With today’s news that Greyhound is basically pulling out of BC, I was inspired to write to the Minister of Transportation urging her to turn this into an opportunity for better public transportation. The following is the email I sent, and I hope that others will encourage her to make such a plan happen.
Minister Trevena,
With today’s news about Greyhound’s withdrawal from British Columbia, and with the past failure of other privatised systems like BC Rail, I believe it is now long past time for British Columbia to develop a strategy for a transportation network that is truly public, fully integrated, and locally-, regionally-, and provincially-focussed.
The loss of coach bus service amongst the communities in our province will have serious impacts to those who reside in these communities as well as to those who live in larger urban centres and spend time in communities currently served by Greyhound. This will mean that people will be forced to choose amongst driving or flying (incurring a larger impact on the environment), hitchhiking (dangerous, at best), and not travelling at all. This province should not have to function in this manner.
I see this failure of the private sector as an opportunity for the public sector to serve residents of and visitors to British Columbia in a much better way. Besides the fact that until now medium- and long-distance travellers have had to rely on unpredictable, poorly operated, and overpriced Greyhound services, regional transit in the Lower Mainland is virtually non-existent outside of the very-limited-service West Coast Express. The Fraser Valley, in particular, is very poorly served overall, and access to Vancouver is almost necessarily by private motor vehicle. It’s time for us to do better.
As a former resident of Ontario, I look to the model of GO Transit for a regional transit system that, for the most part, serves residents quite well. Here in BC, we already have an intraprovincial bus system in BC Bus North.
As a first step, I would like to see the province step in and acquire the equipment, and hire the staff, to operate the existing Greyhound coach routes within BC (along with the previous connections to Calgary, Edmonton, and Whitehorse) when Greyhound withdraws later this year.
But I believe this should merely be step one. Here in the Lower Mainland, I would like to see this service work with Via Rail to expand the facilities at Pacific Central station to become a hub for true regional transit, along with opening up this facility to the public (it is currently guarded for passengers only). This service would provide regular express coach service along the Squamish/Whistler/Pemberton, Surrey/Langley/Abbotsford/Chilliwack/Hope, and Coquitlam/Maple Ridge/Mission corridors, for starters, though express service from Vancouver to suburbs currently served by slower TransLink services (Delta and White Rock, for example) could also be included. Similar expansions could be done in other growing regions (for example, along the Vernon/Kelowna/Penticton corridor, or the Victoria/Duncan/Nanaimo corridor), and additional service should be provided to smaller communities throughout the province in order to improve mobility with the minimum of environmental impact.
In the longer run, more popular coach routes could be replaced by suburban, regional, and long-distance (high speed) train service. This service could also investigate a second Vancouver terminus at an expanded Waterfront station, making use of existing rail lines and/or a bus terminus built on a deck over those rails.
I believe that mass transportation is something that can only be accomplished well by the public sector, and the failure of the private sector in serving this role provides proof that we should move forward as a province to provide this service. It is also only under a public sector mandate that we can achieve the efficiencies required to make the service truly integrated and useful for the public. For example, planning could be integrated to ensure the regional and intraprovincial bus and train services connect properly with existing transportation services provided by TransLink, BC Transit, and BC Ferries. Fares could be integrated, too, on a province-wide version of a Compass card (or some similar equivalent) that could work for foot passengers on all of these services, as well as on bike shares and other local transit connections like the False Creek Ferries.
I sincerely hope these ideas are given serious consideration, and in any case I hope that the government finds a public solution to address the void in transportation services that will soon affect most of this province.
stay true to your nomad skies 