Winnipeg Transit bans 28 passengers in 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE: Winnipeg Transit initially told Global News 29 passengers were banned in 2019. Winnipeg Transit has since updated that number to 28. 

Winnipeg’s public transit authority banned 28 people from riding buses and entering any of its bus shacks and stations in 2019 for either repeatedly skipping out on fares, acts of vandalism or violence, according to its manager of operations.

Bans are issued at the discretion of transit inspectors, and most last for one year.

“If an inspector gets called to an incident and that person is displaying some undesirable behavior, they may be written a public transit bylaw ticket, and in conjunction with that they may be banned from our property,” said Randy Tonnellier, Winnipeg Transit’s manager of operations.

Bans are issued with police as witnesses, Tonnellier said.

Then bus drivers and other staff are notified through an internal operations bulletin with the name, an identification number and photo of the passenger.

The bulletin, signed by chief inspector Craig Gill, notes drivers are supposed to let banned passengers ride their bus before calling transit’s control centre.

If the banned passenger doesn’t leave after an inspector arrives, police may be called.

“Quite often in these cases the person who is banned will just walk away, that’s fine with us. It’s a deterrent for us for undesirable behavior and it’s to promote safety on our buses,” Tonnellier said.

Police have the authority to charge people with trespassing if they enter transit property after the ban is issued.

Appeals to the bans aren’t heard through Winnipeg Transit, Tonnellier said, though he noted in cases where the banned person is also facing criminal charges, a judge can either extend or quash the ban.

The city’s public transit bylaw notes the bans can be appealed through the standing policy committee responsible for transit by sending a written appeal through the city clerk’s office within 14 days of the ban’s issue.

The director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, Neil McArthur, sees no problems with banning passengers in itself, particularly on public safety grounds.

But he does take issue with the appeal process.

“The bus is an essential service for people,” McArthur said. “To have an appeal process that isn’t done through the authority itself and isn’t easily accessible to people, I don’t think makes ethical sense.”

“In many cases these are going to be people without resources — so it needs to be something that is accessible to people, where they can come in and say ‘why did this happen, was this fair?”

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Though the bans typically last one year, they may last as long as two years or as little as six months. Two-year bans are typically doled out to people who have already been banned in the past.

Six-month bans are occasionally issued to people who “show some remorse for their activity” Tonnellier said, pointing to repeat fare evaders as an example as opposed to vandals or people who act violently on city buses.

“It’s certainly not something we do on a regular basis, its more for incidents of an elevated nature,” Tonnellier said. “If someone refuses to pay a fare on repeat occasions, if someone is displaying violence or other criminal behavior, that’s when they will likely be banned.”

Tonnellier stressed that the bans are issued to keep drivers and the public safe. Transit issues about 25-30 banning orders a year — Tonnellier noted the authority has been able to issue bans for about 20 years, but the 2014 public transit bylaw streamlined the process.