>> Greyhound’s decision to write off much of the Canadian frontier
Frontier? This isn't 1827. If Canada has a frontier it is The North, not Alberta.
Canada has significant problems when it comes to servicing small rural communities. Take the 82 year-old "cattle and grain farmer from Langenburg, Saskatchewan" who lives 11 hours outside Edmonton. Getting him health care is a huge problem, a much greater issue than him visiting relatives in the city. Greyhound didn't just disconnect small towns. It disconnected Vancouver form Kamloops, two large urban areas. It just disconnected Vancouver from Whistler.
Those two cities hosted the 2010 winter games. If that link cannot be made profitable, there is no hope for connecting Langenburg.
(I took the Vancouver-Whistler route many times as a kid. It was horrible. Four hours in a bus station and then a horrible bus to complete a journey that could be done in an hour by car. When I turned 16 I bought a car and never looked back.)
Last time i took the vancouver-whistler route it was an hour and a half - two hours or so on the bus and like 20 minutes wait at the station on main st. This was 2 or 3 years ago now.
But oh man were the greyhound staff ever rude and because the first driver on the way out half tore my return ticket i had to beg the driver in whistler in let me on the bus with the ticket i had. He was really close to making me go buy a new ticket even after explaining. There was also only 2 or 3 departure times both ways.
I personally saw this behavior in greyhound lines, and it wasn't even an outlier, it seemed to be the modus operandi. I thought it was horrible at the time and made me never want to ride the bus again. In fact, I avoided it as best I could.
It does seem weird for them to drop perfectly good routes like Vancouver-Whistler, but it makes sense when they're shuttering their whole western operations. I think it's still alright, gives the chance for a new company to come in and fulfil that demand.
Frontier? This isn't 1827. If Canada has a frontier it is The North, not Alberta.
Canada has significant problems when it comes to servicing small rural communities. Take the 82 year-old "cattle and grain farmer from Langenburg, Saskatchewan" who lives 11 hours outside Edmonton. Getting him health care is a huge problem, a much greater issue than him visiting relatives in the city. Greyhound didn't just disconnect small towns. It disconnected Vancouver form Kamloops, two large urban areas. It just disconnected Vancouver from Whistler. Those two cities hosted the 2010 winter games. If that link cannot be made profitable, there is no hope for connecting Langenburg.
(I took the Vancouver-Whistler route many times as a kid. It was horrible. Four hours in a bus station and then a horrible bus to complete a journey that could be done in an hour by car. When I turned 16 I bought a car and never looked back.)