Posted by: tbaysg | May 26, 2011

You Can’t Get There from Here

If you’ve made it to Thunder Bay and didn’t drive here, you probably flew because there are limited transportation options into and out of town. Because of this, Thunder Bay can feel like a bit like an island.

Thunder Bay is 314 km [194 mi] from Duluth, MN, 685 km [425 mi] from Winnipeg, 690 km [428 mi] from Sault Ste. Marie, and 1375 km [858 mi] from Toronto – and there’s not a lot in between.

So, say you don’t have a car. How do you get on or off the Isle of Thunder Bay without paying the big bucks to fly? In short, you don’t – conveniently anyway. For adventurous souls however, there are slightly crazy things you can do. Being slightly crazy myself, I’ve researched these options extensively. It turns out that over the past decade or so, many transit lifelines have been cut or significantly reduced.

Rental Car

One possibility of course is to rent a car. To make this resource valuable in the future, I’m not going to provide prices or policies here, because they will change. I will provide links to the companies in town so you can plug your own details into their reservation system. Make sure you cover your bases and find out the important details to avoid unpleasant surprises. Some things (among others) that you want to be sure of are how many (if any) free kilometers are included in the rental, how much per kilometer if you go over, and whether or not you can drive across the border. Some companies have different policies if you drop off at a different location than you picked up, or if you leave Ontario. Don’t get caught off guard, make sure you know before you go. Our companies here probably look familiar, they are Alamo (www.alamo.ca), Avis (www.avis.ca), Budget (www.budget.ca), Discount Car and Truck Rentals (www.discountcar.com), Enterprise (www.enterprise.com), Hertz (www.hertz.ca) and National (www.nationalcar.ca). Price and distance wise, I’ve found National to be the best, but shop around to be sure. They’re also probably the best if you want a different drop off location than where you picked up the car.

Train

Rail is one of the better ways to travel, but not from here. January 15, 1990 was a dark day in the history of Thunder Bay – VIA rail stopped serving the city. VIA rail is pretty far behind the rest of the world and quite expensive, but even so, it is just plain wrong that they skip the largest city in Northern Ontario completely. For those curious, the reasons have to do with rail right-of-way issues with freight carriers. For the sake of completeness, I feel like I should bring rail up. If you want to get on the train from Thunder Bay, your closest option (unless we get our service back) is to head north through the woods to Armstrong and pick it up there (252 km [157 mi], 5 hours according to Google Maps). If you want to stay on the highway, you can pick it up in Longlac, which according to Google Maps takes about 4 hours and is 306 km [190 mi]. Check www.viarail.ca for info. If you don’t have a car however, that becomes an interesting problem, but that brings me to my next topic, which is the bus.

Bus

Like other things, long distance bus service is very limited. The services, their webpage, and nearby destinations are listed below. Check the site for the most up to date information. Careful, they don’t run every day (don’t be crazy), and the schedules are liable to change:

Caribou Coach – www.cariboucoach.ca – Nipigon, Beardmore, Geraldton, Longlac, and Hearst to the East and Atikokan and Fort Francis to the west.

Greyhound – www.greyhound.ca – Winnipeg and intermediate points along highway 17 to the west, and Toronto via Sault Ste. Marie and intermediate points along highway 17 to the east. In general, it takes 9 hours and change to Winnipeg or Sault Ste. Marie, and 20 hours to Toronto.

Happy Time Tours – www.httours.com – Gotta love the name of this one. Despite its proximity, Happy Time Tours is the only line with regularly scheduled service to Minnesota, but only one location,  Grand Portage.  They run a free shuttle to the casino from Thunder Bay.  Grand Portage is in the middle of nowhere, and if you want to continue on from there, it’s a bit of a trick, I’ll explain.

Duluth – So close, yet so far

Duluth is the closest major city to Thunder Bay, but it’s nearly impossible to get there if you don’t drive yourself (you can get there on Greyhound through Toronto in 2 days!). You can’t even fly to Duluth in less than about 9 hours (Delta cancelled direct flights there in October 2010). Back in the day, Happy Time Tours also used to run regular service to Duluth, but they quit in January 2009.  If you want to take the bus to Duluth, you’ll need to use the rural Minnesota bus routes. Here’s the crazy part, it only runs two days out of the month. If you choose this route, this is a bus you don’t want to miss. The point of this part is not to be negative, but to show that there is a possibility of doing things this way, however insane they may be. Take Arrowhead transit from Grand Portage (see the Happy Time Tours section above).  Go to Arrowhead Transit’s webpage for up to date info. www.arrowheadtransit.com. At the top of the page you can see “Services by County”, go there, then go to “Cook County” and check out the Grand Marais schedule.  You’ll see that you can get from Grand Portage (where Happy Time Tours drops you off) to Grand Marias any weekday. It’s Grand Marias to Duluth that’s the trick. You’ll see on the Schedule that (at least as I write this) they run only the second Tuesday and fourth Thursday of the month… and it’s after the Grand Portage bus gets in, so you’ll probably have to spend the night in Grand Marais unless they change the schedule.  Good thing is that this is a cheap route. Free from Thunder Bay to Grand Portage, then $2 to Grand Marias, then $12.25 to Duluth.

Plane

Then there’s flying. I suppose since that’s the method of choice for people around here, it’s best to include it. The best advice I can give is don’t fly across the border. For destinations in Canada, go ahead and leave from Thunder Bay, but if you want to go to a US location, try to fly out of Minnesota, if you can get there. You’ll end up paying more just to cross the border in an airplane. Update: Happy Valentine’s Day to us – On February 14th, 2013 United Airlines started direct flights to Chicago, flying to the States is way cheaper and sucks less. Thanks United!. Update 2: Aaaaaaand a year later United is gone too, well, it was nice while it lasted. I hear that occasionally airlines offer specials to places directly from Thunder Bay, but it’s not a consistent thing, check in with them to find out. The airport website has basic information (www.tbairport.on.ca). You can only fly a few places direct from Thunder Bay. Bearskin Airlines (www.bearskinairlines.com) and Wasaya (www.wasaya.com) are smaller carriers for places in Manitoba and Ontario. The major Carriers are Air Canada Jazz (www.aircanada.com), and Westjet (www.westjet.com), which will fly you to Winnipeg or Toronto to go other places. Porter runs service to Toronto (www.flyporter.com). United flies direct to Chicago and from there to just about everywhere else www.united.com

I hope that helps. People who know this stuff better than I do, feel free to comment. I’ll do my best to update this as I learn more. Join me next time when I attempt (again) to get a decent cell phone, explain the local transit system or buy a car up here.


Responses

  1. That definitely does help! Thank you so much for posting this! One time I had borrowed my friend’s car and ended up needing to get new auto glass in Thunder Bay because a huge rock came and smashed my glass! It was awful and made me never want to drive again! Once again, thanks so much for the post!

  2. THANKS 4 THAT, WHAT A HASSEL, WANTED TO GET FROM ARMSTRONG TO THUNDER BAY, NO JOY. SO MUCH FOR GETTING A GOOD LOOK AT ONTARIO. THANKS, TRACKS W. AUSTRALIA

  3. Thanks so so much! You are amazing. This information really helped.
    Wish things change soon for Thunder Bay travel.

  4. United is abandoning Thunder Bay on April 24, 2014.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/united-airlines-pulls-chicago-route-from-thunder-bay-airport-1.2518764

  5. We are trying to also connect from Northern Minnesota to Via Rail without a car or plane.. it’s turned out to be way more tricky then we ever imagined. Some of the info here might help us. Thanks for this page!

  6. This was funny to read and very informative for my daughter who insists its not that far away…yeah right!!

  7. Thank you. At first I couldn’t believe that Greyhound or any of the bus services didn’t seem to have a connection to Duluth from Thunder Bay. But your thorough research confirms it. a sad state of affairs.

  8. i want to get to thunder bay from madison wi. is there any hope for me, besides driving? prefer bus…thank you!

    • As mentioned above, the only bus option from where you are is through Toronto. It would take more than a couple days and probably cost as much to fly. Your best bet is probably to bus to Milwaukee and fly from there, which will likely connect through Toronto. Good luck!

  9. Note that Arrowhead Transit now offers one roundtrip bus from Grand Marais, MN to Duluth, MN and piints in between EVERY TUESDAY…(no longer ANY Thursday service). However…be sure to check their website as this is new and could easily chsnge, or a trip could be canceled for lack of enough ridets.

  10. I’m in my sixties now, and wanted to relive a few memories. I was going to Google Earth the rail yards in T. Bay. My mother’s parents lived in Fort William. In those days; (The mid-sixties) it was the twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William. Fort William sure sounds a lot better than “Thunder Bay.” How bland is that? “Back in the day” Canadian Pacific Railway ran two cross Canada trains; both directions; seven days a week: The Canadian & The Dominion. The Fort William rail yards, and train station; were bustling. Lots of activity; day and night. Sad–but not surprised–that the train service in Fort William has gone under.


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