Faced with growing community concerns about crime and fare evasion, last fall Metro Transit began a study on installing turnstiles at four of its light-rail stations.
This past July, they learned how much that would cost: $14 million, according to a report prepared by a consultant and obtained through a data practices request.
The agency contracted with infrastructure design firm HNTB to evaluate installing turnstiles at four stations: Franklin Avenue, 46th Street, Snelling Avenue, and Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue. The report does not evaluate installing turnstiles at Lake Street/Midtown Station, which the agency plans to rebuild as part of its efforts to renew and expand the Blue Line.
If Metro Transit does erect turnstiles at the four stations on its Blue and Green lines, both of which use light-rail vehicles that board at platforms 14 inches above the ground, it would be the first system of its kind in the United States to have them. The agency does not have any concrete plans to implement turnstiles at this time.
Metro Transit leaders and HNTB are worried that, because of the low floor height, people could simply walk on the tracks and step onto the platform, bypassing the turnstiles. This is less of a concern in cities such as Los Angeles, which have light-rail vehicles that board at platforms 39 inches above ground.
“If you put in gates, you can just walk around, walk on the tracks. It would be worse, even more dangerous,” Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle said during an August bike tour of the Southwest Light Rail project.
Installing turnstiles also would require the agency to move its ticket vending machines so that they are off of the boarding area, where they are today. To accommodate the vending machines, the agency also would have to relocate poles that support the overhead wires, rebuild the ramps leading onto the platforms, and lengthen the raised platforms to close to 300 feet. This could be a challenge, particularly at the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station, which at 260 feet is the shortest platform in the system.
The agency does not have current fare evasion rate figures for its light-rail system. In the past, Metro Transit has relied on spot checks to estimate the fare evasion rate. Based on those checks, the rate was estimated at between 8% and 10% in 2016.
The agency also did not say how much money is lost due to fare evasion. However, the per-passenger subsidies for both light-rail routes have increased since the pandemic began, as ridership cratered before slowly recovering. Though 2023 ridership was 58% of 2019 levels, the system subsidy per passenger was close to three times higher, at $5.49 versus $1.96 in 2019.
The report also suggests that the agency may need to consolidate its existing fare media products, which include paper transfers, magnetic transfers, as well as its mobile phone app, to be compatible with the Go-To card. Authors of the report believe no turnstiles available on the market today can handle barcodes, paper transfers, or magnetic transfers, though photos of Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s new turnstiles deployed this year appear to show readers that accept barcodes and magnetic transfers.
Nonetheless, retrofitting the existing ticket vending machines to “add” fare media capability — the report does not say which of their three different types of ticket vending machines they would need to retrofit, and the light-rail ticket vending machines can already reload Go-To cards — would cost $75,000 per machine.
The agency pledges to study their fare collection systems in the next five years. Until then, the Met Council is studying and implementing changes to its transfer policy, fares, and passes, as well as undertaking a $37.7 million upgrade to the Go-To card system to accept credit and debit cards in the next two years. This includes replacing existing ticket vending machines at light-rail stations.
“Any future effort that may be undertaken to add barriers to light-rail stations would require us to consider how the fare products available to riders would interact with that equipment,” Metro Transit spokesperson Drew Kerr said.
Minneapolis resident Renee Pitman believes turnstiles would be a massive waste of money used to enable harassment of riders who can’t pay. “I’m worried that it would be a waste of money, that they would end up spending more money than they would make in fares,” Pitman said, adding that the train should be free. “I’m just opposed to any barriers to using transit because that’s an important part of getting people out of private vehicles and fighting climate change. The more people we can get not driving, the more chance we have in slowing down climate collapse.”
Even if the agency were to install turnstiles, Chair Zelle, speaking at the August bike tour, said the agency will need to increase its human presence. “Law enforcement, security, guides, community service officers, we just need people, including customers, to kind of maintain a standard of behavior and reduce crime,” Zelle said.
As the agency continues to face challenges in hiring police — they remain short over 60 police officers, a number reported as early as 2022 — it’s continuing to contract with private security and social service organizations to maintain order on the system, hire transit ambassadors to inspect fares, and work with unhoused youth to clean up St. Paul light-rail stations.
The agency hasn’t encountered trouble in hiring Transit Rider Investment Program (TRIP) agents. “Our current internal-only opening, we had 30 applicants in three days,” TRIP manager Leah Palmer said at a November Met Council meeting. The agency now has 50 ambassadors, who have conducted close to 60,000 fare inspections in September alone. Pending the outcome of the Met Council’s unified budget, which is now in the public comment stage, the agency hopes to double the number of ambassadors next year, while also expanding private security presence and social service partnerships.
Officials believe the presence of ambassadors, private security and social service organizations have been effective. Metro Transit interim police chief Jeff Doseth reported at a November Met Council meeting that crime, not including smoking, decreased 2.4% in the third quarter of this year, compared to the same time period in 2023. Overall, crime in the third quarter of this year is 30% less than what it was in the first quarter of 2023.
“When you see those crime numbers going down, it’s not just because of the work that the police are doing. It’s the work that TRIP agents are doing, supplemental security agents are doing, the work that we’re all doing as a team is the reason that that stuff is going down because we’re taking that community approach,” Doseth said during the presentation.
Still, the agency continues to have setbacks: Two trans women were harassed near the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station last month, and on Nov. 29 Sharif Darryl Walker-El Jr. was shot and killed by a fellow passenger as a Green Line train neared the Hamline Avenue station. Police have not announced any arrests in either incident.
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