Smells of coffee fill the floor of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 583 headquarters.
Past the lobby and the boardroom, early autumn sunlight beams through the blinds of Renée Dunn’s office.
Just after 10 a.m. on a weekday, the building whispers signs of still waking up.
The union leader’s email inbox, however, has been filling with incident reports, some of which were sent before her workday started.
Looking at one from 9:26 a.m., Dunn summarises its contents aloud.
“He hit the driver’s shield with his fist and then followed the operator outside of the bus and tried to push the operator,” said the vice-president of the transit union in an interview with the Calgary Journal. “This was this morning…it’s everywhere, it’s like an epidemic.”
Reaching up from her desk, Dunn grabs a white binder. Inside are printed copies of incident reports depicting similar scenes from this past year.
At roughly two inches wide, the binder is almost full.
As she sifts through the pages, Dunn remembers being in their shoes while working as a Calgary Transit operator. She says that every driver has a story. One of hers began when she was walking in public to switch vehicles ahead of her next shift.
“A gentleman comes around the corner and runs straight at me,” said Dunn. “He punched me so hard in the chest, I just went down, and I couldn’t breathe.”
She remembers lying there for a moment until she regained her senses. Once she did, she headed to the fleet yard to pick up her next vehicle.
“I was told that they couldn’t help me because I was off of transit property,” said Dunn. “Now this was many years ago, but it hasn’t changed.”
Calgary Transit, in an email statement, says the year-to-date number of verbal and physical abuse incidents reported by transit operators in 2025 stands at 99, an increase of more than 70 per cent since 2020.
Despite recent investments in improving operator safety, workers say they still feel exposed during the moments that matter most.
With assaults against operators piling up, union members argue that the city needs to prioritize funding and taking action.
Violence is getting worse, says transit union
Mike Mahar, the president of the ATU Local 583 since 2020, says he first began to notice an increase in violence against transit operators in the 1990s
Back then, you would hear about an incident every couple of weeks, and they were rarely physical, he said. In the decades to follow, Mahar says the abuse against drivers has only escalated.
One story from the early 2010s replays in his mind.
“The guy was driving along a road, and there was a relatively large open field, and there was a couple of young men running through the field to get the bus,” he said.
The distance between the bus and the stop that the men were running towards was a ways away, Mahar explains. So, the operator parked halfway down the road so they could climb aboard without having to run as far.
“They beat the crap out of him with a bottle. He never drove again.”
MIKE MAHAR
Mahar says what makes it worse is that, while the operator was extending a courteous hand to help the patrons, he was met with ill treatment.
Harry Lew, a former bus driver, says this is often the case.
“When trying to be nice to people, you get called every name in the book,” he said.
Lew, who has since retired, started the role in 2006 and worked as an operator for almost 15 years.
He says that he was once punched by a rider, and that as someone belonging to Chinese heritage, he was verbally abused on the regular.
One time, he recalls standing his ground to a rude rider.
“A guy was really upset with me over, I don’t remember what for, and he told me, ‘Go back to your home country,’” said Lew. “I turned around and said, ‘I’m from Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, you want me to go back to Shaunavon, Saskatchewan?’”
“He didn’t take that very well,” he said. “So, it’s not the funnest job.”
Leaving his driving career behind, Lew started working as the union’s financial secretary. He says what he went through on the job is nothing compared to the experiences of today’s operators.
“It’s sad, our society nowadays has no respect, and it’s gotten worse,” said Lew. “I’m just thankful I’m not out on the road right now.”
Calgary Transit acknowledges that the violence experienced by staff has grown in recent years and is committed to reducing the risks to operators.
“The safety of our operators and other frontline staff is important to us, and it is considered in everything we do,” reads a statement. “Our operators deserve to finish their shifts free of harassment, and to get home at the end of the day.”
Citing their Public Transit Safety Strategy, the department says several changes are coming soon to benefit both customers and staff, including deploying more than 70 peace officers to curb fare evasion and deter criminal behaviour at high-risk locations.
These locations are identified as five LRT platforms on the system’s blue and red lines: Westbrook, Lions Park, Whitehorn, Chinook, and the stations located on 3 and 4 Street S.W. near the CORE shopping centre.
While the union agrees with the need for more peace officers at train stations, Mahar says that because of the way that train cabins are built, LRT operators are inherently less vulnerable to being the victims of violence.
“They’re isolated from the public coming and going,” he said. “Which, when you stop and think about it, why wouldn’t the bus drivers be the same?”
Bus drivers at higher risk
Bus drivers interact with pedestrians more than LRT operators do, which Mahar says makes them susceptible to harmful altercations. He says that an incident from last spring demonstrates this fact.
At around 1 a.m. on May 14, a bus driver was attacked after refusing the riders’ requests to deviate from the bus’s designed route near Falconridge and Castleridge Boulevard N.E., according to a new release from Calgary Police Service.
That same morning, the transit department presented its annual RouteAhead report — Calgary’s 30-year plan for improving transit services — at city council. With operator safety at the top of mind, elected officials later approved a $15 million one-time extension to the already confirmed $3 million investment during a regular council meeting on May 27.
In November, city council approved an additional $9 million one-time investment toward improving safety, but this only defined CTrain stations as its area of focus.
A portion of the funding is going toward retrofitting buses with physical shields separating the driver from patrons.
This will include installing brand-new barriers and updating those installed during the pandemic.
Calgary Transit says the original locks used to close the pandemic shields were no longer holding properly, so they started redesigning them. Mahar says the union is involved in negotiations and has long recommended updating these.
Last year, he says he received a prototype of the new locks but was not impressed.
“I pulled it apart within 30 seconds,” he said. “I immediately contacted them and said how low quality it was.”
Mahar says he reached out to the director and the maintenance manager at Calgary Transit, but when he didn’t hear back, he contacted operational services at the City of Calgary. Eventually, he says that the union filed a grievance due to the lack of urgency endangering operators.
“They’re getting torn open, and people were complaining about it,” said Mahar. “They’re sending pictures of people with rubber bands around this thing and locking it to the bus.”
“It was literally just a sneeze sheet.”
All added up, Mahar says it took a year and a half from when negotiations began for the locks to be redesigned and installed. In an emailed statement, Calgary Transit did not deny the delay but said it is confident in the new system’s longevity.
“The team worked through technical issues and tested each design carefully without Safety Advisors and Body Shop staff, so the new lock system took longer to roll out,” they said. “The final version was only put into service after it was fully tested, refined, and approved to meet our safety and reliability standards.”
Calgary Transit also says that all vehicles will have signage explaining the consequences for unsafe behaviour installed, including the Transit Bylaw 4M81, which makes disrupting or interfering with transit operators an offence punishable by a fine of up to $600.
In addition to the bylaw decals, Mahar says the union fought for decades to have section 269.01 of the Criminal Code posted inside transit vehicles. Championed by the union, the section considers assault against a transit operator an aggravated circumstance, but Mahar says Calgary Transit was reluctant to advertise this.
“They didn’t want to put strict language on the decals because they didn’t want to offend everybody else, but clearly, they didn’t want the public to know that it’s a problem.”
MIKE MAHAR
Last spring, Mahar says the union bypassed Calgary Transit’s management and instead turned to the city’s operational services to advocate for the inclusion of this signage on vehicles. This was successful, but he says that improving the public’s knowledge of this is still needed.
“They just need to know that it’s a criminal offence, and that’s the part that sticks in their head,” said Mahar. “They’re not worried about a $500 fine, but they may be worried about going to jail.”
This section of the Criminal Code allowed the two men involved in the May 14 attack to be charged with aggravated assault, robbery, and failing to comply with a court order. Now, six months later, Mahar says the driver is dealing with headaches and permanent nerve damage to his hand, not to mention the “emotional wounds.”
Transit says it is working with the city’s Emergency Management and Community Safety teams to study the effects of harassment on operators.
Whenever Lew found himself in a threatening situation, he would always follow the rules, but waiting for help was when he felt most vulnerable, such as when an aggressive rider refused to get off the bus.
“I followed our policy and procedures by calling it in,” said Lew. “What do you want me to do? I’m sitting here, this guy’s still on.”
Ensuring safety in the in-between times
The city made improvements in the early 2000s when the union developed a program to make it easier for drivers to contact authorities from their vehicles during an incident. Today, the program — referred to as Code Blue — is a formal version that immediately sends peace officers to the location and initiates police or medical assistance if necessary.
Mahar says the program has undoubtedly made a difference, but because bus routes don’t have the same camera or officer coverage as LRT platforms, the calls can only do so much at times.
“If you’ve ever been in a real tense situation like that, a minute will seem like forever,” he said.
A lack of protection during these in-between times is what Mahar describes as the missing link for improving operator safety. Some of his ideas to fill this gap include redrawing bus routes, building bus stations, and providing operators with personal protective equipment.
Redesigning when and where buses travel would make the system more like the LRT, where vehicles roll through heavily supervised areas as part of their daily routine. He says personal protection could look like a cellular device carried by an operator that would alert authorities and provide their location the second an incident begins.
Mahar says that the areas where Calgary Transit allocates funds have historically “ignored the employee,” which is why the union has brought these recommendations directly to the city. He says they have since organized a recurring operator safety symposium.
“Those meetings are going to take place on a regular basis while we get this done,” said Mahar. “Those are the meetings that I believe are going to allow us to make Calgary Transit accountable.”
While raising awareness and troubleshooting options are productive, he says policy changes will make the most significant difference. Allocating funds for installing bus barriers, for example, would not have been possible without the city council’s support.
“The timing and the willingness of those council members to act was huge,” said Mahar.
Recently re-elected Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal played a role in advancing the protective shield motion after the attack in his community last spring. He agrees that funding operator safety has been neglected for too long.
“I’m all for making it enjoyable for riders, which we should, but I think the other side of the equation is getting ignored,” said Dhaliwal. “Our operators are serving our citizens, taking us from point A to point B, and yet we are not listening to their concerns.”
He says some of the operators living in the northeast want to see education initiatives that teach school-aged children the importance of respecting transit drivers. As one of the few incumbents sitting on a fresh-faced council, Dhaliwal says he has already started these conversations.
“I’m going to make sure I’m having regular conversations with my colleagues, so this thing is not put on the back burner,” he said.
