A hearing in the House Transportation Committee on Thursday put a spotlight on improving safety on Metro Transit light rail trains, especially the Blue Line train which travels between downtown Minneapolis and MSP International Airport. A proposed bill increasing the presence of law enforcement and other "ambassadors" on trains has widespread support by DFL lawmakers.
While there is bipartisan support for legislation that would help, Republicans on the panel voiced a number of issues they have with the bill. Those include the amount of money proposed for the pilot transit ambassador program (too little), to the legislation’s timeline (too slow), to its approach to cracking down on fare-jumpers (too lenient).
“This is more a social service program than it is a safety and security bill,” said Rep. Jon Koznick (R-Lakeville).
Metropolitan Airports Commission VP of Government Affairs Mitch Killian testified about how people coming to town for conventions are even refusing to ride the train due to ongoing safety issues, furthering a conversation that has gone on since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic about drug use and crime on light rail trains.
Obviously it is a problem that requires solving, especially considering the billions of dollars both the state and federal governments have poured into light rail transportation in the Twin Cities, and with the considerably over budget Southwest Light Rail project still struggling to the finish line.
Under the bill, HF3085, Metro Transit would be required to launch the program within six months and would report back to the Legislature at its conclusion.
Representative Brad Tabke (DFL- Shakopee) is sponsoring the bill that would also decriminalize fare evasion, making the infraction more in line with a parking ticket instead of a gross misdemeanor. Metropolitan Council Chair Charlie Zelle said last week that most tickets for fare evasion aren’t paid and that the proposal would free up Metro Transit police officers to focus on more serious crime.
WCCO’s Jason DeRusha had a conversation with Tabke about transit, something that he now uses on a regular basis and has become passionate about fixing at the legislature.
Jason DeRusha: You’ve been riding transit to get to the State Capitol, right?
Rep. Tabke: Yes, that's true. I had somebody, spun out in front of me on the first day of session this year and took out the front end of my truck. And so I've been a forced, reluctant transit rider, but learning a lot.
DeRusha: What have you learned from being on transit, day in and day out? Because a lot of us see the stats or maybe we experience it when we're going to a Vikings game or going to a Timberwolves game, but what is your experience been like day in and day out?
Tabke: It's been dramatically different from when I was riding transit pre-pandemic and hadn't really ridden for quite some time until I got reelected into the legislature. So riding every day, there's, especially the first month for sure, while I was riding, just every single day there was someone smoking, any level of substances from cigarettes to drugs. And lots of things happening that just shouldn't be there, as well as people just treating others rudely. Lots of things that you just don't expect and know shouldn't be happening within a confined space. That doesn't allow for a safe, comfortable ride where people are good using our transit system and we have to change that.
DeRusha: Today (Thursday) on a bill that you've sponsored, I'm curious to have you explain kind of what you're thinking because this bill is described as an intensive intervention program. What does that mean? And tell me why you think that'll make transit safer, not just for the people riding, but also for the train operators and bus drivers who are just trying to go to work?
Tabke: Yeah, absolutely. And just anybody who wants to use transit for any variety of reasons that they choose. With that, what we want to do is basically a two phase program. For the last four years, we have been trying to pass something called Transit Ambassadors, which is having just folks on the trains and buses them to help with not only doing things like enforcement, making sure that everybody's paying their fare, making sure everybody's working within the code of riding, within the code of conduct, but also to help people just make sure they're getting from point A to point B well, and doing that kind of thing. We haven't been able to get that done previously, and so we want to do that this year.
Before we can do that and have it be successful, there has to be a reset of what the culture is of being a transit rider. It's not okay to be smoking on trains. It's not okay to be using drug substances on the train. It's not okay to be doing those kinds of things and committing crimes in the train. And we have to get enough people on there with social services to make sure that everybody who is experiencing addiction, everyone who is experiencing homelessness, everyone who is that kind of thing has access to what they need in order to be successful. We need to make sure those things happen and aren't just kicking people off the train because they are homeless. That the transit system ends up being a magnifier of what is going on in greater society. We know we have all those issues within society, and the transit system really highlights that, and we need to make sure that we are working hard to solve those issues. And that's where we're doing this year.
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DeRusha: People who are doing drugs on the train know they're not supposed to be doing drugs on the train, right? How does resetting the culture, having a code of conduct, how does that really get us anywhere? I don't think anyone who's openly doing drugs or smoking cigarettes or whatever on the train, none of them think ‘oh, this is fine behavior to do.’ They know that they're doing something that's wrong.
Tabke: Yeah, absolutely. But there have been zero consequences for it.
DeRusha: What would the consequences?
Tabke: We're adjusting and clarifying the code of conduct for what it is to be a transit rider. I've been riding the train for a long time, I didn't see a single Metro Transit Police Officer on there. And it was just absolutely nothing. Lately I've been seeing them a lot more often in the morning, and in the evening when I'm going back. As I talked to them and I was like, ‘Hey, what do you guys think should be happening here? What can we do?’ And they were concerned that they didn't actually have the authority for removing someone from the train. They were very concerned that there were things that they needed to be worried about with making sure that everyone is getting taken care of. So it was really interesting to talk with them.
We’ve been clarifying in this bill that these are the things that you get kicked off the train for doing. These are the things that you're going to get a warning for doing. That's something you get a warning for, and then if you don't fix it, then you get kicked off. If you are smoking, it's just automatically you get kicked off the train. So we need to make sure that we have folks that are working. And there's a very rightful concern with a lot of members of legislature and a lot of members of transit advocacy groups and rider, that that will be applied incorrectly to different racial groups and different ethnic groups and different things like that. And we have to be very mindful that we are, as we add and work together in a coordinated effort for having more enforcement on the trains, that it is absolutely a risk. But it's also a risk by not doing anything because people are getting fiercely beat up. There are people who are overdosing on the trains and it's not an acceptable situation.
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DeRusha: So here's my concern. Met Council has already budgeted to hire these customer service officers beyond the trains, but they can't hire enough. We see this throughout our state where we have money budgeted for police officers, or here it's like customer service, sort of what you're talking about, an ambassador. But they have 171 budgeted and they only have 107 in the job. So we can budget for it, but we can't hire the people. We can set up a culture where you get kicked off the train. But the woman who got beaten up on the Lake Street platform this week, one of the guys charged had a trespass order on him for light rail. So he wasn't supposed to be up there. He was up there. I just wonder if we're too far gone with the drug use and the fact that anybody can kind of get on our trains whenever they want. Do you really think that this is going to make an impact?
Tabke: Yeah, I really do think it's going to make an impact. I also don't agree that it's going to be enough. This is not going to be the solution to all the problems. But the main goal of this is to make sure the way we make transit safer in the long run is making sure that people are riding the trains. That’s getting more people there and getting people to ride.
DeRusha: But I don't want to ride the train if somebody's shooting up heroin or smoking crack, right? Or doing fentanyl or whatever next to me. I mean, 0%, want to do that.
Tabke: Absolutely. And I could not agree with you more.
DeRusha: So how do we keep those people off? How do we keep those people off the train though? I'm just not sure how we get this done unless you have an officer on every car.
Tabke: Let me tell you a story as to the genesis of this idea and how it came about. I get on it at Government Plaza Station in Minneapolis and took a bus from Shakopee to Minneapolis. When I got on the bus one day, I looked around and I was like, ‘holy cow, this is a different experience.’ There was a different vibe. It was different than what it was expected to be. I was surprised. I didn't really think a lot of it. From there I was looking at my phone, and I used that time, the hour and a half that I have, to return tons of emails and make sure that we're talking to folks. And I was looking at my phone and I looked up and all of a sudden there were five officers that were all standing right in front of me, and they were all just talking.
I hadn't noticed them there. And so I went down, I started talking. ‘What do you feel needs to happen?’ And they were very clear that they're concerned around the fact that people who they are enforcing laws against come back onto the trains. We have to continue to work on that. Another thing was that they didn't think that they had enough authority to do what they'd needed to do to keep the trains safe. We talked for a long time. They got off and I went and sat down and there was a guy who was sitting in front of me and he was like, ‘so who are you and why? What was that all about?’ He has been riding the train for years, every day to work. He said that he hardly ever sees cops. That what happens is that as we go two, three stops down, people start to get back on the train who are doing drugs, who are smoking and that kind of thing. And we need to have enough of a presence between human services and between just eyeballs of people with authority, who can talk to the police and make sure that we are getting folks in the right places. Transit cops and different folks like that to be on the train consistently so that people know that this is not a space where that's acceptable. That's the plan that we're going for here. Then maintain that with the ambassadors getting in through the summer. So that's what we're working at.
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