MORE ON THE DOG: THE FATE ON WINNIPEG'S DOWNTOWN BUS TERMINAL:
Molly has previously reported on the downtown Greyhound bus terminal (even though it is also a terminal for other bus lines here in Winnipeg) and her opinion is that the terminal should stay where it is despite the opinion of management that the dog is "the domain of the poor and the weird". While not wanting to dispute this definition, having travelled enough on the Dog in her younger days, Molly wants to question the decisions of a management such as Laidlaw that wishes to embark on new capital projects in the face of declining revenue. In other words, the University educated managers know little about real business- is this a surprise ? First Group PLC has announced an offer of $2.8 billion to acquire Greyhound 's corporate owner Laidlaw International Inc. whose main business is focused on school buses- a "captive market". The actions of Laidlaw International to this date have been anything but "profit maximizing" let alone "service maximizing", perhaps because of the fact that the corporate culture has been oriented towards the monopoly of school buses rather than the competitive market of intercity transit.




The parent company of the Dog, Laidlaw , is now based in Illinois after having gone through a two year bankruptcy reorganization and relocating from Ontario to Illinois in 2003. Apparently they didn't do things right then.




May Molly suggest that the previous failures of the Dog were due to poor management decisions and that the idea that the depot should be relocated from downtown to the airport is BOTH socially detrimental (as I have expressed before on this blog) and a foolish management move from simple economics. The best analogy is Walmart trying to sell upscale items which led to a very obvious decrease in Walmart's revenues. Perhaps the Dog is and should remain the purview of "the poor and the weird", and any attempt to change same will result in a drop in revenue, no matter how many millions of dollars you uselessly spend on a new depot out by the airport. Perhaps this is the difference between Molly who runs her own business in a competitive market and the managers of the Dog who have no idea of real competition and are free to dream up any scheme they want. They will be hired, after all, by other corporations at about the same salary no matter how much they destroy the business they worked for originally.





One more example of where "management" rules as opposed to the "capitalist" owners in Molly's great overview of the world, and one more example of where profitability can be subsumed to other managerial derived goals. One where the interests of the managerial ruling class are opposed to the class interests of poor people and perhaps the interests of the shareholders of the corporation in the end. One may also question the effect of a new terminal on other competing bus lines. The OBVIOUS effect is to reduce competition as the other bus lines serve a rural population here in Manitoba. Is the move of the depot a disguised and ill advised attempt to eliminate the competition without a cost-benefit analysis ?





Let the Dog remain as it is, without managerial schemes.
Molly