Alberta bus company looking to fill Greyhound void in Okanagan

An Edmonton-based bus company is eyeing some of the routes in B.C. that Greyhound will be abandoning next month.

Ebus has submitted paperwork to the provincial Passenger Transportation Board for three routes: Kelowna to Kamloops, Kelowna to Vancouver and Kamloops to Vancouver. The Kelowna to Kamloops route would include only one stop, in Vernon.

The Kelowna and Vancouver route will travel over the Coquihalla and Highway 1 and feature stops in Merritt and Chilliwack. The route between Kamloops and Vancouver will have stops in Merritt and Abbotsford.

Earlier this summer, and citing financial difficulties, Greyhound announced that it would be abandoning all but one of its routes in Western Canada, effective October 31st.

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On its website, Ebus bills itself as “Alberta’s economical, efficient and safe choice for travel to Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, Fort McMurray and soon B.C.!” The routes will be round-trip, twice a day, with morning departures and later, afternoon, departures going the other way as well.

“Our model is really passenger-centric. We try not to keep passengers on the coach longer than they need to be,” said John Stepovy, the company’s director of business development. “When we get into a main city, we try not to have multiple drop-off points, midway as well.

“Our model is reservation-based, so we’re not stopping in Vernon if no one is booked to get on or get off. People, when they’re travelling from Point A to Point B, they want to get their as efficiently as possible and that’s what we kind of aim for.”

Stepovy says Ebus’s goal is to start service prior to Greyhound’s departure, “so there are no gaps to the public.” He added that Ebus hasn’t secured any buildings, stating the company first has to get approvals before signing any real estate deals. Ebus will likely partner with hotels as pick-up and drop-off spots.

“The change in the landscape coming October 31st certainly was a motivating factor,” Stepovy said when asked why Ebus is considering expansion into British Columbia. “But, over the years, there’s a lot of people who travel between B.C. and Alberta, and we’ve had lots of inquiries about service into Kamloops, Kelowna, things like that. The timing made sense; we’ve had a closer look and believe there’s an opportunity, so here we are.”

If Ebus is given the green light, Stepovy said they “always hire local, so we will be hiring drivers, looking for customer service staff. That’s yet to be defined, but Kamloops, Vancouver, Kelowna potentially as well. We can have buses and locations, but if we don’t have people, who, really, are the biggest part of the business, there’s nothing we can do. That certainly will be a priority for us.”

Ebus is owned and operated by the Pacific Western Transportation Group of Companies. For more about Ebus, click here.