Metro Transit steps up fare checks

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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At 9:30 a.m. on a recent weekday, with the temperature at only about 5 degrees, a middle-aged gentleman looked with disapproval at a tangle of waste and garbage at the Warehouse/Hennepin Avenue light-rail station in Minneapolis. “They really make a mess of these places, don’t they,” he observed. Then he produced a joint and lit it.

In such moments, when strangers come together to take comfort in the glow of a station’s heat lamps, Metro Transit’s code of conduct can seem pretty abstract. Littering is against the rules; smoking is against the rules; being in the station at all without having paid a fare is against the rules. But when nobody is around to enforce those rules, they don’t have much effect.

“Absolutely, we see the same things you see,” said Drew Kerr, a spokesman for Metro Transit. “Cleanliness of our stations and of our vehicles is something that we have heard about repeatedly from customers.” He explained that crews clean those stations and vehicles regularly, “and regularly their work is undone. In very short order.”

The need for rules — in fact, for an atmosphere of cleanliness and order, of respect for the rights and safety of fellow passengers and transit employees — was made clear in a special report by the Star Tribune Editorial Board last November. Headlined “Systemic insecurity: Saving Twin Cities light rail,” the project chronicled the way heightened community concerns about public safety had undercut the transit system’s viability.

Ridership, though improving, was still down from pre-pandemic levels. Crime was up.

Metro Transit has issued more than 500 citations for fare evasion in the last six weeks. A first citation carries a fine of $35, a more reasonable penalty than the $180 charged under the former practice. Subsequent violations up the ante with higher fines and temporary banishment from the system. What’s important is that evading the farebox now has consequences; for too long, scofflaw riders knew the chances they would be caught or prosecuted were close to zero.

Instead of relying solely on sworn police officers as in the past, Metro Transit is using community service officers (CSOs) to issue citations. As of Jan. 10, the agency had just 13 such officers. Fifteen more are in training. Next month, the agency intends to begin fielding additional agents under the Transit Rider Investment Program; those agents will also issue citations and remind passengers about the code of conduct. And to help buttress the ranks of its CSOs, the agency commendably has begun a program to support and train young people who are interested in law enforcement as a career.

It might seem like creating a feeder system for police trainees has carried Metro Transit’s mission a few stations beyond its route map. Kerr agreed that the agency has had to change with the times. “We’re a transit agency, but there’s a lot of other things that have come along that have been added to the portfolio,” he said.

“There are a lot of things that are happening — antisocial behaviors, an opioid crisis, housing challenges — that transit never created, of course,” he said. “We deal with [them] now because they are parts of the communities we serve.”

Kerr said the agency is still collecting information to guide its decisions about whether and how to enclose light-rail stations to ensure that only fare-paying customers have access to them, another of the Editorial Board’s recommendations. Though it will be expensive, we believe it’s a necessary improvement — and it certainly should be incorporated as early as possible into the planned Green and Blue line extensions.