Safety striping installed years late at Lincoln Fields station amid ongoing coroner's inquest
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Safety striping that should have been placed by the end of 2022 on the canopy of a passenger shelter at OC Transpo's Lincoln Fields bus station did not get installed until earlier this week — amid an ongoing coroner's inquest into a fatal bus collision involving a similar canopy in 2019.
The work did not get done earlier because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the inquest heard on Thursday.
On Jan. 11, 2019, a packed OC Transpo double-decker slammed into a Transitway bus shelter at Westboro station. Three people — Judy Booth, Bruce Thomlinson and Anja Van Beek — died in the crash. Many others were injured, triggering a flurry of lawsuits.
While the city accepted civil responsibility for the crash, the bus driver was charged with 38 counts of dangerous driving causing death or bodily harm. She was acquitted of all of them in a judge-only trial in 2021.
Catch up on the inquest here
The inquest has heard that 13 canopies similar to the one central to the Westboro crash are still standing at seven other stations in Ottawa.
The canopy at Westboro was problematic because, as an engineer found after the crash, it jutted into a portion of the Transitway's "clear zone" — an area outside the roadway where fixed objects can create a hazard to vehicles leaving the road.
WATCH | Looking back on the crash and its lingering impacts:
Inquest examines Westboro bus crash that killed 3
8 days ago
Duration 4:23
The collision sparked a flurry of lawsuits against the City of Ottawa and prompted a criminal trial that saw the driver acquitted. Now a public inquest is looking at what happened with fresh eyes.
On the recommendation of another engineer, the city placed yellow and black high-visibility striping on the edge of the Westboro canopy in 2021, though the station was ultimately taken offline in June 2022 because it was being prepared as an LRT stop.
The city also planned in 2022 to placing striping at all stations with similar canopies as Westboro by the end of 2022, as shown in an internal report shared during the inquest.
That work did not happen.
City transit planner Matthew Wolstenholme testified Thursday that it was only last week, early in the inquest, that the city reviewed the clear zones at the seven stations.
On Monday, striping was placed at a canopy at Lincoln Fields station, he said.
The other six stations had offsets between the curb face and canopies that were in line with what the original engineer looking at safety after the Westboro crash recommended, which was between 1.2 metres and 1.8 metres, Wolstenholme said.
At Westboro station, the offset between the curb face and the canopy was between 0.5 metres and 0.7 metres.
At Lincoln Fields, it measures 0.35 metres to 0.5 metres, Wolstenholme said.
"Can you help me understand why this wasn't done [earlier]?" inquest lawyer Alessandra Hollands asked of the plan to place striping at all seven stations with canopies similar to Westboro.
It's not that it wasn't seen as important, but there were other factors at play, Wolstenholme said.
"For example, we were working to keep our customers and our operators safe through the pandemic and a lot of staff time and resources were allocated to that," he said.
The inquest continues Thursday afternoon.
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