Pacific Coach Lines is cutting back service on its scheduled route between downtown Victoria and downtown Vancouver starting next week.
Between Nov. 21 and Dec. 17, the bus line will operate just three trips daily, down from the current five.
The company is taking advantage of a recent ruling from the Passenger Transportation Board that granted approval of PCL’s application to reduce the minimum number of cross-water trips during off-peak times.
“It’s key that we are talking just about off-peak times,” said PCL director of marketing Darian Tooley in an interview. “May through to the end of September, the service is buoyant both with locals, but primarily tourists.”
But Tooley said increased B.C. Transit and TransLink service between the city centres and the Swartz Bay and Tsawwassen ferry terminals has cut into the numbers riding PCL.
As a result, PCL’s ridership has dropped 40 per cent during the off-peak season, she said. “We are running a business here and we have to react to it.”
Tooley said the company, which has been operating a “cross-water route” between the city centres since 1960, will still provide increased service around the holidays and on its summer schedule.
Between Dec. 18 and Jan. 4, for example, PCL will run from Victoria to Vancouver seven times daily, and will run the other way six times a day.
“We have 50-plus years of traffic statistics. We are quite cognizant of the holiday periods and where the peaks and valleys are,” she said. “When the requirement for service is there, we have every intention to be there.”
Hospitality industry consultant Frank Bourree of Chemistry Consulting said the news was not a big surprise, as PCL has been talking about cutbacks for some time. “But it is disappointing whenever we lose any transportation links,” he said.
Bourree said there may be other factors behind the lower PCL ridership numbers, such as aging equipment and a Victoria intercity bus depot that might be more at home in another era.
In the application to the Passenger Transportation Board, Pacific Coach Lines president Dennis Shikaze wrote that the company anticipated off-peak ridership in 2014 to be 87,664 people, a 50 per cent drop from the numbers recorded in 2010.
Shikaze said that drop is the result of increased and faster service to the ferry terminals by both B.C. Transit in Victoria and TransLink in the Lower Mainland. The transit services also have fares that are 75 to 80 per cent less than PCL. The one-way B.C. resident adult fare from downtown Victoria to downtown Vancouver on PCL is $30.95 plus tax, not including ferry fare.
In approving the application, the board ruled there was “insufficient public need” to justify PCL maintaining its current level of route frequency during off-peak times and that as-is the route is no longer economically viable.
