An overnight vandalism spree left a trail of shattered glass in the downtown Nanaimo bus exchange and other bus shelters along a six-kilometre stretch of the Island Highway and surrounding streets.
The damage to eight bus shelters, which happened overnight on Wednesday, is believed to have begun at the downtown bus exchange.
On Friday, police had few leads with no witnesses or suspects identified.
“The primary investigator, he’s scouring the area,” said Reserve Const. Gary O’Brien of Nanaimo RCMP. “I’m sure somebody saw or heard something. We just haven’t heard from them.”
The leading theory is that whoever is responsible used a vehicle to go from the downtown bus exchange toward the Rutherford Road intersection with the Island Highway, with slight detours along the way to destroy nearby bus shelters, he said.
The region usually only sees one vandalized bus stop a month, O’Brien said. “I’ve never seen the extent of what had happened the other night.”
In a statement, B.C. Transit said it’s aware of the damage and is working with the regional district and RCMP.
B.C. Transit spokesperson Jaime Weiss said bus-shelter vandalism sprees are uncommon but not unheard of.
Two years ago, the tempered glass walls of 59 bus shelters in Kelowna were broken in one January evening, costing the city more than $50,000 in repairs.
A witness that night said they heard what sounded like a high-powered air gun being fired out of an old sedan slowly driving past a Kelowna bus shelter before the glass in the shelter “just shattered.”
Weiss said B.C. Transit does not track bus-shelter vandalism, though it receives regular reports from transit users and local government partners.
While B.C. Transit works with local governments to obtain bus-shelter funding from federal infrastructure programs, and to select what types of bus shelters are installed, maintenance is the responsibility of local governments.
Half the bus shelters vandalized in Nanaimo on Wednesday are maintained by the City of Nanaimo and the other half are the responsibility of the Regional District of Nanaimo.
Logistics manager Ryan Dyszkant of Monarch Structures, a Richmond-based bus-shelter supplier for B.C. Transit, said municipalities looking to install bus shelters in the province can pick between tempered glass walls and perforated aluminum panels.
Dyszkant said he’s seen the tempered glass used in B.C. Transit shelters withstand a hammer blow.
However, the City of Kamloops chose perforated panels over tempered glass for a recent bus-shelter order in part because it would be harder to vandalize and take less damage from rocks thrown up by snowplows, Dyszkant said.
“But that’s mainly Kamloops. I’ve still seen a lot of glass shelters [ordered], so it really varies,” he said.
Weiss said B.C. Transit is aware that more municipalities are choosing non-glass options over glass.
— with a file from Castanet
