Editor:

Greyhound bus is threatening to pull out of northern B.C. and many smaller communities across the province, unless it gets a subsidy from the public purse. We think the best answer to their threat is to establish a publicly owned and operated highway bus network across BC.

A public bus company to connect communities is an old idea whose time has come again. In 1946, Tommy Douglas鈥� first Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government established the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, also known as Sask Bus, to interconnect urban and rural communities across Saskatchewan. Sask Bus efficiently provided essential passenger and freight services to rural and urban residents alike until Canada鈥檚 most prominent opponent of climate action, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, shut it down just this past summer.

Like BC Ferries and public transit in urban areas, Sask Bus was publicly funded. The people of Saskatchewan thought that was money well spent. According to an editorial in the Regina Leader-Post 鈥渞eaders reacted with almost unanimous opposition鈥� to the idea of shutting Sask Bus down and leaving smaller communities without bus service. If highway bus service is going to be publicly funded, it should be run as a public service instead of handing it over to a corporation like Greyhound with a track record of failure. Like urban public transit, highway bus service needs to operate as a unified network with shared ticketing 鈥� seamless transfers are an essential part of high quality highway bus service.

One of the benefits of good highway bus service is safety. The recently established BC Transit bus service between communities on the Highway of Tears is largely about providing safe transportation for indigenous women and girls.

Good highway bus service is also essential for the economic health of smaller communities, and the province as a whole. If you need a car to get there, tourism is unlikely to thrive now that so many younger people don鈥檛 own cars (many young professionals don鈥檛 even bother to get drivers licences). And if you need a car to get to and from your rural town, both seniors and younger people are less likely to want to live there.

A public highway bus service would improve the economic, environmental and social health of B.C. communities large and small. Greyhound has shown that they are not up to the job. We know what Tommy Douglas would do if faced with this situation.

Sincerely,

R. Joanne Banks, Bruce Bidgood, and Eric Doherty

Campbell River, Terrace and Victoria