North Shore residents and commuters are fairly split between wagging their tails and getting their hackles up at a proposal to allow leashed dogs on public transit.
As of July 18, a local change.org petition calling for TransLink to allow fur babies to board buses had reached just under 3,000 signatures.
But how are North Shore residents feeling about sharing a seat with a schnauzer or Shih Tzu?
North Shore News polled 1,046 readers and asked the question: Should TransLink allow leashed dogs on public transit?
The poll ran from July 8 to July 18 on our website. Of the 1,046 votes, we can determine that 455 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
The petitioners make the case that barring leashed dogs from transit forces owners to use more expensive and polluting private vehicles.
So far, TransLink hasn’t indicated any change is coming.
"TransLink’s pet policy allows pets on transit if they are in a fully enclosed handheld carrier that can fit on their handler’s lap. This includes enclosed backpacks and bags. It is reflective of pet policies in place at many other transit agencies in Canada and the U.S.," a statement from the transit authority reads.
Results are based on an online study of adult North Shore News readers who are located in North Vancouver and West Vancouver. The margin of error – which measures sample variability – is +/- 3.02%, 19 times out of 20. North Shore News uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
