Volunteer promotes kidney health page 25
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Tuesday April 8, 2014
Serving Surrey and North Delta www.surreyleader.com
City takes a leap with unique park plan
Top 10 fare evaders owe more than $4,000 each
New site in East Clayton will be home to Surrey’s first parkour course
Worst scofflaws have dozens of unpaid TransLink tickets
by Warren Jané SURREY’S PARKS staff have innova-
by Jeff Nagel AN ABBOTSFORD resident with $14,583 in old TransLink fare
evasion fines owes more than any other scofflaw now being denied licence and insurance renewals by ICBC. Data released by the insurance corporation shows all of the top 10 transit fine offenders it tracks have at least 35 unpaid tickets issued from 2002-2012 and owe more than $4,000 each. Together, their unpaid fines total $73,000. Five of the top fare evaders are from Surrey. One is on the hook for 56 unpaid fines totalling $8,418, while the others have 36 to 45 unpaid fines and owe between $4,000 and $6,000. Three Burnaby residents are on the list. One has 86 fines totalling $11,678, followed by one with 46 fines owing $7,831 and another owing $5,326 for 41 fines. A New Westminster resident has Alan Grossman the 10th highest number of fines – 35 worth $5,800. ICBC on April 1 began denying auto insurance and driver’s licence renewals to motorists with unpaid TransLink tickets issued in 2012 and earlier, in line with provincial legislation passed that year. A total of 37,000 old unpaid fare evasion tickets worth $5.7 million are now subject to ICBC “refusal to issue” holds. The identities of the top fare evaders listed by ICBC were withheld. The ICBC list does not include all fare evaders – it only tracks the ones with active driver’s licences.
“We can only play a role in helping to collect this debt...”
See FINES / Page 4
BOAZ JOSEPH / THE LEADER
West Breden, 24, co-founder of of Parkour Surrey, leaps over a concrete wall in Holland Park. Pakour is the art of ‘moving between two points as efficiently as possible using only your body and the urban environment,’ says Breden. The sport, which is growing in popularity, is like gymnastics on concrete – without the soft landing mat.
Editorial 6 Letters 7 Sports 22 Life 25 Classifieds 28
tive plans for the future site of East Clayton’s Hazelgrove Park, something the city has not seen before. The new park at 7080 190 St. will feature the city’s first purpose-built parkour course. But what exactly is parkour? “It’s about moving between two points as efficiently as possible using only your body and the urban environment,” said West Breden, cofounder of Parkour Surrey, a group of local parkour enthusiasts. “It’s just you and your body moving from point A to point B Owen Croy as creatively and fluidly as you can.” Some of these movements include flipping and jumping over ledges and railings, scaling large concrete walls and even leaping from rooftop to rooftop, all without padding or safety equipment of any kind. Traceurs and traceuses, the men and women who practise parkour, need to know their bodies well because parkour is like “street gymnastics” in a sense. See NEW PARK / Page 8
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