http:// www.adventurecharters.caA Williams Lake bus company is seeking the Passenger Transportation Board's permission to provide a twice-a-week service between Prince George and Surrey.
If all works out, Adventure Charter and Rentals will have it up and running by early June, operations manager Randy Gertzen said Wednesday, filling a void created when Greyhound Canada withdrew from Western Canada in October 2018.
The company submitted an application to the PTB in February. By then, an attempt by another venture, Merritt Shuttle Bus Ltd., to get a similar service on the road was looking doubtful and the last of its deadline extensions expired in early March.
In contrast, Adventure Charters has years of experience in the business. It provides a daily run to to the Mount Polley mine and a charter service for schools, teams, First Nations, and other groups.
"We do any kind of charter service that you require," Gertzen said. "If you want to go from here to Seattle, to Edmonton, to wherever you want to go, we are licenced to go anywhere in B.C. or the States."
Moreover, Gertzen said the company used to do emergency runs for Greyhound.
"So we got a pretty good idea of what they did and how they did it," he said.
The plan is to provide a twice weekly service that takes clients to the Skytrain station in Surrey and scheduled to connect with the BC Bus North service in Prince George, with 11 stops in between those two. The application also calls for a second twice-a-week service between Williams Lake and Kamloops.
On the Prince George-Surrey route, it will run a 36-passenger bus, significantly smaller than the buses Greyhound used. Hiring additional drivers, setting an exact schedule and establishing a method to book rides will be among the next steps pending approval of a licence by the PTB.
Details will be posted on the company website, www.adventurecharters.ca.
