Bus routes both close to home and far away were discussed at a recent Flin Flon city council meeting.
Public transport has been a big issue in the Flin Flon area over the past month, both in positive and negative ways. On the positive side came a deal last month between the City of Flin Flon and Town of Creighton which will see Flin Flon’s local passenger bus fleet begin running transit routes in Creighton, for the first time since 2011. The negative side came with the closure last month of Mahihkan Bus Lines, the northern-based highway bus company that shut down operations and is now seeking to sell off equipment and vehicles. With Mahihkan now closed, Flin Flon is without a passenger bus link to Winnipeg for the first time since Grey Goose shut down its own passenger service in 2018.
On the local bus deal, Flin Flon Mayor George Fontaine said the decision to expand the network to Creighton started with conversations with Creighton local leadership during regional economic development meetings.
“It started on the fact that we work together, as all three communities, as an economic development group - we sit together once a month or almost that rate, we talk about things that would be positive to all communities in the area,” said Fontaine.
“We’ve realized that while we’ve been working, we’ve been segregated in a lof of the type of things that we did. We just said, ‘We have a bus driving anyway - what if we did bring it to Creighton?’ For our businesses for example, if people from a neighbouring community want to come in and they don’t have transportation, they can come in and use our businesses. That’s good for our community.”
Each community’s administration laid out the groundwork for the deal itself - the costs were deemed acceptable for the Town, meaning they would foot the bill for their side of cost to make the service work.
“We had a conversation - our company that manages the bus system took a look at what it would cost in terms of having a few stops in Creighton. The cost was acceptable to the Town of Creighton and they were willing to move forward,” said now-former City of Flin Flon chief administrative officer Lyn Brown.
Meanwhile, Flin Flon still has no highway bus link through Manitoba. Creighton operates its own transit service, the Creighton Connection, which runs passenger vans between Creighton and Prince Albert with connections to Saskatoon.
Rumours have abounded since the Mahihkan Bus Lines closure that other transport companies may step in to fill the void left behind, but none have announced publicly that they will and none have answered requests for comment from The Reminder about plans involving Flin Flon. Fontaine said Flin Flonners and northerners in general need the service, saying it is more affordable than air travel and warning that some people may need to cancel medical trips due to not having transport to the city.
“The answer is that we need the service. We need the service for people who don’t have their own particular personal transportation, for people who require it for medical, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of use that can be put to it - as long as its a good, clean service, a regular service and a reliable service, I think it’ll be used,” Fontaine said.
“I’ve had people tell me it’s very important, that they’ll have to cancel medical travel because they can’t afford it. I’m not an expert on this, but there is a difference between what the travel program gives you and what you have to pay for an airline ticket. For some people that’s just too much and they can’t go - they have to forego medical services. This way, with a bus, they could make it work so they still have a choice.”
