Thank you very much for the question. I appreciate it.
Some of the trends we're seeing in the United States are starting to crop up in Canada.
For coaching systems, it is about identifying the fact that the middle class will happily take a coach bus if it is a luxury service and it serves their needs. Some luxury services—Red Arrow is a great example, between Calgary and Edmonton—are now expanding. It goes from having wider seats and cookies on board to Wi-Fi that functions. It's a moving office.
This is a niche area, but it has taken off in Europe. It started during the prepandemic period and became more popular in the United States. It targets the middle class person who can afford a bit more than a typical, old-style Greyhound ride, but who doesn't want to pay for a rail ride or flight. That is a trend.
The second trend we are seeing is on-demand shuttle service. This speaks to your previous question. Current public operators, whether it's B.C. Transit, St. Catharines Transit—now Niagara Region Transit—or Toronto Transit.... These existing public urban transit providers are also integrating on-demand shuttle services. There's absolutely no reason why, through provincial-federal alignment with municipalities, these services cannot extend beyond the jurisdiction where they typically operate. It is entirely reasonable that there could be a TTC-level or GTHA-level of on-demand shuttle service that is centrally controlled by public transit in the interest of transit. It's not a 40-foot or 60-foot bus. It's not a big coach. It's an on-demand shuttle.
Everywhere on-demand shuttles are deployed by centralized public transit, they reduce emissions, increase ridership, reduce ridership times and save operational dollars, including in Quebec, where Exo has one of the best operational pilots.
Those are two of the models. The first is the on-demand shuttle model. The solution is there. It would have to be centrally managed; otherwise it becomes a clustered, congested, inefficient, Uber-style system. It has to be centrally managed by the transit or public authority. The second is the luxury coach service.
If I may, I will add a third point to your previous question.
What are some of the possibilities for increasing inter-regional transit and rural mobility? An immediate one is leveraging Via Rail. We do not leverage Via Rail's data and clientele. Via will stop at a station, but there's no data going to the local, regional and rural transit providers saying when these customers are getting off. It's a simple data solution. This technology existed 20 years ago. Being able to leverage the existing clientele that already feeds into Via would support the growth of rural transit—including by private operators, as it should—into some of the communities that are poorly served today.