Centralized booking: Low hanging fruit?

In our posts, we the dudes have ranted often about the disconnected nature of intercity buses in this province; disconnected in the sense that logical routes have little to no service (EG Hamilton-KW/Cambridge) and disconnected in that operators both public and private do not exist together as one system.

We created our map because as bus users ourselves, we wanted to see how Ontario’s bus routes worked together, especially since the public sector has been dropping the ball on this since at least the early 1990’s when it stopped publishing an intercity bus map for the province.

Without putting too fine a point on this, us two dudes were able to piece together a map on our own time for free and even if the result isn’t pretty, people can glance at our work and maybe figure out where they want to go. While the MTO really should still be publishing a map, bottom-up up project was doable with publically available info on the internet.

What if, knowing how to go somewhere, a prospective passenger wants to buy tickets? It works fine if the route is all on one carrier; let’s say for illustration sake, Greyhound from Toronto to Ottawa. However, what if this person wants to, I don’t know, somewhere in Southwestern Ontario (could be Woodstock, could be London etc) to Niagara. This really isn’t a niche thing, with colleges and universities as well as tourism; people all over the province want to come to Niagara. The problem is, in order to do so, our hypothetical rider would need to buy two different sets of tickets on at least two operators (Greyhound and Coach Canada) depending on where in Niagara they wanted to go. Wouldn’t it be great if, in order to be licensed to operate on Ontario highways, bus operators had to participate in an Ontario wide ticketing system? This wouldn’t stop them from having their own websites and tickets of course, but would also allow for the purchase of through trips on multiple carriers without having to do the research oneself.

Is this just a pipe dream? Maybe not. In the UK, the national railway service was privatized in the 90’s. Each region of the country was broken up into franchises awarded by that country’s Department for Transport. In addition to the portions of the country given to them by franchise, train operators are also able to service other areas but need to apply for this service, so that schedules can be worked out for station platforms and sections of track. Because there are so many operators (24 as of 2017) a trip between different points in the country often involves multiple operators. Unlike for buses in Ontario, a traveler can book tickets for multiple British train companies on one site! The National Rail Enquiries website, allows for through tickets to be bought. For example, let’s say you wanted to go from Bristol Temple Meads (my station when I lived in the UK) to Stanstead Airport. This is a common trip because Stanstead is the home airport for many European low-cost airlines. The journey involves using two operators; both the Great Western Railway and the Stanstead Express. Let’s look at what happens when one books a ticket.

Oh my goodness, it’s magic, your ticket is valid for both operators! Hell, the National Rail Enquiries even publishes a map. Crazy right? I wasn’t clear on how to find the history of this service, eg was it an initiative of the train companies themselves or was is something legislated by the national government but now it is run by the train companies themselves working as a consortium.

However it happened, the service is a lifesaver when making multi operator journeys, something that, in Ontario, would be extremely difficult.

Since we dudes are in the business of “ideas to make bus travel less shitty” we propose a central booking system for Ontario bus companies. We’d rather not impose something on the operators; for better or worse the public sector is not directly involved in running buses outside of the GTA and it makes little sense to piss them off. We’d love to have the MTO take the lead on having this ticketing system negotiated with the bus companies but it doesn’t need to directly run the site; National Rail Enquiries is, as you know, run by the firms without the UK transport department at all. For Ontario, with little precedent for cooperation between companies we think the MTO could serve as an “honest broker” in setting up such a ticketing system, negotiating with each company to come on board and making sure each company receives the correct revenue from a multi operator ticket.

Like a lot of ideas on our site, maybe this sounds like a pipe dream but the implementation of is, I think, not a ridiculously difficult thing. Maybe somebody wants to start a conversation with an MPP candidate? No, right now bus riders don’t have political power but why not get them thinking (and a bit worried) about what would happen if we did!