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.
It’s believed 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.