If you’ve ever desired to take a bus trip across Canada, this summer may be your last chance. Greyhound announced Monday that, due to a 41 percent decline in ridership since 2010, after October 31 it will terminating all bus service in western Canada except buses between Vancouver and Seattle. Service in Quebec and Ontario will remain unchanged, for now, except for the routes west of Sudbury.
Some local companies offer bus services in western Canada, mostly within individual provinces. Unless some of these companies step in to fill the gap left by Greyhound, it won’t be possible to go from, say, Vancouver to Calgary or Calgary to Winnipeg by bus.
Where passenger train service is offered by the government-subsidized Via Rail, prices are roughly twice Greyhound’s fares. Currently, a Greyhound bus trip from Vancouver to Toronto is about US$217, compared with US$564 by train. Vancouver to Edmonton is around US$89 by Greyhound and US$230 by train.
Greyhound from Vancouver to Calgary starts around US$60. The only train from Vancouver to Calgary is run by a private company called the Rocky Mountaineer, which offers cruise train service at prices start around $2,000. Service is less than daily, so this is solely for vacationers, not regular travelers.
Dosage also has a significant role in the ED treatment. buy tadalafil cheap Their services are fast, customer friendly and tadalafil without prescriptions open for 24×7. This drug would prepare your penis for sexual activity. viagra mg Moreover you need not have to face the embarrassing problem while going to shop to purchase viagra cialis this drug.
Greyhound’s withdrawal from western Canada reflects the same sorts of influences that are affecting urban transit markets: low gas prices and competition from other forms of travel, in this case, airlines. Earlier this year, Megabus announced that it was cancelling its service from San Francisco to Reno due to competition from airlines and Greyhound’s willingness to cut prices to match Megabus.
On the other hand, as the Antiplanner previously noted, a company called Flixbus has entered the market between southern California and Las Vegas, Phoenix, and other Arizona cities. Since Greyhound, Megabus, and, of course, numerous airlines are already competing in that market, it will be interesting to see how Flixbus does and whether Megabus (which is operating some of Flixbus’ routes) decides to drop out of the Las Vegas market too.
While it is likely that urban transit could still be profitable in some high-use corridors and cities, such as New York and San Francisco, it is fast fading everywhere else. Similarly, there is still room for intercity bus service in high-use corridors that are about 100 to 400 miles in length, but not over longer distances and not in thinly populated areas that don’t have major destinations such as Las Vegas at one end of the corridor.
There could also be competition from long distance ride share. Just Googling “long distance ride share”came up with several sites such as https://www.ridesharing.com/. It will be interesting to see how many of these companies become significant just as Airbnb has become in the hotel market.
The Antiplanner wrote:
While it is likely that urban transit could still be profitable in some high-use corridors and cities, such as New York and San Francisco, it is fast fading everywhere else. Similarly, there is still room for intercity bus service in high-use corridors that are about 100 to 400 miles in length, but not over longer distances and not in thinly populated areas that don’t have major destinations such as Las Vegas at one end of the corridor.
I drove much of the New Jersey Turnpike last weekend, from the Delaware Memorial Bridge (Exit 1) to the I-280 interchange in the north (Exit 15W). Pretty obvious to even a casual observer that this is a travel market with robust intercity bus service (and presumably robust demand for same).
Some of the providers I observed (running between New York City in the north and places in the south such as Philadelphia; Wilmington, Delaware; Newark, Delaware; White Marsh, Maryland; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Norfolk, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; Charlottesville, Virginia and Raleigh, North Carolina) included Greyhound; Bolt (Greyhound subsidiary); Peter Pan; Megabus (operated by CoachUSA, at least in the East); Vamoose; Washington Deluxe; Eastern Shuttle (a so-called Chinatown carrier); BestBus; GoBus; and TripperBus.
It helps that most of these buses are running in the “sweet spot” mentioned by The Antiplanner above (100 to 400 miles), with the travel distance between Raleigh and New York being a little bit of an outlier at slightly over 500 miles – but the others looking pretty reasonable: Norfolk to New York about 364 miles; Charlottesville to New York about 345 miles; Richmond to New York about 335 miles; Washington, D.C. to New York about 225 miles; Baltimore to New York about 195 miles; and Philadelphia to New York at about 95 miles.
Like the Antiplanner mentioned the Sweetspot…
there’s only four kinds of transportation, transit or otherwise.
Commute (less than 50 miles a day) carried out by the average work day and the places in between. This accounts for most of the miles accumulated daily in the US.
Short distance transit: less than 10 miles. This was the mode once served by streetcars now by buses and automobiles.
Long Distance: 500 miles or more, dominated by railroads, made obsolete by air travel.
Intermediate distance: Between 50-500 miles, its what the passenger rail lobby is trying to capture, at the request of immense subsidies and failing.
Interesting. Between Dallas/Fort Worth and points south, I see Americano, El Conejo, El Expresso, Greyhound, Los Paisanos, Megabus, Omex, Tornado, Turimex and Vonlane. Also obviously another robust (and competitive) intercity bus market.
Markets serving Vancouver and points east are kind of difficult to serve by bus (and rail, for that matter) due to the terrain of most of BC and the need to cross the Rockies. Any serious competition in these markets has to come from other airlines.
While some of these markets are quasi-monopolistic, there are limits to the amount of market power a dominant carrier can exert. If they raise prices too high, they may drive some traffic to the less-preferred modes, as well as encouraging new entrants in the market who may see opportunities to cut into the rents those carriers are getting by setting higher fares.
MJ wrote:
Markets serving Vancouver and points east are kind of difficult to serve by bus (and rail, for that matter) due to the terrain of most of BC and the need to cross the Rockies. Any serious competition in these markets has to come from other airlines.
Yes, crossing the Cascades and Rockies has some of the same winter challenges in Canada that it does in the U.S. Add in long distances (the closest Canadian metropolitan areas to Vancouver, B.C. are Calgary, Alberta, which is over 600 statute miles away by highway and Edmonton, Alberta, about 725 miles away), and bus becomes a less attractive way to travel.