The German busing company FlixBus says it will soon launch daily round trips between Regina, Saskatoon and North Battleford, entering a market shaken in recent years by the end of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company and Greyhound services in the Prairies.
The company, which now owns Greyhound and has been running routes in other Canadian provinces since 2022, will also offer daily service to Calgary and Edmonton from its three Saskatchewan hubs as of July 1, it says.
“In the case of Saskatchewan, really cross-provincial travel is only possible if you have your own car,” said Sara Tohamy, FlixBus’s strategic partnerships manager.
“We all know gas is expensive these days, but also with expensive flights as well … there’s just really this demand for affordability,” she said.
FlixBus will be a direct competitor to Rider Express, which runs routes between Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert, and offers connecting routes to Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg from Saskatchewan.
Unlike FlixBus, whose routes between cities will be direct, Rider Express buses make several stops at smaller communities between its hubs.
“Greyhound was able to run 90 years or more in Canada because they were the only provider. But when the market is open and everybody can provide the service, then it’s a different story,” said Rider Express owner Firat Uray.
Most Rider Express routes currently don’t face competition, “but once we have this kind of outsider coming and manipulating the market, maybe it will damage our business as well, and maybe there won’t be a Rider Express after a couple years,” he said.
Uray said his company has been profitable because of its connections across several provinces, but government support would be needed to open routes to smaller communities in Saskatchewan.
“Private companies [are] only able to provide service with limited budgets where there is demand,” he said, noting that Rider Express is planning to open up routes to Estevan and Yorkton this summer.
Keith Willoughby, who runs the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan, agreed with Uray’s assessment of the challenges of the Saskatchewan bus market, but said a new player in the field is exciting.
Saskatchewan’s sparse population, the high fixed costs of running a travel bus fleet and the popularity of private cars are all headwinds, he said, but competition could spur an uptick in the popularity of taking the bus, prompting growth.
“If there can be an opportunity by which there will be more people taking the bus, there will be greater opportunities for this, and that’s where there could be sustainable advantages for both the consumers as well as the companies involved in this industry,” said Willoughby.
The travel bus industry in Saskatchewan and the Prairies more broadly has been turbulent over the last decade.
In 2017, the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, a Crown corporation that had offered routes to hundreds of smaller communities across the province since 1946, was shut down due to lack of profitability.
The following year, Greyhound ended its passenger and freight services in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, leaving hundreds of rural communities across Western Canada without any formal bus service connecting them to large centres.
“If you’re in a small town and you don’t have a way of getting out of your city or your town, it can be extremely difficult and very negative for your mental health,” said Jacob Alhassan, who teaches community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.
“Transportation is probably one of the most important social determinants of health.”
Alhassan studied the impact of the STC’s 2017 shutdown on rural communities, and found that reduced access to transportation had a broadly negative effect on rural communities, leading to missed health appointments and a significant increase in transportation costs to bigger cities.
Alhassan said he’s cautiously optimistic about FlixBus entering the Saskatchewan market, and is hoping for more routes to more communities.
Tohamy said she couldn’t offer details on routes in the province beyond Regina, Saskatoon and North Battleford, but that FlixBus is definitely open to the idea.
“Just because it’s a smaller community, that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to serve it,” she said.
“In fact, those are the communities that we want to serve the most, because they’re the ones that are oftentimes left out.”
