Maybe give a subsidy to greyhound instead of reinventing the wheel.

It’s not surprising to see the NDP willingly want to sink a lot of money into something that won’t work.

OK Johnnybelt, as an obvious expert in the field of preventing the murder of aboriginal women, what should be done to reduce or stop it? Give us the benefit of your vast experience in crime prevention so that we in the NDP can see the error in our ways. Show us what would work and we will stand behind you. Of course, I’m asking for practical, concrete steps not pie in the sky platitudes like we usually get from penny pinchers who put lower taxes bvefor peoples’ lives.

Subsidise Greyhound? If it would work, why not? However, I believe it is very important that any schedules should be established with safety of the customers as the most important criterion, not the profits of the company, and that there must be enough buses running at the times needed. Another successful approach might be to emulate shuttle bus services as the hotels and airports, or the on-call buses used to transport the elderly and invalids. I don’t think that who does it matters much, just that it be done successfully.

How about considering the death penalty for criminals who are sex offenders or who commit violent crimes.

I would think continuously educating these women on possibilities that they could become the next victim would sink in. Or is common sense an issue?

Did I hear a whine? Oh, just the NDP complaining again.
Until the Bands bring forth a viable plan, stuff gov’t does I don’t see
working.
Johnny is correct and these ideas have been hashed out many times.
There is no schedule that is gonna work. If someone wants to go someplace, they want to go now, not wait for a bus.

Well how about the multi million dollars we give to the band ,or maybe the government should cut a pet ion of that out and they can have limousines for pickup

Easiest job in the world is lthe opposition. They have no power but can complain about what the government is doing and always saying they would do a better job.

As for paying for a shuttle service that’s just silly. Greyhound already travels the route but yet still see lots of hitch hikers. Why not just give the natives a %50 off on grey hound tickets. Be a lot cheaper than a shuttle service. Also here is a novel idea, stop hitchiking, don’t make yourself a victim. With all the media attention the highway of tears has received everyone in the area knows about it, yet some still hitch hike. Why should we care about their lives if they don’t?

After all the media reporting, meetings, etc; etc; on the dangers of hitch hiking. Not only on Highway 16, but on all roads. People (and young girls) continue to hitchhike.

So obviously the problem is much bigger that providing a bus service or a shuttle service, unless it was going to run on an hourly basis. Not likely to run hourly because of the huge cost attached.

We would be much better off to have private taxi’s in designated towns, and Cities that would pick up and deliver people to and from their destinations. Not having to wait long for a ride would certainly help to stop people from hitch hiking. We could design the program to apply to certain age and sex groups, to ensure that people did not misuse the program. The cost would be negligible in relation to the costs we now pay for policing, etc;

This problem can be solved and at the same time create some employment in the area’s effected.

If you can pay billions in the greater Vancouver area for bridges, mass transit, freeways, etc; you can surely pay a few million to set up a half decent system, that will save lifes.

Its time for North Central BC to get some bang for our tax dollars.

Where’s our MLA”s on this issue. Can you come up with the money??

The problem with all these half-baked ‘solutions’ is that someone will always find a reason to not use it or abuse it, and people will complain no matter how it’s set up.

The real solution is to stop hitch-hiking. Yes. It is that easy.

Is nt it illegal, if it is then the police should be notified an then throwin in the drunk tank for a night or 2. But maybe they are used to that

1. Hitchhiking is not illegal. Picking up hitchhikers on some Highways is illegal.

2. JohnnyBelt. The stop hitchhiking solution might be easy for you, who no doubt have a comfortable income, money in the bank, car, house, etc; etc;. However a large percentage of people, especially in the interior do not.

It should be obvious to you that even in spite of the number of people killed, hitchhiking continues. Your solution is simplistic, and of course has already been proven, to not work.

3. Nothing ventured nothing gained. A few enterprising individuals with some Government contracts could have the taxi idea up and running in no time. This certainly would work to some extent, and could be improved over time.

4. You cant think outside of the box, if you refuse to come out of the box.

When will the N D P EVER STOP WINING AND COME UP WITH CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS ? DO STOP BEING STUPID AND HIChING A RIDE. I do know I hitched in my youth ,, wake up dummies

The risks are well known and documented. If people don’t value their own lives enough that they want to risk hitch hiking, why do you expect the government to step in? Where does personal accountability take a role?

JB. Thinks this us a first.. I agree with you on this issue. You have to take responsibility for,your actions. Is it the heroin addicts fault for shooting up and overdosing..or is it society? Is it the hitch hikers fault for risking their lives by hitchiking even though they have heard of the highway of tears or societies. Even with a shuttle you would have to work around the schedule so some still will hitchhike and blame the schedule for,them having to hitch hike. Planning your trips make sense if you want to arrive safely. The choice is yours, don’t blame anyone else for your decision to risk your life and hitchike.

Hmmm, a shuttle service?? From where to where? Prince Rupert to Prince George?

Ok, so now what about the side trips to bring people to Hwy 16. Lots and lots of communities lie off of the beaten path, so how do we get them to Highway 16? Kitimat to Terrace, Southbank to Burns Lake, Fort St. James to Vanderhoof and so on and so on and so on? More shuttles?

Lots and lots of shuttles, running lots and lots of schedules!

Then what??

Ok, now we need a shuttle from Mackenzie to Prince George, another to Dawson Creek or Fort St. John, perhaps one to and from Fort Nelson! What about Dease Lake, McBride, Valemount, Blue River, Quesnel, Williams Lake west to Bella Coola!

When and where does the demand end? After all, why should one area get a free shuttle, courtesy of the taxpayer while another area get’s ignored??

A shuttle here, a shuttle there, shuttles, shuttles everywhere!!

Or, don’t hitchhike!!

In spite of the very well known and very well publicized dangers and in spite of any other transportation options, some will still ignore the dangers and put themselves at risk!

Then what??

When you consider that these towns in the outlying areas do not have any transit services, except for the occasional bus, then people should be able to see that this is a unique situation,.

Its much easier to build a multi billion dollar transit system supported by taxpayers from all over the Province to move people back and forth in the lower mainland, but somehow people get their nose out of joint when you talk about spending a few dollars to get some sort of **efficient** transit system in the interior.

People in the interior deserve to be treated better. Especially when it comes to spending tax dollars. We are, and have been, for many, many years treated as second class citizens. Those people who try and make the case that the solution is to stop hitchhiking are basically taking the easy way out. They are also making it easier for the different levels of Government to do nothing.

As an example. When people get raped or murdered in the Greater Vancouver, area, or in Surrey in the area of the Sky Trains, we do not solve the problem by telling people to stop taking the sky train.

People would do less hitch hiking and use other transit systems if they were available. We have the money, what we lack is the intelligence, intestinal fortitude, and moral fibre, to solve this problem.

This problem should be embraced by all people in the Northern Interior with a view to solve it, rather than pretending to do something, when in fact we are doing nothing.

If you want to get people to come to North Central BC, and settle here, then you better get off your ass, and do something to make the area more habitable. As it now stands, this area is not much better than some third world countries. Especially the outlying areas.

Palopu. You know what has happened when someone gets assaulted on the sky train.. People start travelling together for safety.. They don’t keep travelling alone again till someone is arrested. Also the millions of people that ride their transit compared to the few that hitchike isn’t really comparing apples to apples now is it?

Can you guarantee people would stop hitchiking if we had a transit system..of course not.. do you really think the highway of tears stops people from moving here ? Do you think a shuttle for native hitch hikers would begin an onslaught of people moving to PG..

Would be nice to know the true cost of this shuttle.. Tossing a million at it with no real numbers to go on is useless.

I say shut down all transit in the lower mainland,Vancouver Island areas.They can all afford to drive or buy a boat to get around just like all the citizens of the north can find some way to get to their destinations.Do you now see how stupid some of you sound, when you come up with you simplistic views of how people should lead their lives.To tell them to just stop hitchhiking or spend a night in the drunk tank in order to change their ways is very naive in my books.

Palopu, you are really shooting from the hip tonight! Perhaps you should take time to think this through a bit more!

According to Wikipedia, the Lower Mainland is a name commonly applied to the region surrounding and including Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As of 2011, 2,590,921 people (59% of British Columbia’s total population), lived in the region; sixteen of the province’s thirty most populous municipalities are located there.

Palopu, I have been to the lower mainland many times and have used transit many many times. The buses and skytrain lines that I have used have often been packed, almost to capacity. So, we have a transit service that makes itself available to the greater portion of 2.5 million people plus visitors to the lower mainland.

Whether we in the North like it or not, the bulk of our provincial transportation dollars provide service to the bulk of our provincial population. Buses are full, skytrain is heavily used!!

Here in the North, Greyhound provided a service along Highway 16. If this service had been utilized to a far greater degree than it was, perhaps Greyhound would still be providing the service or an even greater amount of service. But Greyhound is not is business to lose money and empty buses travelling back and forth along Highway 16 does not pay the bills. Use it or lose it! We didn’t use it and we lost it!

What would make you think that people would use a government provided service, when hitchhiking better fits their schedules?

On this issue, the NDP is simply pandering for votes! Surely you can see that, can’t you??

So, how do you stop the hitchhiking?? I wish that I had an answer to that. Perhaps the First Nations along the highway could do more to minimize the number of their young members that continue to hitchhike?? Perhaps the parents could do more to encourage their young family members to avoid this dangerous activity? Perhaps every driver on Highway 16 could report hitchhikers to the RCMP, who could then speak to these people.

I don’t have the answers, but I honestly think that a shuttle service would be an ineffective waste of money, spent to placate those that wish to lay blame everywhere but where it should lay.

The world is a cold, cruel place and in it are people who will prey upon others. That’s the facts and that will never change! Best to avoid being in a situation where one can be preyed upon! Better safe than sorry!

Common sense is often simple. Not for everybody, I realize…

Like Hart Guy says, how are you going to operate a shuttle service to all the off-highway locations, and how are you going to meet everyone’s schedule? It will sure end up costing more than $1 Million. That’s just to get it up and running let alone the ongoing operating costs.

No, this would just be another poorly run government boondoggle run and staffed by lots of bureaucrats without any sort of accountability.

Would this shuttle service go to each reserve? How many shuttles will be needed etc.. Pie in the sky solution.

A year ago or so, a young Northern First Nations girl went missing in Kamloops and was found murdered. Another tragic loss, another grieving family and all because of another psychopath on the loose!

Bad people exist, bad people will always exist! That is the cold hard truth! We have the “Highway of Tears”! Perhaps Kamloops now has one of their own.

There is only one way to stop the abductions and murders of innocent hitchhikers and that’s to stop hitchhiking!! But hitchhikers didn’t ride Greyhound, because Greyhound didn’t fit their schedule. Now Greyhound has cut back service and people seriously think that a shuttle would fit the hitchhiker’s schedules?? Hardly, at least not in the real world, the real world, a place seldom occupied by the ND!!

Do I understand it correctly then, because we could not cover all of the possible remote location we should refuse to cover any of them at all and just let the young women be murdered because it is their fault for:
1) being immature and making poor choices,
2) being aboriginal and not living in a large town,
3) hitchhiking so they can go somewhere
3) living in a home outside large cities?

As to the buses in the lower mainland. They are not always full in larger communities. I live in Ladysmith and there is a bus that travels between Ladysmith and Chemainus several times a day. Usually it is empty or has just a couple of passengers, but it still runs at taxpayers’ expense. Why am I more privileged than a 20 year old girl from a reserve between Burn’s Lake and Smithers would be? Why is it OK to spend a lot of money to provide a service to me but not to her? My life is not in danger, but her’s is!

Can we apply the logic to health care too, please. No more surgery or treatment for lung cancer, for instance. The people who get that are smokers and they knew the risks all along. Why should the taxpayers pay for the consequences of their foolish choices. They should have just stopped smoking. That logic is rather stupid, don’t you think, but that is the same as the “stop hitchhiking” pie in the sky solution. Live in the real world. People want entertainment and they will get to where they want somehow, dangerous or not, just like tobacco addicts do when the need a smoke. Perhaps we should also stop vaccinations for HPV, after all cervical cancer mostly comes from sexual activity. Stop having sex, then we won’t have the problem and can save millions of dollars.

Such an approach is absolutely ludicrous, but is presented as a self-serving rationalization by those who do not want to provide services to aboriginal people in this province, and before you accuse me of presuming racism when nobody has mentioned it, I refer you back to the comment by buzzinga, who said, “…throwin in the drunk tank for a night or 2. But maybe they are used to that…” Maybe they are not used to that. Maybe that is a blatantly racist stereotype comment.

ammonra…Smokers are a small percentage of lung cancer patients. More than double the number of lung cancers is caused by pollution than by cigarettes.

@ammonra. I didn’t realize there was a government shuttle between Ladysmith and Chemainus – oh wait are you talking about a Greyhound? There IS a Greyhound travelling to all the main cities along Highway 16 including Burns Lake and Smithers already, they just have to get to a pickup location on their scheduled route. They just have to use the service like you do on the Island. Do you hitchhike if the bus is not on your schedule or do you wait for the bus to arrive?
Do you even realize some of the highway of tears victims were from Kamloops and further south? Or even from downtown PG? How does a shuttle help there for instance? I would venture a guess that a Greyhound goes by quite a few of those who hitchhike along highway 16. There is also a Greyhound bus that travels to Fort St James, a small burg an hour and a half off the beaten trail, will a shuttle travel to Tachie, or Takla Landing, or Yakoochee reserves past FSJ? Give your head a shake, some of these places already have a shuttle that services PG, but again, you need to be on their schedule and not your own.

Completely off the wall NDP comments. what would a million dollars buy you? There are people on this blog that state it only costs 200 grand to bus kids twice a day from Giscome to a school in PG a year. So a million dollars will buy you what? 5 shuttles to Giscome? How in the world will this provide a shuttle all the way to Prince Rupert? Maybe they are talking about just the cost of the shuttle buses themselves? Maybe in the NDP system of things these will all be operated by good will and volunteers, toss me a set of keys, these perpetual motion machines the NDP has scouted out will serve our communities to infinity and beyond.

Perhaps the 24/7/365 shuttle service between Prince George and Prince Rupert which the NDP provincial government operated during its ten years in power could be duplicated! Oh, wait, there wasn’t one!

Do not look for rides with total strangers, no matter what! That works!

Cheap easy fix and huge savings to the tax payers. Death penalty to know sex offender,and people who commit violent crimes. Reduce the number of inmates crowding or penitentiaries also eliminates the possibilities of these people being released and re-offending.

Install billboards on all reservation and highways reminding people of the possibilities which could happen to them if they choose to hitch hike. Let nature take it’s coarse to the people who lack “common sense”

Slinky, the shuttle bus is run by BC Transit (http://www.transitbc.com/regions/cow/schedules/schedule.cfm?line=35&) so the Greyhound buses are irrelevant, as is where the murder victims originated. Just because a service will not catch 100% of possible victims does not mean that services which would protect 80% should not be done (illustrative percentages, not actual). Just because everyone can’t be protected doesn’t justify nobody being protected.

oldsilver, whether lung cancers from smoking are the majority or the minority, the point I made is the same. It is still from a personal choice that they developed it so they should stop smoking, if the attitude of the pie in the sky posters above is to be followed. As to those causing the pollution which gives other cancer, they should just stop polluting then people wouldn’t develope lung cancer – just stop polluting, like they expect young people to just stop hitchhiking. I might add that whether the polluters should be sued for damages and the cost of treating the diseases they cause is a different question, although, if they were, it would presumably have to include the taxpayer and governments since they both use cars which are notorious polluters.

Maverick wants nature to take its course, so let’s apply that to lung and cervical cancer, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and any other lifestyle disease. Society will be irreparable damaged, but we will have let “nature take its coarse (sic).” We could even put billboards all over the place warning of the dangers of unprotected sex and smoking, then letting them die untreated will be fully justified by removing our society’s responsibilities to protect its members. Letting nature take its course is such a ridiculous suggestion. Society has a responsibility to all of its members. It should start exercising that responsibility toward the women along the highway.

The question of schedules is an important one and poses a severe limitation on the Greyhound service. People who hitchhike do so when they want to go somewhere, not when Greyhound has a bus scheduled. If we are to help possible victims, any transportation service must be available when the possible victims want it, not at corporate convenience (3 a.m. for instance as some Greyhound buses travel). The recommendation was that a transportation method be provided to help people and that means having it running when they will need it.

Just to note to the anti-NDP people posting with their inane comments, let me remind you that this recommendation came originally from Wally Oppal’s report into the Highway of Tears. He was a Liberal cabinet minister, and not a member of the NDP. It is actually a Liberal proposition, but one which the NDP fully supports. It is the current Liberal bunch who are dragging their feet on their own proposition. I guess these anti-NDP types follow the old adage, “Throw enough BS against the side of a barn and some of it will stick!” Blaming the NDP for a Liberal proposition is plain BS.

oldsilver’s comment about the causes of lung cancer does not correlate with published scientific information which states “The incidence of lung cancer is strongly correlated with cigarette smoking, with about 90% of lung cancers arising as a result of tobacco use,” (http://www.webmd.com/lung-cancer/guide/lung-cancer-causes).

However, I am not an epidemiologist so cannot guarantee the information although I believe it is closer to the truth than oldsilver’s estimate of one third from tobacco (bad enough in itself) and two thirds from other causes. Smoking causes cancer, that has been proven.

ammonra, re your statement “Society has a responsibility to all of its members.”

Thanks for the statement!

Now I get to ask, what about one’s personal responsibility?

ammonra, are you suggesting that none of us have any responsibility for ourselves. our own actions, our own decisions? It’s not my fault!!

I feel a great deal of sadness, especially for the mother’s of the victims along the Highway of Tears, or any highway for that matter. But the only truly effective way to prevent the abduction and murder of hitchhikers is to stop hitchhiking! A shuttle service will NOT stop hitchhiking!! Not in the real world!

If you are a teen living in the Vancouver area, you can hop on a bus just about anywhere and go shopping or to entertainment or to school or church or whatever. Buses also run frequently and late into the night. It costs $2.50 one way.
If you are a teen living in northern BC, you don’t have even close to the same access to the freedom of moving around. Sure, take the Greyhound, when it is available but the schedule is infrequent and the cost is much more than city type transit. There is also the Via train but that only runs every second day each way and cost more than a city bus. Many communities don’t have taxi service or it is restricted to only part of the day.

What happens if you live in a northern community and you have to attend court or get to work or you have to get medical attention or just visit with friends and family? I can understand young people’s need to be out and about, to have freedom. Or to flee from a bad situation. By not really addressing the issues in any concrete meaningful way, we as a society assist in keeping some people marginalized.

Why is it almost exclusively women who are murdered? I am asking this question, rhetorically.

When I was in Cuba, I learned about their system for getting people from one place to another when you can’t afford to own a car. Buses are in many cases free and subsidized by the government. They also have a licensing system for cars and drivers that formally recognizes hitch hiking. A driver can get a cheaper license and a particularly coloured license plate and they must pick up hitch hikers. These drivers are considered safe. People stand at the side of the road in designated
places and are picked up by the drivers with those plates. If the driver does not pick up hitch hikers, they can be reported and their low cost license revoked.

It is easy enough for people with decent incomes and safe home situations to point fingers. We as a society have the responsibility to find solutions.