[CHARLOTTETOWN, PE] — P.E.I. businessman David Anderson’s road to expanding his shuttle service into New Brunswick continues to run into delays and heated opposition.
In early January, Anderson, the president of Advanced Shuttle Services, came up against the fury of two Bathurst mothers whose sons were killed in a 15-passenger van collision that took the lives of seven members of a high school basketball team in 2008.
The women at the time said Anderson’s application to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) for a permit to transport people in 15-passenger vans from Charlottetown to Fredericton with stops in between “proves they have learned nothing from our sons’ deaths.’’
Anderson, though, has been adamant about the safety of his 15-passenger vans that currently carry passengers between P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.
He says the vans go through extensive inspections and also receive spot checks every couple of weeks. He has been operating Advanced Shuttle for seven months but the service has been in operation since 1999 and has never recorded an accident.
The mothers — Isabelle Hains and Ana Acevedo — account for two of the five formal objections to the application.
An EUB spokesperson told The Guardian Tuesday the objections require the board to hold a public hearing within the next 40 days to determine whether to grant the license. Word could come days or weeks following the hearing.
Even though the time has passed for the public to make formal objections, Hains and Acevedo feel that the crash Monday in Ontario involving a 15-passenger van reinforces the argument to have Anderson’s application thwarted.
Eleven people were killed when a truck broadsided a 15-passenger van near the hamlet of Hampstead, west of Kitchener.
Ontario Provincial Police on Wednesday said the van failed to stop at a stop sign and that the truck had the right of way.
