Carpe Diem looking to fill void
Carpe Diem Group is hoping to serve customers who will be left in the lurch due to the provincial government’s decision to axe the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC).
“We’re looking to take over as much as we can that STC already has,” said Mitch Blyth, Carpe Diem’s general manager. “A lot of different ideas floating around in our ownership group right now, but we have some great ideas that we will release at a later date.”
This plan, which happened “very quickly,” began March 22, when Finance Minister Kevin Doherty announced the end of STC, which the government founded in 1946.
Blyth called his CEO the day of the budget announcement. Their goal is to “help out the people of Saskatchewan in this situation,” said Blyth.
“There’s cancer patients, dialysis patients, people like that. This is becoming an essential service to these people; it has been for how many years STC has been around.
“We feel that when it becomes a matter of life and death, that’s where we want to step in.”
Blyth said Carpe Diem hopes to offer no disruption to transportation service. STC’s freight service is scheduled to end May 19; its passenger service is scheduled to end May 31.
Carpe Diem has 14 vehicles that can be used for STC-type service, said Blyth, ranging from two to 22 seats.
Carpe Diem also has access to a larger fleet of vehicles.
“It’s going to be a supply and demand thing. We can provide whatever type of vehicle is necessary,” said Blyth. “If we find a need for the 54-passenger, we certainly have access to them.”
Carpe Diem is based in Regina, Saskatoon, Yorkton and Melville.
Blyth said he’d like to work with other transport companies, which could act as a “feeder system” to cover even more of the province.
STC’s 25 routes serve 253 communities. Its projected ridership for 2016-17 is 182,000, down from 790,000 in 1980, around the last time STC was profitable.
“Every year, $10 million to $11 million was being expended to subsidize STC ... $85 million over the next five years to maintain everything that we were doing at STC,” Doherty said on the day the budget was announced.
Carpe Diem is still working through costs and prices, but Blyth isn’t too worried about the numbers.
“We plan on running a lot more efficiently,” said Blyth. “We’ve been watching the STC buses and obviously the big 54-passenger buses aren’t full, so we can run this a lot more cost effectively.”
Unlike their limousine service, the charter vehicles won’t be liquor licensed, said Blyth, although the company aims to “step it up a notch with general service.”
STC employed 224 people who will be laid off with the company’s end.
Blyth said Carpe Diem will be looking to hire new staff, although he’s not yet sure how many.