With non-essential travel restrictions on Highways 3 and 99 to last through the holidays, Ebus will be back to running two buses a day next Wednesday, Dec. 15
BC Operations Manager, Glen Desjardine says after waiting a few days to resume service after the highways washed out, they began with one bus a day connecting both Kamloops and Kelowna to the Lower Mainland via Princeton.
“We re-launched our morning services only on Nov. 20 given our operators the ability to identify things such as debris on the road. There’s always a bit more challenge when operating at night so we just through out of respect for the highway crews and fellow road users, I think the safest choice was to operate in the day time only,” he said.
But with washouts to both the Coquihalla and the Trans Canada, coupled with sky-high air fares, people have been turning to buses to try and get to and from the Lower Mainland.
A round trip by bus to Vancouver leaving Kamloops at 8:15 a.m. next Friday, Dec. 17, returning back from Vancouver at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 19 will set you back $160.76.
The only flight available on Google Flights that same weekend is operated by Pacific Coastal Airlines. It leaves Kamloops Airport at 9:40 a.m. with the return flight leaving Vancouver International Airport at 7:55 a.m. Sunday. It will set you back $592.
Desjardine though cautions the highway detours has made those trips a little longer than usual. The bus trips take about seven hours one way compared to the 55 minute flight.
“[Modifying our route has] added some obvious time to the travel schedule and that’s had an impact on how we rotate our buses and how we rotate our drivers as well, so we’ve had to somewhat reinvent the wheel, so to speak,” he added.
“We did also run some scheduled services shortly after the highways had reopened and had to turn around because of highways closures, just intermittent highway closures and just not having the confidence in the sustainability of the highway openings.”
But Desjardine notes passenger counts are climbing for the upcoming holiday travel period between Dec. 17 and Jan. 3, adding if people are looking to travel, it is better to book sooner rather than later.
“We made the conscious decision to move away from a non-refundable, somewhat of a discounted fare, to a fully refundable fare,” he said. “So all the Ebus tickets that you buy now are fully refundable, and they are fully flexible.”
