Officials in charge of the South Surrey Park & Ride are taking steps to make the lot’s new pay stations less palatable to robbers, following a rash of thefts.
The machines were taken on three separate occasions in the first 2½ weeks of this month – Dec. 10, 12 and 15 – all around 3 a.m.
TransLink media liaison Jiana Ling said Thursday that revenue loss due to the thefts “is not believed to be significant.”
TransLink is working with Impark – which manages operations for the lot – to address the problem, she said.
One step will be to relocate the pay stations – which were installed when pay parking went into effect early last month – to a more central location at the bus loop, where there are “more eyes.”
RCMP have been advised, and transit security has bumped up its patrols, Ling said, noting, “We’re looking at various options to mitigate future occurrences of this.”
Impark spokesman Julian Jones said additional measures are planned that “we’d rather not make public.”
Jones described the meter thefts as “a very isolated incident,” and suspects the same person or people is responsible for all three of the thefts.
One of the meters was later recovered, he added.
“The sophistication of the meters and the way that we install them, and the way they’re built these days, that’s certainly a far less frequent occurrence than it would have been many years ago.
“Hopefully, we’ve taken the measures to prevent that happening again.”
Jones and Ling said similar issues have not been noted in other TransLink park-and-ride lots.
Both said they were not aware of reports of vandalism or vehicle theft at the South Surrey lot, though at least one driver who had her car stolen from the lot Dec. 2 told Peace Arch News that she has heard of several such incidents.