Saskatchewan Transportation Company: A Premature Execution

[dewline]

So we're trying to rebuild an intercity transit network - preferably publicly owned and operated - across Canada. Even if our provincial/territorial and federal governments don't quite realize that the country needs it right now. Certainly, the current management of my birth province of Saskatchewan doesn't realize it yet. That, or they are acting in defiance by using an austerity budget to justify what they've announced intent to do yesterday.

My family used the Saskatchewan Transportation Company when we lived in Saskatchewan. In the absence of a proper passenger rail service, and given the lack of attention given by privately owned bus transit, it was and still is vital to have.

Comments

[thewayne]

I really appreciated the public transit in Dresden and Berlin two years ago. Phoenix, about a decade ago, finally got light rail going, but it does pretty much nothing if you live outside of the central corridor that it runs in. And the bus service isn't all that impressive.

But closing a major bus company? I would like to see a close examination of the province's budget. Mass transit is a critical part of service to the community, and completely shuttering it is a very radical move, I don't recall having ever read about such a thing. If only two lines are profitable, then you need to investigate and see what the characteristics are that make it so, then try applying them to less or non-profitable liens. You might need to reduce frequency of service to some lines, but you can't just throw in the towel like that.

It's kind of funny, I keep going hack to our cruise. I spoke with the captain of the ship that we were on while we were tied alongside a newer ship from the same line. He said that the ship that we were on was going to be retired in '16. The new ships are longer and have more staterooms, but at the same time are more highly automated and need fewer crew and cost less to operate and pollute less. I wonder when the last time that the Sask bus fleet was upgraded?