Some B.C bus drivers, including ones in Kelowna, are being accused of behaving badly and drawing the ire of their passengers.
A Victoria transit operator is said to have kicked a mother and her three children off his bus for being too noisy, and a Kamloops driver is accused of "kidnapping" passengers in a confrontation caught on video.
BC Transit spokeswoman Meribeth Burton says the company is investigating the incidents.
"There is a high degree of professionalism that we expect at all times," Burton said, regardless of the challenging situations drivers may encounter each day.
In Kelowna, a young man has complained he has been effectively banned from riding some local buses after he videotaped a driver using a phone. Nathan Peters says other drivers have been refusing to let him board their buses.
"They say I'm a safety issue, but all I did was film a driver doing what he shouldn't have been doing," Peters said Thursday. "It's really frustrating not be able to get on a bus to go where I need to go."
Peters says he will meet with senior managers from BC Transit next week to try resolve the situation.
And AM 1150 morning show host Phil Johnson said he saw a Kelowna Transit bus go through a red light at the corner of Harvey Avenue and Gordon.
Johnson said he was so dismayed by the driver's actions that he followed the bus downtown to the Queensway transit station. He asked the driver how fast he thought he was travelling when he went through the red light.
"He suggested I was lying," Johnson said. "My reply was to advise him I had better things to do with my time than drive downtown to the bus loop to stand there arguing."
In Victoria, a mother boarded a bus with her infant son and two other children on a trip from Esquimalt to the University of Victoria. Fellow passenger Karita Del Moral said the driver asked the mother to keep the noise down, even though it wasn't disruptive. "He finally said, 'you can get off the bus. . . this is your stop, you're going to get off' and kicked her off the bus with her three children," Del Moral said.
The mother left the bus in tears, said Del Moral.
In a separate incident, Burton said BC Transit has suspended a Kamloops driver with pay after a video posted on YouTube titled Transit Driver Kidnaps Passengers showed a male and female passenger yelling at a driver to let them out after he apparently missed their stop. Burton said the driver is being investigated for allegations he didn't follow proper protocols.
"Management here at BC Transit has watched the YouTube video and we're very concerned with what we see and hear," Burton said.