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Greyhound pulls 'bus rage' ads
Becky Rynor, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Greyhound Canada said Tuesday that it is in the process of pulling a series of ads in an extensive, cross-country campaign featuring the slogan, "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage."

The company made the move in response to last week's gruesome beheading murder on an eastbound Greyhound bus near Portage la Prairie, Man., which claimed the life of Tim McLean, 22.

"We just felt, in light of the recent incident, it could be a very offensive message and we didn't think it was appropriate for it to be run any longer," said Greyhound Canada spokeswoman, Abby Wambaugh.


Undated handout proof of one of Greyhound's ads that the bus company recently pulled. The company made the move in response to the gruesome beheading murder on an eastbound Greyhound bus near Portage la Prairie, Man., which claimed the life of 22-year-old Tim McLean July 30, 2008.


The campaign included posters and ads in handbooks at universities and at the Alberta summer games. It used the slogan, "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage," intending to encourage commuters to avoid the stresses of highway driving by taking the bus.

"(The ad) was saying you don't have to be behind the wheel, you don't have to be in the traffic, you can sit back and let someone else do the driving for you," Wambaugh said.

"It was aimed at potential and current Greyhound ridership. We don't think it's an appropriate slogan anymore, and that is why we've chosen to remove it."

Last week's horrific attack has resulted in a growing number of calls for beefed-up safety on intercity buses.

By late Tuesday, an online petition had gathered more than 600 signatures, demanding Greyhound improve its security.

"That was the bus I always take to go visit my parents in Manitoba and would like something to be done about this," wrote Melanie Schwarz on her posting to the petition. "This is not Greyhound's fault but now maybe its time to prevent it from anything like that happening again."

" . . . can't more security be legislated/mandated?" wrote D. McCoy. "It doesn't make any sense that there is more security getting into a night club than there is to ride a bus across the country!"

Janine King also signed the petition and wrote, "Greyhound needs to review its security measures to ensure that this never happens to another passenger. Please, for Tim's memory, something needs to be done."

Wambaugh said Greyhound Canada has been working with Transport Canada for the past 18 months to determine what security measures would be most effective for intercity bus companies.

But given the "rural nature of our network, airport-style security such as X-ray machines would not be practical," she said.

Wambaugh said Greyhound operates under an "open" system, while airports operate under a "closed" system.

"You get on a bus and it makes many stops along the way and everybody on the bus is free to come and go," she said.

"I believe we have around 600 locations in Canada and many of those are rural locations. A lot of them aren't even Greyhound terminals. They would be what we call agencies, which means we contract with a business and they operate as a Greyhound bus stop or ticket agent on our behalf. So that's very different, as well, from an airport."

She said that since 2003, the Department of Homeland Security has given Greyhound more than $16 million in grants to implement security improvements, such as random "wandings" with metal detectors.

"We're working with Transport Canada and we are hoping for funding from them, as well," Wambaugh said.

"As far as security goes, this was an incident that we were very shocked and saddened by. We do still believe that it was truly an isolated incident. Nothing could have prepared us for what occurred."