Council approves Transit driver shields plan
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/01/2019 (2426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
City council unanimously approved the purchase of Winnipeg Transit bus driver safety shields Thursday.
Under the proposal, $3.1 million will be earmarked in the 2019 capital budget for the purchase and installation of the shields on all 630 buses in the fleet by the end of the year.
Coun. Brian Mayes, chairman of council’s public works committee, said the 2017 murder of on-duty driver Irvine Jubal Fraser removed any opposition to the installation of the shields.
While a shield would not have made a difference in how Fraser was killed (he was stabbed outside his vehicle), the drivers union said the devices will eliminate most of the common assaults.
“Our membership is very happy,” Aleem Chaudhary, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, told the Free Press. “Everyone’s talking about it. It’s a relief to the driver and, hopefully, in the future it will have a big impact on reducing the number of assaults on the drivers.”
The proposal approved by council is a slight variation on the proposal from the public works committee, which wanted to use a portion of Transit’s 2018 surplus and have the work done within 18 months.
Transit director Greg Ewankiw had proposed a three-year phase-in of shield purchase and installation. Ewankiw told the public works committee the work could be done within 18 months, and his only justification for the phased-in approach is that was the typical length of time taken by similar transit authorities across the country to install shields.
Coun. Jeff Browaty, who initiated the motion at public works, said he was embarrassed it’s taken the city almost two years following Fraser’s slaying to conclude safety shields should be installed on all buses.
Brian Kyle Thomas, 24, was found guilty of second-degree murder Thursday by a jury in Winnipeg.
aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
