Greyhound is under no obligation to lose money so that people who choose to live in distant rural communities can have access to bus transportation. They didn’t “abandon” anybody: they made a responsible business decision to stop offering services that were losing money, after years of losing ridership and giving public notice that this decision was coming.
If people who choose to live in distant rural communities don’t like living in a place without hospitals or nearby emergency services or decent internet infrastructure or a high school – or private bus services – then they are welcome to move to a larger municipality. They don’t get to complain to Greyhound that they live in a community with too few people to support a profitable bus service.
“The ties that bind us together are falling apart, piece by piece.”
Nonsense. I can use the portable supercomputer in my pocket to have a video chat with somebody living 15000 km away, so those ties are doing fine. If you choose to isolate yourself from others by living in a community of fewer than 1000 people that is hundreds of kilometres away from a bus stop, then that’s your choice. You don’t get to complain that you’re lonely after you do it, and Greyhound doesn’t owe you anything.
It’s not Greyhound’s responsibility. To the extent that society, as a whole, decides that it is important to maintain publicly-available transportation options to those in rural communities, society, as a whole, should devote the resources to maintain those options.
If technology changes the cost equation (self-driving, electric, etc), expect the cry to start that the government shouldn’t be in the bus business and the private sector can run it more efficiently…
(It’ll take a lot to replace those big long haul buses. Those things are Passenger Deliverators in bad road conditions.)
What are you, some sort of heretic? You are talking about treating some elements of public transport as a “social good” (good for individual people, good for the economy, good for society as a whole, and won’t happen properly if left to the market). Now, you do KNOW that this is much the same as ‘socialism’, don’t you?
Exactly this. Social benefits are worth granting a regulated monopoly for. And then the fuckwit neo-libs come along and object to a monopoly that excludes competition, and hate regulation. So social goods re thrown out of the window. They’ve never heard of babies, but sure hate bathwater.
The ones with lead piping? That drove us all mad?
(Sorry. Irresistible, again. Second time today I’ve had to do this here. Plum.)
I think most people would agree with you here on the point that Greyhound isn’t obliged to be unprofitable and it is a good idea for government to step in to provide essential services that for profit industry can’t.
But this is too much. Not everyone can just get up and leave their home. Consider that many of the people living in these communities are old, poor, or infirm. Many of them will have family and friends nearby and wouldn’t want to leave the place where they’ve spent their entire lives.
The people who can easily move to a larger town for better jobs and easier mobility have probably already left. Most of these towns in rural Canada are filled with people who, for one reason or another, can’t easily leave. And with the termination of bus service, their quality of life has just gotten significantly worse.
If the Liberals follow through and find the funding to continue some kind of service, then that would be government doing what it’s supposed to do.
Many are also First Nations and living on reserves – it’s not a black and white “choice” to live there. People who live remote in this country by actual choice usually have access to cars.
This is quite literally people’s lives at stake. It’s not just about Costco and Walmart trips, it’s Dr’s appointments and access to government services. Until you’ve actually driven out to some of these places, it’s hard to fully grasp just how isolated they are.
And as mentioned above, for a lot of people, hitchhiking becomes the only option. It’s called the highway of tears for a fucking reason. People are going to die.
