Greyhound Canada to chop all routes, finish operations – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

TORONTO – (AP) – Greyhound Canada is permanently cutting off all bus routes across the country and suspending operations of the intercity bus company in Canada after nearly a century of service.

The coach company announced that its remaining Ontario and Quebec routes will be permanently suspended on Thursday.

The American subsidiary Greyhound Lines, Inc. will continue to operate cross-border routes to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver after the border is reopened.

The decision comes a year after Greyhound Canada temporarily suspended service due to a sharp drop in passengers and mounting travel restrictions during the first wave of COVID-19.

The bus company has struggled for years with falling passenger numbers, increasing competition and deregulation.

However, the complete loss of so-called Farebox revenue during the pandemic has forced the company to cease operations for good, said Stuart Kendrick, senior vice president of Greyhound Canada.

“It was a very difficult decision that we made with a heavy heart,” he said. “For many Canadians, it has been a lifeline for more than 90 years. This will have a massive impact. “

The decision is a blow to rural and remote areas that rely on a patchwork of private intercity bus companies for transportation.

The service has long been part of a network connecting smaller communities and major cities, providing an affordable and convenient way to travel for everyone, from key workers and students to the elderly and backpackers.

However, the rise in car ownership, ridesharing, low-cost airlines and urban migration has slowly undermined the number of bus drivers, leading Greyhound Canada to gradually reduce the frequency of some services and cut other routes altogether.

Several bus companies have teamed up and reached out to federal and state governments for financial assistance as COVID-19 restrictions mount. But Kendrick said they were relegated to existing pandemic support – what he called “negligible” for the beleaguered passenger transportation industry – and prompted Greyhound Canada to temporarily suspend all service last May.

Approximately 260 employees were laid off after Greyhound Canada temporarily suspended passenger services last May. Another 45 employees will be laid off due to the permanent closure, Kendrick said.

Drivers across Canada said they were disappointed with the Greyhound closure, like 68-year-old Robyn Brown, who used to ride the Greyhound bus to Toronto when she lived in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Brown now lives in Vancouver and has also used greyhound bus routes to visit friends from smaller towns in British Columbia that are not served by other public transit.

Prior to the pandemic, she and her husband planned to take a greyhound from Vancouver to Winnipeg to save on travel expenses.

“I’m really sad to see it work, I really am,” she said, adding that she would now fly to Winnipeg or Toronto if she wanted to travel between provinces.

Lisa Baril in Calgary said she had childhood memories of riding a greyhound bus to visit her grandparents in Kelwood, Manitoba.

As an adult, Baril said she would pick up her grandmother from the Greyhound station in Calgary every time she visited.

“She would say (Greyhounds closure) is a shame,” Baril said of her late grandmother. “She would probably get frustrated and say, ‘Well, how am I supposed to see you guys now?'”

Michael Clark, 35, of Waterloo, Ontario, said he took the greyhound bus almost every month in college to visit his parents in Kingston, Ontario, from Ottawa.

“When I returned to Kingston, I took weekend day trips to Toronto, pulling the earliest and newest buses in and out,” he said, describing the closure as “a terrible loss” for smaller Ontario cities.