Greyhound running away from South OK Communities will be hurt if bus line cuts are approved

No community in the South Okanagan and Similkameen would be spared if Greyhound Canada’s proposed route reductions and eliminations are approved by the B.C. Passenger Transportation Board.

Hardest hit would be Keremeos, Princeton and Hedley, all of which would lose bus service entirely.

Kaleden, Okanagan Falls, and Oliver would see once-daily departures in each direction reduced to twice-weekly. And the once-daily departure north from Osoyoos would also be cut to twice weekly.

Penticton would only see buses head south twice a week, rather than daily, and it would also lose one daily trip north to Kelowna. That would, however, still leave four daily northbound departures.

Summerland would be least affected with a daily evening arrival from Penticton being trimmed to twice weekly.

“It’s not completely unexpected, but certainly any time you have another service disappear from rural areas it makes life a little more difficult,” said Keremeos Mayor Manfred Bauer.

“I know Greyhound is saying ridership has gone down, but opportunity has gone down. At one point, I think, we used to have three (daily) buses; now we have one.”

Bauer has already written a letter to the B.C. Passenger Transportation Board to register the village’s concerns about the possible cuts, and expects other affected communities will do the same.

The village is also asking residents to write individual letters of opposition, and Bauer is planning to rally fellow directors at the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen at their meeting Thursday

“That’s pretty much all we can do,” said Bauer, who believes seniors and those with medical conditions who are unable to drive will be disproportionately affected by the loss of bus service.

Greyhound states in its application to the B.C. Passenger Transportation Board that its ridership in this province over the past five years dipped by 30 per cent to 854,000.

The company also claims it lost $12.9 million last year in B.C.

Partly to blame for those losses, Greyhound says, is the too-rigid regulatory system that’s meant to protect the travelling public, its passengers, while limiting competition against the company.

“These controls and requirements have not only prevented Greyhound from adjusting its transportation offering to respond to market variations in a timely way, they have not provided market protection,” its filing states.

“Over the last eight years, B.C. has allowed unregulated and often government-subsidized competitors to implement services on Greyhound authorized routes without the constraint of regularity oversight or filing, and often without offering Greyhound the opportunity to object.”

If approved as proposed, the changes would kill nine routes and stop service to 28 different communities throughout B.C, leaving the company with just 10 routes in the province.

“Greyhound deeply regrets that the public may be negatively impacted by the proposed changes, but it is in the broader public interest to maintain services with fewer options than to have Greyhound abandon its B.C. operations altogether in order to stem its severe operating losses,” the application concludes.

The B.C. Passenger Transportation Board is accepting public comment on the proposed changes until Oct. 13.