BC Passenger Transportation Board has approved Greyhound route reductions across the province, including the North Thompson Valley.
“This is very disappointing news,” said Clearwater Mayor John Harwood. “We’ve gone from three buses a day to two and now to just one.”
The only buses through Clearwater going to Edmonton and to Vancouver will arrive and depart during the small hours of the morning, he said.
The afternoon buses that formerly made the connections east and west are being discontinued.
People using the bus now must have their tickets and baggage tags before boarding, the mayor noted. They no longer can buy a ticket after getting on the bus. Instead, they must go to the bus depot at Jim’s Market while it is open to get their ticket and tags, then return after midnight to catch the bus.
For those wanting to go to Kamloops for a medical appointment, leaving and arriving in the middle of the night will make the trip difficult or impossible, he said.
Those with medical appointments in Kelowna or elsewhere in the Okanagan will find the connections will make the trip even more problematic.
Greyhound complains that it is not getting enough passengers to pay for the service, but one reason it is not getting the passengers is because its service has gone down, the mayor said.
He gave as an example last Christmas, when a number of local residents were abandoned at the Greyhound station in Kamloops. They needed friends and family to drive to the city to get them.
There was no meaningful public consultation on the cutbacks, the mayor said.
Last October District of Clearwater and Wells Gray Country services committee were given less than two weeks to comment.
Harwood said local residents are lucky to have the transit service that provides weekly bus trips from Vavenby to Kamloops and back (a local transit bus also runs on the third Thursday of the month from Blue River).
The service is expensive to operate, he noted. BC Transit is prepared to help with operating costs, but not with the cost of buying new buses. The situation is another example of costs being downloaded onto local governments, the mayor felt.