Prince Albert-Saskatoon bus route closing

As few as ‘two, three passengers’ on board per trip, says owner of Rider Express

One of the private companies that emerged after the provincial government axed the Saskatchewan Transportation Co. says it’s abandoning its route linking Saskatoon and Prince Albert.

Rider Express Transportation owner Firat Uray said he began running the 140-kilometre route five days per week before dropping it to three because of low demand. Eventually, he concluded it would never make money.

“There is not much passengers there. It was not covering the cost,” said Uray, whose Regina-based company was granted approval by the Highway Traffic Board to begin operating on June 30, one month after the last STC buses stopped running.

“There was two, three passengers (per trip),” he said. “Mostly they were medical patients coming for treatment in Saskatoon. They are not happy … once they are hearing that we are closing (the route).”

Uray said the Saskatoon-Prince Albert jaunt isn’t the only unprofitable route in the province. While Rider Express runs vans to Swift Current, Yorkton and Estevan, its only real money-maker is the Saskatoon-Regina trip, he said.

STC’s closure has been a contentious issue since the Saskatchewan Party government announced plans to shut down the 71-year-old Crown corporation, arguing that rising subsidies and declining ridership made it unsustainable.

Government officials predicted the private sector would pick up the slack, but the NDP and the Stop The Cuts activist group say the decision was made prematurely, without considering its effects.

At least one of the private companies that sprang up this summer has already shut down for good. Uray said he recently bought a couple of vehicles and equipment from a numbered company that operated as Forward Coach Lines.

Forward Coach Lines’ website redirects to Rider Express’s page, and messages left at the company’s phone number were not returned.

Uray said his plan was always to operate the company for a year, then re-evaluate. He said business is so tight he can’t afford a licence from the City of Prince Albert — which Mayor Greg Dionne scoffed at.

“They said they couldn’t afford a $200 business licence,” Dionne told the Prince Albert Daily Herald. “I couldn’t give them a break because we have other companies supplying the same service that are licensed.”

While Rider Express is struggling, Melville-based DiCal Transportation — which secured approval to carry passengers in early July — plans to add more passenger routes next month and introduce even more next year.

DiCal owner Diane Smith acknowledged the firm would not be able to sustain passenger routes if it hadn’t been operating as a courier, freight transportation and moving company for seven years, but said interest in its latest venture has gone from slow to steady.

“Now, things are going quite great,” she said.

DiCal — which runs passenger vans between Yorkton, Melville, Balcarres and Fort Qu’Appelle — plans to introduce routes to Kamsack and Canora this month, with more on the horizon, Smith said.

While the company’s entry into the passenger business was difficult because of opposition to any private company taking over from STC, she simply saw an opportunity and decided to take it, she added.

“I kind of feel like we got (dragged) into politics by trying to fill a void,” she said.