Transit safety to be examined amid Nanaimo exchange revamp

She added a visit to a local high school revealed concerns among several youths about personal safety on board vehicles.

“The girls told us they don’t want to ride the buses because they’re touched all the time and there’s racist comments. You’ll find there are a lot of sexual assaults that happen that may not ever get reported to BC Transit and stay with police, so I think it’s a discussion worth having.”

Safety at the downtown exchange was paramount, in light of the February attack and other instances over the years.

A new transit exchange along Terminal Ave. is aiming to address many safety concerns, including a constant security presence.

Area A director Jessica Stanley said whatever decisions are made related to transit safety should be well-informed.

“We do have a perception of a lack of safety, or at least of concern, and there have been some incidents. The best route to address perceptions of safety and to answer that underlying fear-based question, ‘are we not safe?’ is actual data and actual facts and information about actual safety.”

She said despite some “high-profile incidents,” she believed a vast majority of riders would have never had an issue.

“If we don’t address it with data, then we have people making fear-based decisions that may not be based in actual fact, and I think that undermines the trust in the public transit system, which might not be reality.”

Where future discussions happen is still undecided.

Armstrong chairs the City of Nanaimo’s Public Safety Committee and suggested it could be a topic for discussion at a future meeting, however any recommendations would eventually have to come before the Regional District, which operates the service.

RDN chief administrator officer Douglas Holmes said there are many challenges in the downtown area in particular, but incidents around the exchange aren’t necessarily caused, or made worse, by transit.

“I don’t know necessarily if the event that happened at Port Place [Shopping Centre] should be tied to transit. There is some proximity between the temporary transit exchange and the event that happened…there’s no question that at any point in time an event could happen that involved a person riding on transit, either the person who was put in harm’s way or the person doing the harm, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s causal with respect to transit.”

He said he firmly believed the transit system is “extremely safe”, adding every incident reported to them is investigated fully “to their natural conclusion” to understand the circumstances behind it and any preventative measures can be put in place.

RDN transit officials are due to review key performance indicators with BC Transit in the fall, with safety potentially added to the discussion.

The letter sent to Mayor Krog in February raised several questions regarding the proposed exchange, including what security presence would be in place and whether the facility was even needed “where trouble-makers, like these bad apple youths will gather to beat-up people or loiter???”

A similar incident to February’s attack occurred in October 2025, which saw a man attacked twice in consecutive days while waiting for his bus at the downtown exchange.

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by Alex Rawnsley

Transit safety to be examined amid Nanaimo exchange revamp

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