Arrest made in assault of bus driver
Monday, May 8th, 2006 - 10:15 am
Police have arrested one teenager, and expect to arrest a second person today, in the weekend beating of a TransLink bus driver in Coquitlam. Two attackers beat the driver of the No. 153 bus unconscious after a fare disupte, then vandalized the bus before fleeing around 6 am Saturday morning. At some point, the bus rolled into a parked car. The driver, who was also bitten, is expected to recover.
Union officials from the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) are pushing TransLink to adopt an “honour fare system” similar to that on Skytrain in order to reduce fare disputes with passengers. TransLink says it is still studying the use of surveillance cameras and/or protective cages to improve driver security.
TransLink spokesman Doug McDonald says the system experiences about 200 assaults annually against drivers, most of them minor, and that the number of violent incidents is rare when measured against the TransLink’s annual 60 million kilometres of travel and its daily ridership of more than half-a-million.
Later on Saturday, a transit supervisor suffered a “nasty cut over the eye” after being called to a fare dispute between a bus driver and a passenger. (Sources: CBC Vancouver; Globe and Mail, page S1; CKNW radio)
