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Transit police spokeswoman Anne Drennan said the alleged assaulter was sitting near the front of the bus when it stopped to let passengers get off. As the bus started up again, the man allegedly punched the driver on the shoulder, but his hand bounced upward and grazed the driver’s cheek. He then shouted to be let off the bus and fled to SkyTrain where he was caught at New Westminster’s Columbia Station. Henry Alexander, 36, of New Westminster, has been charged with assault.

“The driver told us that although his injuries were minor, he was really upset because he didn’t know if he would lose control of the bus,” Drennan said. “This is one (incident) where a barrier quite likely would have prevented an assault of a driver on a moving bus.”

TransLink maintains it plans to test a variety of barriers, as well as get feedback from drivers on passenger interaction and safety, before deciding on a specific model. The Plexiglas barriers being used now were retrofitted in four buses based at transit centres in Vancouver, Port Coquitlam, Surrey and Burnaby. These cost about $3,000 each and shield the driver’s seat from passengers but still allow the driver to talk to passengers at the fare box or behind the red line. They are also able to withstand a significant amount of force.

No timeline has been set for choosing a barrier, which will likely be included as standard equipment in new buses, spokesman Chris Bryan said. The transportation authority has about 1,300 buses now, but it costs more to retrofit them than to have barriers factory installed in buses when they’re built. “It makes sense to do it as part of the fleet replacement,” Bryan said.

The barriers are among a series of tools to prevent bus driver assaults, including cameras, transit security guards, conflict avoidance training, and the installation of a button that drivers can push to alert dispatchers to an emergency and the location of the bus.

In 2015, there were 110 recorded assaults on operators — down slightly from 119 recorded assaults a year earlier and a significant drop from 134 assaults in 2013. So far this year, about 32 bus drivers have been assaulted, compared with 35 recorded in the same period last year.

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