BlueStar Coachlines has a fleet of 26 full-size, 56-seat tour buses. However, the majority of them are sitting in the bus yard these days.“The bus industry has taken quite a big hit because of COVID,” said BlueStar’s maintenance manager, Luke Ferguson.Business for the Kelowna-based company has dropped by 93 per cent since the pandemic hit, and its staff has decreased from 60 to just 7 people, two of them on-call only.
Underwood said tour buses play a critical role in tourism by moving millions of passengers throughout the province every year. In B.C., motorcoaches have banded together to form a coalition and are now in the process of lobbying the provincial government for more help. “So on a coach that is five years or newer, it’s about $18,000. If you had no cash flow and now you suddenly have work and we have to put that coach back on the road, that translates per coach to $18,000. Nobody has any money. How are we supposed to serve the community?”
Maybe they should join the resistance: