New bylaw intended to provide increased safety, well-being for Halifax Transit users

Commuters are being promised a safer Halifax Transit trip in the near future.

“The purpose of this bylaw is to allow police to remove people from transit if they choose to for the right reasons and ban them from facilities,” Tony Mancini, representative for the Harbourview-Burnside-Dartmouth East district on Halifax regional council, said in introducing the second reading of the transit safety bylaw at a council meeting Tuesday.

“We need to work on safety for our residents, riders and staff and it’s a good step in that direction,” Mancini said.

The staff report dated just six weeks ago recommended a bylaw to promote the safety and well-being of passengers and transit employees, primarily because HRM “does not have a bylaw for public transit” and because Halifax Transit frequently faces safety concerns pertaining to vandalism, violence, and criminal activity.

The bylaw will have two approaches, namely voluntary compliance and enforcement.

“Compliance would focus on strategies like informal resolutions, warnings, public education, and dispute resolution,” the staff report says. 

“Enforcement would include issuing bylaw offence tickets and taking enforcement action such as ordering a person to leave transit property or prohibiting a person from entering transit property for a specified period of time.”

Mancini said police could bar people from the transit terminals and the buses but not from the ferries because they fall under federal jurisdiction. 

Philip Herritt, director of transit operations, said the bylaw will become effective “very quickly” after it is adopted by council and published in accordance with municipal charter requirements.

“We’ll work with our partners in HRP (Halifax Regional Police) and RCMP on the role of implementation of the enforcement of it,” Herritt said.

Fines for someone who commits and is convicted of a summary offence under the bylaw will start at $100 for a first offence, $250 for a second offence and $350 for a third offence.

The staff report says that, depending on the situation, a mix of both a voluntary compliance and enforcement approach will be taken to de-escalate and handle the situation.

The report says that prohibiting people from transit for a specified period of time can be a significant penalty and therefore under the bylaw, the police officers will be required, prior to prohibiting a person, to consider the severity of the contravention, the circumstances surrounding it and the the individual’s history of previous contraventions.

The report recognizes as a bylaw risk the potential for an increased number of appeals to the bylaw administrator as non-compliant individuals are banned from transit property.

Any person who has been prohibited from transit property for a period longer than 24 hours can appeal.

Herritt said appeals will be prioritized and dealt with.

He said transit is coming back to council in November with a report on how to build a safety officer program, drawing from practices used by other transit companies across the country.

Positions for four additional transit service supervisors, previously approved by council, will be posted within the next two weeks, along with two other service supervisor positions left vacant by retirement, he said.

Pam Lovelace, councillor for Hammonds Plains-St. Margarets, asked about RCMP availability to take transit calls in rural areas of the municipality and about the lack of consultation with the public about the new bylaw measures.

“The RCMP have no issue with the bylaw and their ability to enforce it,” Herritt said, adding that with detachments in Lower Sackville, Tantallon and Cole Harbour, the force is accustomed to servicing areas where Halifax Transit travels.

“In order to push this through as quickly as we did, we did not do the public consultations, and there was minimal consultation with the operators but we had used surveys that had taken place in the past around those challenges,” Herritt said. 

He said a lot of the front-line operators were informally canvassed about the new program.

The staff report said the lack of public consultation on the bylaw was necessary because of the rapid increase of security incidents in Halifax Transit and the time-sensitive nature of the report.

The forthcoming Halifax Transit Safety and Security Program will have an extensive community engagement strategy to share information and gather input, the staff report states.

Iona Stoddard, representing the Timberea-Beechville-Clayton Park-Wedgewood district, asked Herritt what is to prevent a transit scofflaw from simply boarding another bus.

“That’s one of the challenges that we are facing today,” Herritt said. “Our supervisor staff and our front-line operators are unfortunately well aware sometimes of who the individuals are and we do keep documentation between ourselves, HRP and the RCMP as to who they are. 

“We will continue to work with access and privacy to determine the best way to share that information continually across the board.”

Council passed the bylaw with a unanimous 15-0 votes.