Startup bus line owners hoping the ‘homey’ approach makes passengers happy

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This article was published 01/01/2019 (2758 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since Greyhound drove off, leaving Manitobans in a lurch, three local bus lines have been filling the void — and the stomachs of passengers who rely on the service.

A nondescript brown building a block from Health Sciences Centre — where many riders are headed — serves as the depot for buses travelling to and from Brandon, The Pas and Thompson. Passengers waiting for the bus heading north can help themselves to a free bowl of stew.

“We try to make it homey,” Maple Bus Lines owner Lori Mann said. “It’s not the Taj Mahal, but everybody likes it.”

The company services Thompson and shares its 4,000-sq.-ft. depot with Kelsey Bus Lines and Brandon Bus Lines.

If you don’t know the address of the depot, tucked away at the corner of Sherbrook Street at Pacific Avenue, you’ll likely miss it. The familiar red and blue seating inside was salvaged from the bus depot at the Winnipeg airport after Greyhound stopped its service in Western Canada on Oct. 31. Many of its routes have been brought back to life by the bus lines sharing the depot.

“Everybody is so grateful and has embraced us,” Mann said.

The reviews on Facebook rave about the customer service and driver friendliness. That’s what Mann said she was aiming for when she met with Maple’s new drivers and staff, many of whom worked for Greyhound.

“I wanted it to be their company,” she said of the employees, whose loyalty to customers is paying off.

“I’m very, very happy,” Mann said. “We were full all through Christmas, and I can see return ridership, which is wonderful.” Maple stopped bus service for Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and cancelled last Sunday night’s run from Thompson because of safety concerns when extreme wind chill was forecast for the northern Manitoba city.

“We don’t ever have less that 30 people on our bus,” she said, meaning they’re always more than half full.

Business has been good for the other two bus lines operating out of the depot.

Brandon Bus Lines’ three-days-a-week run to Brandon is often full of passengers and freight. The First Nations-owned Kelsey Bus Lines has been successful on its route from Thompson through The Pas and is moving into Maple’s Thompson depot — the former Greyhound building.

In Winnipeg, the depot near HSC was chosen because of its location, Mann said. Most of Maple’s passengers are in Winnipeg for medical appointments. When the Greyhound bus depot was located at the airport, that meant costly cab rides for patients heading to HSC, she said.

Greyhound’s claim Manitoba routes are not economically viable isn’t proving to be true for those taking them over, Mann said.

The charter business owner said she took a calculated risk buying a new fleet of buses to run the scheduled bus service. “It was scary,” Mann said. But it proved to be a wise bet. The passenger business is steadily growing, and so is the amount of freight being shipped, she said.

“Freight is up tremendously,” she said. The business that went to trucking firms when Greyhound left is migrating to Kelsey and Maple, who run buses to the north at opposite times of the day. Pretty soon, they are going to need trailers for hauling freight behind their buses, Mann said.

“It is viable,” she said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca