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Public bus service best answer to Greyhound’s outstretched hand

In 1946, Tommy Douglas established STC to interconnect communities across Saskatchewan
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Editor, The Times:

Greyhound bus is threatening to pull out of northern British Columbia and many smaller communities across the province unless it gets a subsidy from the public purse. The best answer to their threat is to establish a publicly owned and operated highway bus network across B.C.

A public bus company to connect communities is an old idea whose time has come again. In 1946, Tommy Douglas’ first Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government established the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) to interconnect urban and rural communities across Saskatchewan. The STC efficiently provided passenger and freight services to rural and urban residents alike until Canada’s most prominent opponent of climate action, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, shut it down just this past summer.

READ MORE: Greyhound cuts service to Clearwater (March 13, 2013)

Like BC Ferries and public transit in urban areas, STC was publicly funded. The people of Saskatchewan thought that was money well spent. According to an editorial in the Regina Leader-Post, “… readers reacted with almost unanimous opposition” to the idea of shutting STC down. If highway bus service is going to be publicly funded, it should be run as a public service instead of handing it over to a corporation like Greyhound with a track record of failure. Like urban public transit, highway bus service needs to operate as a unified network with shared ticketing – seamless transfers are essential.

The wildfires in the Interior last summer illustrate why B.C. needs a public highway bus service. Instead of stepping up, Greyhound left people in communities like 100 Mile House without service. When the evacuation was ordered, seniors from 100 Mile ended up traveling overnight on uncomfortable school buses to Prince George. B.C. needs a bus service with the mandate and capacity to help in emergencies.

One of the benefits of good highway bus service is safety. The recently established BC Transit bus service on the Highway of Tears is largely about providing safe transportation for Indigenous women and girls. But the Highway of Tears is not the only place where rural women have to choose between isolation and the danger of hitchhiking.

The danger of highway crashes is also crucial. Parents in rural areas know that young drivers traveling long distances on snowy highways sometimes don’t arrive safely. Many seniors don’t feel capable of long winter driving trips. Regardless of age, driving long distances in cars is hazardous; leaving more of the highway driving to professionals is common sense.

It is also common sense that we need to overcome our over-dependence on private automobiles to fulfill Canada’s Paris climate commitments. We must reduce the climate pollution that is fueling ever more destructive wildfires and floods. The federal-provincial Climate Framework commits B.C. to shift transportation spending away from urban freeway expansion projects, which is an obvious way to fund a public highway bus service.

Climate action in transportation cannot be isolated to urban areas. Would you choose to save money and reduce your carbon footprint by living without a car if that meant you couldn’t get home to visit your family? The B.C. NDP won’t be able to meet their promise to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from transportation by 30 per cent in only 12 years without much better highway bus service.

Good highway bus service is also essential for the economic health of smaller communities, and the province as a whole. If you need a car to get there, tourism is unlikely to thrive now that many younger people don’t own cars. And if you need a car to get to and from your rural town, both seniors and younger people are less likely to want to live there.

A public highway bus service would improve the economic, environmental and social health of B.C. communities. We know what Tommy Douglas would do.

R. Joanne Banks, Campbell River

Bruce Bidgood, Terrace

Eric Doherty, Victoria

Members of Council of Canadians