Greyhound Canada To End

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Similar thing with the bus. I doubt this was really about the service not being viable. Given their track record I thing they just weren't making enough to consider it worth it.

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and freed up those profitable lines for a service that actually factored public service into their business model.

Just asking here, but were the "profitable" lines awarded exclusively to Greyhound?

I personally feel that Crown corporations should typically compete for business, but I'd certainly never suggest that they should be unable to.  Canada Post's "Priority Mail" competes with UPS and Purolator and FedEx, as (I think) it should, but it would be a bit self-defeating if we said that CP cannot carry courier packages in markets served by the other three.

Aren't those basically the same thing?  Businesses don't actually have to be hemmorhaging money before they can say "this isn't worth it".  You keep insisting you're not suggesting that Greyhound owed us anything, but at the same time you also keep insisting that "they could have done more" or that there's something immoral about them winding down operations.

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Actually Magoo, I support Crown corporations having a monopoly.

Very well.  But I was really inquiring about why STC had to wait for Greyhound to withdraw in order to serve some markets.

WRT to a monopoly, that's certainly one way for a Crown corporation to succeed.  But I would think that what with the "no profit" thing, CCs should succeed regardless, shouldn't they?  How could a private company, with shareholders expecting cheques, compete against a lean, mean CC with no such mandate?  Are we forgetting how PetroCanada put all the other gas stations out of business??  And how private couriers like UPS or FedEx are hanging on by a toenail?

Fyi, Canada post owns purolator.

And Yes, greyhound served the highway 16 and 1 routes in the province, as well as the route to Calgary. A lot of cream actually. Sure STC had the option of going to war with them but what would have been the point of that given Greyhounds national service (though now in hindsight they may as well just have done that). But no, unsupervised competition is not always a productive thing, as with the phone situation here, and the bus.

Why? Because the most important thing isn't how the businesses fare, and their freedom. It is Making sure the public is served.
After all there are far too many cases of businesses closing down when it suits them, and leaving communities in the lurch and governments to clean up their mess.

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And Yes, greyhound served the highway 16 and 1 routes in the province, as well as the route to Calgary. A lot of cream actually. Sure STC had the option of going to war with them but what would have been the point of that given Greyhounds national service

Would the point have been "healthy competition"?  Doesn't that benefit the public?

But if you're saying that STC voluntarily chose to only service the most unprofitable routes and leave the "cream" for that American company then how can you express surprise when they fold faster than Superman on laundry day?

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Why? Because the most important thing isn't how the businesses fare, and their freedom. It is Making sure the public is served.

Again, I think the public is well served by lower fares and two choices.  Or at least better than by a monopolistic fare and no choices.

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After all there are far too many cases of businesses closing down when it suits them, and leaving communities in the lurch and governments to clean up their mess.

Exactly.  And yes, I'm looking at YOU, Blockbuster Video!  Dafuq am I supposed to do with my VHS recorder now??  You didn't even TRY to fight Netflix.  You just up and ran as soon as you weren't making billions any more. 

You're still sort of acting like companies have (or should have) some moral responsibility to the very customers who are no longer supporting them, though.  Instead of saying I'm just making that up, maybe you could just explain it?  What do private businesses owe their customers, aside from the obvious (e.g. a safe product and such)?

Magoo,

Two choices makes sense only if you refuse to consider how it works on the ground. I am guessing you are thinking about an airport terminal where there are the Air Canada ticket window will be alongside the WestJet.  The difference is that Airport terminals are stand alone operations.  Bus Terminals are owned by the bus company.  Now I am pretty sure I have seen terminals with secondary companies represented (can't remember for sure).  However the smaller companies were not in competition with the company that was the owner and main tenant of the terminal. This is how the market system evolved and it evolved into almost exclusively monopoly positions on all the routes.  So you cannot say with one breath let the market figure it out and then with the next breath that multiple companies are the best option.

Significant barriers to entry. I would guess that Greyhound owned the infrastructure along the way.  So the STC would either of had to duplicate this or found a way to muscle into Greyhounds terminals.

Secondly a money making route may be less inviting dividing the available customers in half.

Canada Post has the mandate to serve all corners of the country. Perhaps they should consider entering the people transport service industry - they already have to deal with delivery of materials to some extent (mail and Purolater).

Ok! Both Smith and I have mentioned this repeatedly.,,

STC owned all the terminals. The Saskatchewan government under Brad Wall sold off all the bus terminals. Greyhound was no longer able to use the bus terminals. They were picking up passengers on the outskirts of the cities because STC owned all the terminals and sold them all.

in Regina, the old STC bus terminal is now the new Regina City police detachment headquarters. It was a brand new building.

Saskatchewan Transportation Company was formed as a crown corporation way back in the early CCF government days because Saskatchewan has a thousand gazillion small communities speckled throughout the province. These people needed public transportation to link them with the larger cities.

it was an NDP brainchild and the Saskatchewan government destroyed it for as what Smith said for ideological reasons because it was something that was important to the NDP party in this province.

ovwr the years, the STC made the province a lot of money.  It was profitable most of the time. Some years though it operated at a loss. It was an important service to our province and many people were dependent on it to get around.

When the Saskatchewan Party was first elected, our province had a television station called SCN. One of Brad Wall's first decisions was to shut the station down.

thw book value of the broadcast station's assets was $4,000,000.00. Brad Wall sold the assets for about $400,000.00 or for 10% of its real value. They sold it off to a company from out of province with no background in filming or broadcasting. Only a fool would sell something off for 1/10th of what it is worth but this is what they did.

these Saskatchewan Party's decisions are not fiscal. They are strictly ideological.

With STCs closure we already had vulnerable people stranded, everyone else forced to pay more to hire cabs, and others put in danger and getting killed.
Greyhounds mercenary pullout makes a bad situation worse. Spinning this as a bad corporate citizen somehow being the victim of an enitiled populace who think they "owe" us something is as ridiculous as it is callous. No one has stopped them from doing anything here. Ultimately it is governments' policy and indifference that has let people down. Greyhound has shown they care more about an easy buck than doing a good job.

Maybe go back and re read the thread. Every one of those points has been covered more than once.
Except the bit about the terminals. They were owned by a crown corporation. They were not for sale. And as I did say already Greyhound has been begging and threatening for government funding for decades.
Why would they offer to buy a terminal even if it was for sale?
Your theorizing might be interesting to some were it not for the fact it has no bearing on what is actually going on here. Plus it is really irrelevant when compared with the toll this is having on people here.

If you need that one explained you really haven't been following. Or you are just playing games.

I misinformed you about the Saskatchewan Party debt. I do apologize.

History of Saskatchewan debt.

Someone from the SP mentioned that the debt was around 8 billion.

the graph also shows that the NDP had an increasing debt in the late 1970s.

the potash corporations were not paying income tax in Saskatchewan. The NDP tried to negotiate with them and they said that they were losing money. Allen Blakeney asked them to show the government their books to prove that they were not making a profit. They said no. They would not show their books. They also did not legally have to because they were American corporations that were headquartered in the United States.

allen Blakeney then bought up 50.1% of the potash corporations and brought the books up to Canada. It turns out that the potash companies were making tons of money after all and those profits were going into the provincial coffers.

this is where the NDP debt stems from. The revenues from the potash went partially into a heritage fund that totalled 2 billion dollars that was to be left for future generations.

grant Devine squandered it all away.

From the article, this is what the Saskatchewan Party did to the people of this province in the 2017 budget.

  "The government:
– shut down the province’s bus company;
– cut transfers to cities;
– reduced funding to libraries;
– eliminated funding for home repairs for people on social assistance;
– reduced wages for civil servants;
– cut subsidized podiatry services (creating a risk of increased foot amputations for diabetics and others);
– cut subsidies for hearing aids for children; and
– eliminated funding to pay for funerals for its poorest citizens."

Sask. rejected Ottawa's offer to cost-share subsidized bus routes once operated by Greyhound

Saskatchewan politicians snubbed the federal government's offer to help replace Western Canadian bus routes abandoned by Greyhound Canada in 2018.

Federal Minister of Transportation Marc Garneau called the move disappointing.

"We were ready on a 50-50 basis to cross share in providing service for lines that would not be covered by the private sector," he said Wednesday.

Garneau said the federal government made the $10-million offer to four provinces, and so far both Manitoba and Saskatchewan have said no.

Garneau said the offer is meant to help mitigate some gaps in service, while the federal government tries to find a long-term solution to inter-city bus travel.

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"Particularly on vulnerable groups, such as seniors and Indigenous women and girls, who may lack access to other means of transportation for safety concerns or to access healthcare services."

Garneau wrote that the private sector has not filled gaps in public transportation.

"There remains a 79 per cent [service] gap within your province. This concerns me greatly," Garneau wrote.

"Restoring this service is more important than partisan politics."

Advocate says federal offer misses the mark

The federal offer stands until October 2020​.

Even if the province changes its mind, that likely won't help the province's most vulnerable people, said Jo-Anne Dusel, executive director of the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan, whose member agencies run shelters for women.

Dusel called the Greyhound routes inadequate and said they were unable to fill expansive gaps in public transportation caused by the closure of STC (Saskatchewan Transportation Company).

It seems to me that this is an example of how there are significant differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

I have no idea. Seriously at a loss. 

Sean, it is the rural communities who need the service. They are the ones suffering. It wasn’t the rural communities who said shut down the rural bus service, it was the Saskatchewan government.

Misfit wrote:

Sean, it is the rural communities who need the service. They are the ones suffering. It wasn’t the rural communities who said shut down the rural bus service, it was the Saskatchewan government.

Sorry but wasn't the Conservatives strongest base of support the rural parts of the province? If this is wrong please let me know.

iyraste1313 wrote:

Article 13. Universal Charter

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

The Canadian Charter is based on thi9s principle in Section 6 on Mobility Rights...but no judgement in favour of the right to access to transport has as far as I know ever been determined.

However the Supreme Court of Canada has also determined that Canada must at least equal the rights established by international law.

In BC it was the so called progressive NDP that forced Greyhound out of service by cancelling all subsidy to the rural areas, leaving a decimated system with access to public transit only to the profit making routes, Kamloops, Kelowna and Whistler, from the Lower Mainland, which of course has a heavily subsidized transit system within the Lower Mainland and into the Fraser Valley.

This must be challenged legally. I just don´t get it, how people can just stand by and do nothing, while people¨s fundamental needs are being so grossly violated. Worse where are the so called climate change activists promoting reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Such gross discrimination (Section 15)!

But of course unlike Venezuela, where the new constitution, likewise based on International Law, was heavily promoted throughout Society, you probably couldn¨t find anybody in Canada that even has a clue, including all Tribunal and Lower Court Justices of the Peace. Not just of the basic precepts of the Sections of our Constitution, but the heart and soul of our Law based in case law!

 

While I agree that public transit is vital and a right -- I cannot agree that mobility rights under the Charter support that in law. The right is to be able to locate anywhere but it has never been interpreted as a right to have someone else move your person other than you.

Of course I would be delighted if we had a constitution that clearly established a right  to access to housing, food, public transit, all health services and education. As it is now you have a right to those things subject to an ability to pay for much of them.

There is also the elephant in the room which is a where numbers warrant argument. As services are withdrawn, demand for them goes down as well as people will not locate where they do not have them. As bus service declines people move to where it is reliable and thereby reduce demand for the service which is cut again. This can happen in a city, nevermind the country.

Where you have private services and no competition, if a business is allowed to take the cream and leave the rest they will. If the bus company was told that they do not get the right to buses between Toronto and Montreal if they will not serve the rural west, the company would look at the math differently.

I do not agree with the state buying up the rural routes in the West and operating just them. Imagine the federal government buying the whole thing so that the state can use revenue from more profitable lines to cover the costs of these. Greyhound should face that attitude. If they look at Canada as a single enterprise they might find some of these rural routes not so bad. This is a similar approach to the post office. Of course there are addresses much less profitable than others to serve but the post office, owned by the public, for lettermail charges the same. The US post office, a private company, is obliged to take the whole thing and they do that as well.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Misfit wrote:

Sean, it is the rural communities who need the service. They are the ones suffering. It wasn’t the rural communities who said shut down the rural bus service, it was the Saskatchewan government.

Sorry but wasn't the Conservatives strongest base of support the rural parts of the province? If this is wrong please let me know.

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.

you are also implying that because they vote conservative that we somehow should not care. Kinda like if you vote Conservative then you should be cut off from government funded health care because you support the governments that cut back on these programs.

you also seem to have a glib attitude that if you need public transportation then move to the urban centres. This would include all First Nations people leaving their remote communities and moving to the cities because that is the only place where public transportation will be viable and tolerated by some in urban eastern Canada.

public transportation is an essential service. You run STC for the service that it provides to the public and not as a private business that that must maximize profits or not function at all.

Misfit wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Misfit wrote:

Sean, it is the rural communities who need the service. They are the ones suffering. It wasn’t the rural communities who said shut down the rural bus service, it was the Saskatchewan government.

Sorry but wasn't the Conservatives strongest base of support the rural parts of the province? If this is wrong please let me know.

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.

you are also implying that because they vote conservative that we somehow should not care. Kinda like if you vote Conservative then you should be cut off from government funded health care because you support the governments that cut back on these programs.

you also seem to have a glib attitude that if you need public transportation then move to the urban centres. This would include all First Nations people leaving their remote communities and moving to the cities because that is the only place where public transportation will be viable and tolerated by some in urban eastern Canada.

public transportation is an essential service. You run STC for the service that it provides to the public and not as a private business that that must maximize profits or not function at all.

I am not being glib about this at all. You are also mixing two issues:

1) Issues that are presently universal and rural areas do not support -- eg healthcare

2) Issues where there is no present national reaelity (as much as I would support one). Inter-municipal, intercity, and local transport is private and/or regional. To say we shoudl impose a public option on a regional basis on a region who does not want it and will not pay for it is a different issue than inisisting that healthcare be delivered universally.

I am also not being glib in pointing out the problem that it is difficult, as much as we may want it, to get policies that lack support. For one part of the country to push for programs UNIQUE to a region that does not want them is problematic. It is less like healthcare than a demand for gun control only in a few rural communities who do not want them.

Please don't lecture me that transit is an essential service since you have been here long enough to see that I have argued that point and that it should even be free.

There are consequeneces for regions to elect governments that do not want certain things when it comes to the provision of those same things. I am not being glib to say that. True even if I support those things and a minority there I agree should have them.

@Misfit

To make the argument on healthcare would be if we had no public healthcare nationally but wanted to get it for the part of the country that does not want it.

Part of the problem here is that Canada has fewer people in rural areas reliant on public transit now than it did 100 years ago. People used horses and the rural areas were well populated. Then came mechanized transit. At first public transit extended as those in the country did not have cars. Then more got cars and urbanization took off so more located in cities that expanded. The result is that there are few people in many places that would use transit and this is essentially why a private company does not want to provide service.

What has happened in some places (in the US) where this has happened in small cities is that they scrapped running empty buses and funded taxis as it was cheaper to run a car for one person than a bus.

The problem of running buses where tehre is no density that wants them is that they are simply unaffordable and that the reasons for urbanization, and majority car use are not things the bus company can manage.

The transportation problem is not just in small communities in rural Canada it is also in cities. In cities the transit is poor. Parts of the capital of Canada have no transit. Parts of the city have transit one way but not another -- for example there is a business park with retail and offices where transit is designed for those who live there to leave in the morning and come home at night. There is nothing for those who want to go the opposite direction.

To fix transit it may be more practical to make it free in the city (charge car users there fees to drive in the city to pay for it) and this would create a greater critical mass - demand - to extend service. From there run lines out of the cities to nearby rural places (as Clive Doucet proposed in the last mayoral election). Then once done link all rural places up.

Yes a long time.

However, you don't start to build a web of transit where there is no demand and eventually reach the places where there is.

That said, there are arguments to retian where possible what exists. However, the problem is the decline in quality of the service has reduced demand as people needing it move so the present Grehound system is unsustainable for public or private. For now, I suggest a plan to grow from good transit from the places where demand presently exists and to address the problem of the minority who need it by using some sort of on demand car system rather than running an empty bus with all the fuel and polution  that means pretending that there are enough users even when there are not. Mini-buses could be used in some places as well. Pint being thattransit service of the kind Greyhound left is not practical in most places. Some system could be designed for the few remainaing who need it but then to make people move back you need to grow outwards from where demand is.

Again -- not being glib. this is a real problem and denial on this site pretending that it is affordable to send empyt buses at a huge loss is not going to fix it. There are many priorities: health care preservation and extension, retreats in public support for education and childcare, income support public housing. We can't just say we can provide everything right now becuase we, in the city, think it is a public right and it should be that way. We can't overrule the majority of voters in a province who refuse to finance the system (wanting tax cuts) to supply a service we think is essential that they do not want.

More to the point -- we have to decide as a nation (collective majority) that we want something universal rather than fill in gaps where the local people won't cover it or it is not sustainable. Healthcare became a universally recognized right to impose on all parts of Canada becuase a majority government of Canada did that. There is no majority government of Canada that has made a decision to override local people to make a naitonally recognized right of transportation so you would think starting to build it where there is demand and where people want it is a priority. There are cities in Saskatchewan with terrible transit where more depend on it and where the community voted in the majority to have such programs. They could be first -- economically, practically, democratically and morally

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.

Sean wrote:

”1) Issues that are presently universal and rural areas do not support -- eg healthcare”

what???  What an absurd statement! Rural Saskatchewan does support universal healthcare and there is no evidence that the residents of rural Saskatchewan do not support universal healthcare.