Provinces chip in to keep rural Maritime Bus routes in service

After two years of substantial losses, an interprovincial bus servicethat connects rural parts of the Maritimeswill be able to continue running its rural and northernroutes thanks to new funding, the owner of the private service operator says.

Mike Cassidy, who owns Maritime Bus, said his company provides an essential service, andthe combined $900,000from the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I.shows him the provinces agree.

"It's nice to feel needed and it's nice to feel wanted," Cassidy said, adding that the COVID-19pandemic has been "very difficult" on passenger service companies like his.

The funding will help the company cover some of themillions of dollarsin losses incurred over the last two yearsand prepare for a rebound in tourism, the provinces said in news releasesTuesday.

Cassidy said the absence of multi-day trip bookings from cruise ship passengers during the pandemichas been especially crippling.

"That's over half of our business and that was gone for the last two years," said Cassidy, who also owns Coach Atlantic Group, the parent company of Maritime Bus.

"Next weekwill be the first cruise ship arrival, and it is looking good at this point."

Cassidy said he's hopeful that revenues during thisyear's tourist season could be 90 per cent of what they were in 2019.

Maritime Bus, which also offers parcel shipping and transports blood productsto hospitals, received federal and provincial funding last year to keep some routes running in New Brunswick.

Provincial breakdown

Nova Scotia and New Brunswickwill each contribute $400,000 to the company while Prince Edward Island is providing $90,000. The release from Nova Scotiasaid the provinces' contributions areproportional to the ratio of kilometres driven by the servicein each province.

"Maritime Bus provides a service that's vital to linking our communities and our province, and links our province to our Maritime neighbours," Kim Masland, Nova Scotia's minister of public works, told reporters Tuesday.

Electric, clean diesel buses

Cassidy said plans to add clean diesel and electric vehiclesto his fleet are underway. He said the company will soon be ordering electric buses for its municipal operations on P.E.I., but those vehicles aren't suitable for interprovincial travel.

"There's not quite the range in a big motor coach from the battery pack," Cassidy said."And also [with] the room that these batteries take up, you lose most of all your storage compartment underneath the bus."

He said Maritime Bus will continue to monitor the evolving technology because he'd like to have one of the first fully electric motor coaches when it's feasible.

In the meantime, he said, the company's aim over the next year is to explore decreasingits reliance on diesel from fossil fuels by switching to diesel derived from biomass.