give a shit about yours” with the rural middle class and wealthy. And there are a LOT more wealthy farmers now than 40 years ago. 

In the BC Liberals we had the sweetest smiling neocons, who I would argue were every bit as right wing as the neocons in the Sask Party or the Man Conservative Party. Its not in the name its in the ideology.

..i can very much relate to the french yellow vest. in fact i envy it.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..i can very much relate to the french yellow vest. in fact i envy it.

Unfortunately co-opted completely by the right here - but I understand

..saw 3 of those coopted fools standing on a corner saturday waving canadian flags and holding signs. i could only read "no trudeau" as i passed by. couldn't make out the rest.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

To move the thread back to its intended topic:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I will make another transit observation that Greyhound may be thinking about and people here may not. There is a technological revolution happening.

Presently we only have larger, mass, labour intensive public transit or private cars by those able to afford to own and have the ability to operate them. We all know this dichotomy is ending.

What will replace it is a transit method where you can use a car, without a driver and without knowing how to or being able to drive. This will change private transport radically meaning many people will retain private transit when they would have been forced onto public transit.

This will change public transit: first it will remove ridership of the people that will be able to retain private transit and they will not longer pay into the system or be users of larger means of transport like buses. Second public transit will have the option to use on demand dispatch of smaller vehicles to adapt imediately to demand. All these vehicles will operate independently of direct labour. Instead, there will be labour to operate the system remotely and only arrive to deal with problems. This means instead of running large buses to 2 am in the city they might send a car and the route won't go around the city but address where the people want to go. For the rural communities regional parking lots of autonomous cars, van and buses, can be parked around the province and as demand arrives they will start up and go to where needed - and cruacially when they leave their passangers can return or go to the next one without a driver. This will cost a fraction of what any system does now. The flexibility is light years ahead of what there is now.

Seeing this writing on the wall, large companies may now see the technology and realize that there is no point investing in a system using drivers and gas vehicles knowing the entire system is going.

If you believe that public transit is a right -- as I do -- instead of investing just in a place where the majority do not want the service and demand is too low do something bolder. Call for a Canada-wide network to be built as soon as possible of integrated, on demand, size and place apporpirate, autonomous vehicles running on renewable electricity. The government could draw in its best companies and invest billions. The reuslt would be worth it, sustainable economically and environmentally and extremely progressive. It would transform rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

Then we are talking.

There is a very good reason to question these technological advancements and whether or not they are helpful. I've already stated in other places that there are many environmental problems with private vehicle ownership, and changing to electric cars only solves the carbon dioxide problem while introducing environmental problems of heavy metals. There's another concern with self-driving cars. One of the arguments that people use in favour of public transit is that it benefits people with disabilities and helps them to move around. If self-driving cars become a thing, then you have negated a key argument for providing public transit. Why spend money on public transit for disabled people when they can have more freedom by getting a car? (Neglected is the class issues and poverty that people with disabilities often face, which could also cause them problems in that regard.)

One of the key arguments for public transit is that the environmental impact of public transit is far less than accomodating private transportation for individuals. So to use your parking lot example, those lots are taking up valuable land that can provide housing, habitat to animal species, and plants and wetlands that can soak up excess carbon and turn the trend of increasing carbon concentration in the opposite direction. Does that mean that private automobiles are going to go away any time soon? No, but we need to start having a conversation about making that sacrifice and providing alternatives. For example, car sharing is growing in popularity. That allows people the freedom to drive when they have to while otherwise not having the hassle of owning a car. This is but one example of where we need to go.

I don't understand the point being made here:

Ont he one hand you argue for car sharing -- this means the people would need to drive and then somehow return the car for the next person. Autonomous driving allows the car to return itself. How can car sharing do anything other than reduce demand for public transit while still offering a more expensive option than autonomous car hire and one that offers nothing to disabled people. With a fleet of autonomous cars you can share one car among many people becuase it can go to the next person. Car sharing means having to keep more cars close by. Car sharing does not plug in to public transit but autonomous cars could provide a local feeder sysem to a backbone like rail.

..good broadcast above. turns out manitoba also rejected the 10 million from the fed gov arguing they weren't in the bus business.

Why was Manitoba never in the bus business? The Sask CCF set up the bus company as a vital service four rural areas. Why did ther Manitoba NDP never do the same on the many occasions it was in power? Real question.

swallow wrote:

Why was Manitoba never in the bus business? The Sask CCF set up the bus company as a vital service four rural areas. Why did ther Manitoba NDP never do the same on the many occasions it was in power? Real question.

..can't answer your good question swallow. i would also like to hear a response. but back in the 70's the ndp owned a bus manufacturing company for a while then sold it. flyer industries it was called. they should have kept it.

quote:

Flyer Industries

Flyer has been building trolleybuses since 1970, the year of their first prototype. At first, they put the electrical components (probably GE) removed from aging Brill trolleys in a new body. Toronto received roughly 150 of them. Hamilton did too. These were the E700 series models. San Francisco (Muni) bought two. Dayton had a fleet of E700s. Flyer then came out with the E800 series. Vancouver received 50 of these and Hamilton received a small number of them. The Hamilton E800 had new components though they were the standard design of trolleybuses from the late 30s to the late 50s when the then last trolley buses were manufactured. San Francisco had over 300 of these. Seattle and Philadelphia bought AMG trolleys which were basically E800s built under license. Then Flyer came out with the E900. Vancouver bought 245 of these. 80 of this group were bought by Mendoza, Argentina where they were refurbished and put into service. The Flyer artics were of this series. These 50 were the first articulated trolleybuses Flyer produced and as nearly everyone know, these were problematic. Flyer received an order of more than 250 NFI LFR-40s and LFR-60s from Vancouver. the LFR-60s are articulated (60 is the length in feet). Philadelphia acquired around 28 NFI LFR-40s.Vancouver is very pleased with these state-of-the-art models, which have Kiepe electric components (the motors, I think, were built by Shkoda (erroneously transliterated as Skoda)), the very successful Czech trolleybus manufacturer. BTW, Flyer was acquired by another source which renamed the company and its buses New Flyer. They are still manufactured in the Flyer plant in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The solution is a non-profit transit corporation run by rural and remote communities themselves organized to serve their needs. Transfer ownership of unmaintained railroads to the communities they serve. 

Currently it costs under $100 to fly between Toronto and Vancouver and cities in between!

So it's currently very hard to bus companies to compete for customers against airlines. Who wants to pay the same or more for a bus ride that takes very much longer than a plane ride?

Check out Flair Airlines for great prices.

https://flyflair.com/where-we-fly

Carbon pricing/fees/taxes/tariffs could help out with that.

Part of the problem with the Greyhound business model is the size of the buses they run almost everywhere. Smaller inter-community shuttles might be viable, especially if they were subsidized similar to urban transit.