Edmonton city council passed two motions Wednesday related to transit safety, including one to get more information on possibly piloting fare gates.
The first motion, put forward by Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, asked administration to bring back an adjustment to the operating budget that included four more (unfunded) transit safety teams made of Transit Peace Officers (TPOs) or a mix of TPOs and outreach workers.
That motion passed.
“We just need to build on what is working and continue working on it,” Sohi said.
“The overall safety on public transit is improving. You heard that from the police chief yesterday. We heard from EPS and the police commission today again.
“We need to accelerate that. We need to make sure that we’re doing more. I think the best way we can do that is add more transit security officers along with social workers,” the mayor said.
On Tuesday, council heard an update from police and Edmonton transit that, while public perception of safety is still an issue, actual safety is improving. Crime severity and violent incidents are down on transit and ridership is up, councillors were told. Non-violent incidents are increasing.
“Social presence is one of the biggest forms of control we have,” said EPS Acting. Supt. Jared Hrycun, who oversees the crime suppression and community operations division.
“When our officers are present, the violent incidents go down. I know our officers are making every effort they can to be present as much as they can at as many different locations as they can.
“Any additional resources are always beneficial to our efforts,” he added.
“We work closely with our ETS counterparts — the community peace officers — and anything they can add to increasing social presence in the transit areas is going to be beneficial.”
The second motion, put forward by Coun. Tim Cartmell, was to ask administration for a report outlining a plan, evaluation and cost for a two-year trial for fare gates at two transit centres, including one underground LRT station.
Several councillors said they’d like information on existing research on fare gates and some sort of jurisdictional data in an effort to also consider their effectiveness.
Administration said the report would outline criteria for potential locations, cost estimates, how the pilot would be evaluated and how it would be best implemented.
An amended motion that included asking administration for a cost-benefit analysis and its recommendation was later passed.
Coun. Aaron Paquette said data has shown fare gate approach doesn’t make transit safer.
“The literature says it doesn’t work,” he said, referencing a recent Calgary report that researched transit systems across North America and surveyed riders, and determined turnstiles weren’t feasible for Calgary transit, were very expensive and that they would not impact transit safety.
Calgary decided instead to increase staff like peace officers, corporate security, dedicated police resources and additional community outreach teams, and made infrastructure improvements focused on safety.
That’s the approach Paquette would rather see Edmonton take.
But Cartmell says he’s constantly hearing from Edmontonians that they don’t feel safe taking transit.
“If the things that we were already doing were working so well, we wouldn’t have this constant conversation,” he said.
“We need to consider all the tools. To ask for a report that considers the tools… is not the end of the world,” Cartmell added.
“I think we need to figure out whether this is worth doing.”
Administration is scheduled to return to council with the turnstile report in the summer of 2024.
Metro Vancouver Transit Police officer Const. Travis Blair said fare gates have led to more background checks.
“If someone were to force a fare gate open by pushing the paddles open, if people … tailgate through… under the Greater Vancouver Transit Conduct and Regulation Act, those are actually violations, so people can be liable … receive a violation ticket.”
That means they have to provide identification, Blair explained.
“Between January 2023 to September of this year, our officers have made arrests for 712 outstanding warrants,” he added.
The Metro Vancouver Transit Police have between 12 to 20 officers on shift at any given time. They monitor more than 60 stations and 80 trains on the whole system.
“It’s always about the health and wellbeing of the individual and then we look at the criminality of the situation as well. In-house, we do have our community engagement team,” Blair said.
He says any service can always use more resources and staff.
“We can’t prevent all crime but obviously visible presence, uniformed presence in the form of a transit police officer or a peace officer that’s uniformed, that’s really the biggest thing that makes people feel safe and restores public safety.”
Edmonton has 43 stations across its transit network, Edmonton Transit System branch manager Carrie Hotton-MacDonald told council.
“I don’t think that a technological solution is a lone or sole-source problem solver in this case,” Hrycun said, “but I do believe it could be beneficial to our efforts when we’re enforcing some of the safety concerns on transit.”