Rider Express returns with Regina route

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This article was published 09/03/2021 (1688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rider Express, the Regina-based bus company that stepped into the fray when Greyhound cut its Western Canadian service, is taking another crack at the Winnipeg-Regina route.

After Greyhound pulled into the depot for the last time in Western Canada at the end of October 2018, Rider Express was ready with a number of routes that serviced the country from Winnipeg to Vancouver.

However, weeks later, it was forced to cut Winnipeg from its route schedule because of lack of bookings. But on March 19, it is restarting Winnipeg to Regina service.

Omer Kanca, Rider Express’s manager of operations, said the company hopes that the rollout of vaccinations and the approaching summer travel season will get people travelling again.

“These are all hopes. You never know,” Kanca said. “These are very unprecedented times.”

The Winnipeg-Regina trip will cost $100 including taxes and will board at the Maple Bus Lines depot in Winnipeg at 936 Sherbrook St. Scheduled stops will occur at Portage la Prairie, Brandon, Virden and Moosomin, Sask.

Tickets can be purchased online from the company’s website (www.riderexpress.ca) or through the company’s call centre and they can be purchased from the driver.

The company understands the lay of the land a little better after a couple of years in business and despite the massive disruption to the travel industry caused by the pandemic, the company does not intend to stop service at Winnipeg. It is planning to acquire some new buses — expanding its fleet of 12 Setra, Prevost and Temsa buses — and hopes to extend its routes farther east.

“Our hope, our plan, is to connect the entire country, not just stay in Western Canada on the busiest routes,” Kanca said. “We would like to be the new Greyhound of Canada.”

After the Saskatchewan Transportation Corp. (STC), a Crown corporation, shut its doors earlier that year, company founder Firat Uray launched Rider Express, servicing a number of intraprovincial routes in Saskatchewan.

In the immediate post-Greyhound period, Uray told the Free Press, “For now, we want to stabilize this route. We want to go step by step.”

Kanca said the company’s philosophy continues to be careful, slow growth.

It will start with weekly service, leaving Regina on Friday night at 11 and arriving in Winnipeg at 6:30 Saturday morning, then leaving Winnipeg on Saturday night at 11.

Kanca said the company has received lots of inquiries about a Winnipeg-Regina route over the past six months and they believe there is demand.

“We feel like there is going to eventually be a service there,” he said. “We know the times are hard, obviously, but there is a strong need for the service. So we are going to start slow.”

Its Calgary-Edmonton and Edmonton-Regina routes are four times weekly with Vancouver-to-Calgary going twice per week. The hope is to be able to eventually increase frequency on the Winnipeg-Regina run as well.

But the business has already been hit hard by the pandemic. It started a Regina-Calgary service in mid-March last year at the very beginning of the pandemic.

The company had to cut schedules over the past year because of public health restrictions on non-essential travel.

“It has caused a huge hit on our operations and it still is,” Kanca said.

But the company believes that if it is the one taking the leap into this market, the pent-up demand for leisure travel will bring customers via word of mouth.

“Ground transportation is a must,” he said. “You can’t do without it. Obviously the distances in Western Canada are not easy to manage. But still there is a need. We cannot simply ignore that. We are willing to do the job.”

The company has been disappointed that it has not been able to collaborate with support from federal or provincial governments. It hopes that might still be possible at some point.

Meanwhile, the company is prepared to re-establish itself, post-pandemic, in some key routes and it believes it can be sustainable even with as few as 15 to 20 passengers per trip.

“But we can’t last on that for too long,” Kanca said.

Ideally, they would get up to 35 riders per trip before long.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca