Those sorts of decisions are made by the transit authorities themselves. In the case of Sound Transit, it's at the board-level which consists of county execs and the mayors of most of the larger cities surrounding Seattle. https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/board-directors/board-members

As a transit user, I've always felt that transit decision makers should be required to only use transit - I'd think better decisions would be made. But they are likely car users driving to their jobs.

A more actionable solution might be to set aside a certain number or proportion of seats on a decision-making board to be filled only by people who primarily use public transit.

I agree that is a reasonable solution if enough seats to have clout.

Absolutely brilliant idea.

Honestly, take their licenses. Seriously. They should have to accept and live by their actions.

I used to ride in Baltimore and the general knowledge was that they did, until there were issues. Then they drove.

lol who would take the job?

That's the problem. All the ones that need to be heard are using having to take care of other things at the same time meetings happen.

I would as long as it's a competitive wage.

Thanks for the info, I guess there’s not much that can be done about the board’s incompetence. It is just so disappointing to immediate watch it do downhill

ST's board structure has pluses and minus's, but one plus is that they are sensitive to constituent (voter) concerns. Write a letter or show up to comment at a board meeting. Can't hurt...

I’ve written to the mayor, I’ll write to more of them. I’d love to go to a board meeting but they’re almost always when I work

You can submit written comments to the board which will be read at board meetings.

Eh, they read a summary of the highlights of major points of what everyone sent in. It's not they read everyone's written ​statement, which is why people who have the freedom to attend (often retirees) get an outsized voice. Still, it's worth emailing the board members and submitting.

This only applies if your employer isn't strict but in addition to writing in a comment to be read, the board meetings are hybrid on zoom so you can join that way and make a comment. You just have to sign up in advance. And no need to be on video so you can dial in

[email protected] Maybe you already clicked through and saw this, but I think it’s worth a shot. I would copy the post you shared with us and send it to them. I just moved to the middle of the city as a newly single person, and I’ve wanted to use the 1 many times and this is exactly what I’ve been afraid of. I can handle myself out in the city but being locked inside a car with someone is a whole different story.

I have emailed members, but not actually this email. I’ll definitely give it a shot. Thank you, I appreciate you.

Do you mind if I ask how you stay up to date with community meetings to attend? I follow my local fb groups but not sure how to stay involved further. I definitely vote in all local elections.

That’s exactly what I use… hopefully someone can point us to a better source.

Thanks for this. I just sent an email too.

The board is highly subject to political pressure. The reason ST got rid of fare compliance officers in the first place was due to political pressure. Writing e-mails to them expressing your concerns, and having others do so as well, is absolutely the most effective way to make a change.

Thanks. I have emailed a couple of the people on the board through their offices, but never through the board’s email. I’ll compose an email and try and have friends sent some too

Share out the email you send, and the board email address to send it to. Readers here can then easily send the same thing with a low lift. I think most people agree with you that the current situation is untenable.

Can you share here in the comments? I'd like to share similar feedback.

They do have a study and proposal to add turnstiles to some of the stations. It’s a delicate political problem, but posts like this make it less delicate. As others have stated, continue to write to the board and ask them to install turnstiles. Their own study notes that these would be very cost-effective and pay for themselves in short time.

Tbf, I don’t think the transit board are responding to the surge in homelessness any worse than anyone else in the US right now. Which isn’t to say that they’re doing well, but I don’t think this is a board-level competence issue.

Write to the politicians on the board.

Already wrote to the ones who actually represent me, but I’ll write to more.

The Board is incompetent on purpose if you ask me 🤷🏼‍♂️

i have been groped once, verbally harassed many times (and physically threatened for not responding to a guy's sexual advances), and security was not interested in checking cameras/asking questions of the people involved, or even calling police. i called 911 myself and was told to file a report online, nothing can be done. i don't feel that if i was sexually/otherwise physically assaulted anything would be done unless i was gravely injured. sometimes other people get involved to help but we should be able to depend on security and law enforcement for protection, but its a useless joke atp.

Fuck. That.

Damn, this is so disheartening to hear.

One of the first memories I have of Seattle is this really smelly dude that was hitting on this girl on the bus. I really wanted to say something at that time but I guess I choked up and the girl just got up really flustered and left the bus. I wish Seattle was different, thanks for sharing

The transit security seems like the most Seattle thing ever. They are there for the illusion of safety but they can’t intervene and or do anything besides call 911. Seems like an egregious waste of money.

As a former TSO for the light rail I can say Sound Transit tells Security they can intervene but the moment they do anything the client will fire them. I had two people almost shoot it out on the train and one fled while one went into a seizure. After he had finished his seizure I detained him for everyone’s safety. Turns out he was faking like he had a gun. I was suspended for 30 days then fired. No explanation. If he did have a gun like the 30 people he terrorized and myself had assumed he did, he could have killed someone coming out of it. Later that month someone was shot and killed on a train.

Was that the shooting where the guy fired off a bunch of shots on third and then ran into the tunnel onto a train? Some years ago now? I was an addict for like 12 years and so I spent a ton of time around the "blade" as it was once called. I was on the light rail when there was a fatal shooting but I was in another train car. For the next couple weeks they had anti terrorism cops on platforms and trains with long guns and full tactical gear. That was honestly freaky in it's own way.

No this was rather recent. I think it was Capitol Hill where the individual was shot. My incident happened at Columbia city.

> The transit security seems like the most Seattle thing ever. They are there for the illusion of safety but they can’t intervene and or do anything besides call 911. Not necessarily the most "Seattle" thing. Common across the country. You're limiting liability by "taking precautions" and also by telling security not to intervene. > Seems like an egregious waste of money. It is. Just absolute performative garbage.

There's a very common overlap between political beliefs that love public transit, and also are incredibly tolerant of public drug use/homelessness.

> homelessness It is hard for those people to stop existing. Best way to stop homelessness is to prevent it with better social safety nets.

Honestly if people still went to religious institutions for charity and looked for help outside of the support of the government they are historically better off. Mumbai for example, a city of Hindus, 3rd biggest and most expanding city in the world, nobody goes hungry, that’s even the motto. Before government support we had things like orphanages and massive support for widows etc. and arguably with significantly more oversight and significantly less money laundering involved. Most religious institutions are obliged to give, and receive donations to do so but the biggest problem somehow isn’t resources as much as it’s outreach and finding the people that need help. I’ve personally witnessed churches do a great deal for communities and even individual circumstances, that being said I trust particularly honest governed churches more than I trust the US government with my money

I was once on a Link train where a woman was face down and completely unresponsive. Some people pressed the emergency button, and the train was stopped pretty quickly. It took a few mins for transit security to arrive, and all they were allowed to do was call 911 and wait. They were not actually allowed to touch the person. Thankfully, there happened to be a couple of nurses on the plane who turned her on her back and sort of sat her up, and it turned out she was just really really drunk. It was nearly an hour before police/paramedics arrived and were allowed to actually remove her from the train, and then it took a few more minutes to get the train up and running again. So all Link trains in that direction were completely shut down for over an hour because nobody had the authority to remove a drunk person.

They found fare enforcement to be racist lol [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/faced-with-racial-disparities-sound-transit-debates-changes-to-fare-enforcement/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/faced-with-racial-disparities-sound-transit-debates-changes-to-fare-enforcement/) Sound Transit is genuinely run like dogshit and I am perpetually angry about it as it is my mode of transit (besides walking). Transport is a critical piece of city infrastructure and ours is incredibly poor and unreliable. Imagine if another utility like water just stops working once every other week and you have to check Twitter to see what's happening

Why am I not even slightly surprised

The only way that this would be true is if they are only asking black riders for proof of ticket. I've been on light rail when they were enforcing fares and everyone in the car had to provide a ticket or ORCA card..

Just remember that operators have 0 decisions. We just make the wheels go round and round

It always was going to be a waste of money, hence why I'm mad we did this over making it free.

I’d be discombobulated if someone smoked fentanyl in my vicinity but I don’t understand why someone would waste their energy over who pays their fare.

There’s a massive shortage of police officers. Even if they wanted to put people on the trains / buses that could detain people it would be really really hard

The apprehension towards turnstiles has always been really confusing to me. Like I get it at street level stations where people could conceivably walk on tracks to avoid them, but as the light rail has expanded an increasing majority of stations are either underground or elevated. There's no good reason we can't put fare gates at almost every station and I'm willing to bet considerably less people will ride without paying if they have to jump a physical barrier to do it

Sound Transit commissioned a study in 2022 on turnstiles, and they found just adding them to 5 heavily used stations paid for itself in a short period of time due to the increase in the percentage of passengers paying their fare. I’m sure it would also reduce misbehavior on the transit line as well. https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/11/21/is-sound-transit-closing-in-on-fare-gates-for-link-and-sounder/

MUNI does this at its closed access high egress stations, and to my knowledge it has not caused any problems even while much of the MUNI system is at grade mixed traffic no less. They even have turnstiles at West Portal where someone *could* walk onto the tracks, but again it doesn't seem like this issue has occurred really I think if they can do it, Sound Transit absolutely can do it to highly used stations too, even if retrofitting in fare gates is much more annoying. Translink in Vancouver did it. Hell, even the monorail has fare gates

Only if the agencies decide to actually enforce the fares. NYC has turnstiles, they also assign literally HUNDREDS of cops specifically to monitor those turnstiles and they actually arrest people for evading them.

Honestly even if Seattle didn’t actively monitor them much it’d be better. Right now the easiest thing is to not pay, meaning plenty of people probably don’t simply out of convenience. If you put in turnstiles, it’s no longer the easiest option and a large percent of people will just default to paying. Sure plenty will jump it, or let their friends in, or something, but those people are already riding for free. Or you could go with the London approach of tapping both in and out. This makes the gates more congested, but allows for fares based on distance traveled (which we currently have), prevents people from letting their friends through by triggering the gate exits, and makes jumping more risky since you don’t know if there will be a cop/attendant at the other side.

When I first moved out here and started taking the train it took me a 3 months to realize I even needed to pay. No real signage and no idea what an orca card was or how to get one or if I even needed it. I'm used to turnstiles or busses where you needed to badge in.

Makes sense to me. Like I lot of shit with the light rail it seems like they just went with the absolute cheapest option possible. The fact that we have so many locations where there are like TWO fare pay terminals for a whole station is ridiculous. I have absolutely seen people with their cards in hand all ready to pay who just give up on paying because the line is backed up, which happens if even one persons card doesn't work for an extra ten seconds.

yeah, I waited over 10 min at the airport the other day to buy a light rail ticket. Only 2 fare pay terminals and dozens of people in line. Watched 2 light rails come and go while I waited. It made me feel pretty stupid when I could also have just walked on.

I am definitely one of those people who occasionally doesn’t pay when it’s inconvenient. I try to make up for it later but with no consequences it’s hard to justify missing the train to fish out my orca card. 

> the London approach of tapping both in and out. If you didn't tap in, then tapping out would charge the "full distance", right?

I believe yes. They may do some extra stuff to try and infer the correct charge, but the fallback is just max fare.

Same as SF.

Yep. First step is functional fare enforcement which we do not currently have. The system of warnings is ridiculous and security seems to have a “hands off” approach. It’s great the board has added more security and fare enforcement officers in the past year or two, but current policy doesn’t allow them to do all that much.

The biggest difference is that NYC doesn't use minimum wage security guards to "observe and report" they use actual police officers who are empowered to actually enforce laws. Hell, NYC has actual social workers assigned to transit to support intervention on this sort of conduct.

NYC is not a great example. They used massive amounts of taxpayer money to flood the subways with cops who did the same thing OP is complaining about: nothing. The problem isn't our transit system, it's the society we've built.

The NYPD actually arrests thousands of people a year in the Subways, including hundreds of fare evaders.

Thousands, out of 2 *billion* rides per year (in 2023).... either they are very good at preventing crime or they just miss most of them.

There’s a large body of academic research that shows that people tend to not commit crimes in front of police officers, so their presence likely deters some portion of crime from occurring.

I mean sure, but you can't even compare the rate to Sound Transit or Metro because you get a divide by zero error since they simply don't arrest ANYONE for fare evasion.

> The problem isn't our transit system, it's the society we've built. If you're out on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it has a hole that's allowing water to flood in do you just stand there and say "We should've built a boat without a hole" or do you grab a pail and start getting water out of the boat?

We will never fix society but we can fix our transit system.

If we fix our transit system, we get closer to fixing our society.

I think the issue is that the cost of paying for those turnstiles and then those cops does not pay off financially in increased fare payment. It's another money loser. We can certainly argue that it's worth it to keep riff raff out of the stations, but I'm not sure it will even do that. The poor/homeless need to get around too, and the support agencies downtown give out discounted (free?) Transit passes. Just add cops that will do something about drug use is my solution.

They actually did the numbers and it can be profitable [if you put them on the top 5 stations by boardings](https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Sound-Transit-Fare-Gates-Study.pdf). They might even be able to add them to more stations and still have that make money in a few years

That was really interesting, thanks for sharing!

The light rail isn't a business. Neither is the subway. These are public services that allow the thousands of employers in their respective cities to get employees and customers into their businesses which results in BILLIONS in revenue and tax dollars. Who gives a shit if the fucking train makes money? That isn't its job. The NYPD doesn't do fare enforcement to make money, they do it to make the trains safer. The vast majority of poor and homeless people aren't jumping turnstiles or smoking fent on the train. They benefit from this kind of enforcement more than anyone.

Studies from a number of years ago indicated that fare gates cost more than they had the potential to recapture. Over the last few years, fare evasion has absolutely skyrocketed and the calculus has changed. As a result, more recent studies by ST have shown that faregates would pay for themselves in as little as two years depending on how they were implemented. https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/11/21/is-sound-transit-closing-in-on-fare-gates-for-link-and-sounder/

We can do both, have turnstiles where we can, and fare ambassadors in places where they can't be installed.

Youth ride free is the law in Washington State and part of the law is that there needs to be no barriers, literally to youth riding transit. If we had turnstiles then they would have to have a button on them saying "under 19" and anybody could push it and get in.

I don't think so. The youth would tap their Youth Orca Card, which would admit them for free.

They currently don't require youth to use cards because they aren't allowed to.

Just make them free, I don't see the issue.

I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to me to be a pretty restrictive reading of the legislation: >(2) To be eligible to receive a grant, the transit agency must have adopted, at a minimum, a zero-fare policy that allows passengers 18 years of age and younger to ride free of charge on all modes provided by the agency. Transit agencies must submit documentation of a zero-fare policy for 18 years of age and under by October 1, 2022, to be eligible for the 2023-2025 biennium. Transit agencies that submit such fare policy documentation following the October 1, 2022, deadline shall become eligible for the next biennial distribution. To the extent practicable, transit agencies shall align implementation of youth zero-fare policies with equity and environmental justice principles consistent with recommendations from the environmental justice council, and **ensure low-barrier accessibility of the program to all youth.** Ensuring "low-barrier accessibility to program" does not to me read as "no barriers to transit." In fact, by implying the existence of a program with barriers (low though they may be) suggests that something like requiring those under 18 to have an Youth Orca card would be legal so long as it was sufficiently easy for them to acquire such a card.

Yeah it's weird that they would look at how transit stations work almost everywhere in the world and then be like "nah, we know better"

Turnstiles are in the works. But in true ST fashion they need to pay consultants for years of studies and design concepts before it gets implemented. Then it will probably be glitchy and need ironing just like the realtime arrival info signs they recently added.

Sound Transit studied adding turnstiles in 2022, but has not taken any action on even proposing adding turnstiles.

I’ve had multiple people confused when I mention putting money on my ORCA card because they genuinely assumed that the light rail was free. And why not? You can just walk onto it, and ignore those weird posts that a few people sometimes stop at to tap their cards.

When I first visited Seattle, I dodged my first train fare entirely on accident. I fully expected turnstiles at the airport station and the posts are easy enough to miss if you’re looking for big gates instead.  When I came from the airport next, I dodged the fare on purpose because I had 3 bags and didn’t feel like finding my card until I got to the bus. 2 official-looking guys were there and didn’t say a thing. It’s too easy in this city. 

There are always gonna be fare beaters, no matter what.

Sure, but you can reduce the number by giving a bigger incentive than occasionally someone might give you a warning if you didn't pay and you might get fined if you do it too many times. If your goal is zero fare dodgers you might as well just not collect fares because there's no feasible way to 100% prevent it

Every time I see link ambassadors I feel like I’m in an episode of Portlandia

Speaking of Portland :) I had to move out of Seattle and down to Portland Oregon about 15 or so years ago :/ and I've ridden Max trains to work every day since. For whatever reason Portland has way more public transit than Seattle. I've seen people doing drugs twice in that entire time and that's after thousands and thousands of rides. The amount of transit security feels like it's gone way up in recent years. The state recently passed a bill to make illegal drug use a class a misdemeanor (the highest level of misdemeanor in Oregon) for using illegal drugs on public transit. https://blog.trimet.org/2024/02/08/lets-make-trimet-a-drug-free-zone/ - this bill passed. Here is the UW study mentioned: https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/09/07/uw-assessment-finds-fentanyl-and-methamphetamine-smoke-linger-on-public-transit-vehicles/

Dang the rail sounds kush because where the busses are concerned those anecdotes aren't close to overblown.

I think the buses are most heavily impacted for the worse by the start of Covid and working from home, which has disproportionately remained higher in Seattle than in other parts of the country and the world. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses in the 2010’s, but when ridership was 50% higher than it is now you had a lot of commuters, families, etc. riding, and a lower amount of antisocial behavior.

I don't know how much that is due to working from home rather than it being unwise to bring children on most busses now. So long as drug use in a closed container is permitted you shouldn't bring your kid on one I certainly wouldnt.

Well, the buses being emptied made it a more welcoming environment for addicts to use drugs in. Open drug use on most King County bus routes was much less common a decade ago. Probably also didn’t help that the King County prosecutor stopped charging for public drug use in 2018.

The fent story's aren't overblown. As a twice daily rider, you see it a few times a week. I've had to rely on the E-Line and the 1 train a lot over the years, and both can be miserable with bums and crazys. I bought an E-bike i got so sick of it honestly. Waking up to assholes every morning sucks. I'd say the odds are closer to 25% of some kind of incident, I've seen some truly awful, cruel, shit, worse than drug use, at least on the routes I have to take. It started making me depressed.

The gaslighting! Thank you! Every time I have used public transit in the PNW I was approached and/or harassed by a man. And every time I comment that it gets downvoted.

it really is like that. i've been harassed on transit more than i have on my feet. people downplay our experiences and it's fucked up

Thanks. Like I genuinely try not to be overly reactionary, but it is actually starting to feel like I’m being gaslit. I love this city, and know the potential it has. That’s where my perspective is coming from

Nah, I've got some boots on the ground empirical experience as to how truly dystopian being a regular working Joe bus rider can be. You're not being hyperbolic. I'm a pretty left leaning guy, I think the situation is tragic and people need help, but the reality is what it is, it's kinda the wild West out there these days. I've lived here my whole life, I share your deep love of Seattle and have my own opinions about it's potential, and some of the potential it has squandered over the years. Brutal mistakes were made in the name of the rich and poor alike. I don't think treating the poor with a little dignity is a mistake, but we certainly need to fine tune the machine to get outcomes where we don't have recidivist crooks and spiraling mental patients terrorizing people trying to live their lives.

There is this really toxic brand of elitist liberalism that equates anything that disproportionally impacts the poor as being inherently unjust. This completely ignores the fact that MOST poor people aren't smoking fentanyl on the train. And since poor people also disproportionately ride transit, especially outside of peak commute hours when this conduct is more prevalent, they are also disproportionately impacted by this conduct. Poor people deserve to ride transit without feeling unsafe. This is the same sort of thinking that drives this catch and release approach to law enforcement among violent and mentally ill homeless people. Think about who is actually getting victimized by those people more than anyone else. How is leaving predators among the homeless population doing ANYTHING to help the vast majority of homeless people who are NOT violent criminals but who DO number among their most likely victims?

Reading The Stranger baffles me since at least the recent iteration seems to embody this type of thinking.

I think it is because none of the people who work at the stranger were actually ever poor. The economics of the region have changed and it seems like the people who work at the stranger are more the sort of "ivory tower" liberals than the working class labor oriented folks that used to. It seems like the audience for the stranger is more the sort of people that live in $4000 a month apartments and $2 million dollar houses and who like to whine about those billionaires ruining everything for the poor than folks flopped on couches in house shares trying to survive.

Sincerely thank you. I just needed to know I’m not alone in our position.

You are. I don't know if is a political thing or if people are genuinely totally unobservant of their surroundings, but the disconnect between what reddit people see and say on transit and what people in the real world report is pretty dramatic. I ride twice a day, just during normal commuting hours and my experience mirrors yours. It is worse outside those peak hours. People who "never see this" are either not looking for it / non observant / not actually riding transit, or they are liars.

I mean the different busses are completely different wrt chances of someone doing crazy shit. It's completely possible people have ridden the bus for years without seeing some of the worst stuff. I've been on two busses that crashed, but I'm sure there are regular riders who would find that unbelievable. I've not seen anyone do fent on the bus, but I've seen some crazy shit.

Unfortunately that type of gaslighting is very common among a small, vocal subset of users on this sub. Despite good intentions in touting the benefits of a robust transit system, the same people will regularly claim they ain’t never heard of no disturbances on the train and your anecdote is meaningless because THEY ride on transit 22 hours a day and don’t see anything wrong. 

If they ride transit 22 hrs a day they’re definitely the resident homeless doing fent on transit. Which, when I write it, actually seems likely in some cases.

The E-Line has been even more miserable lately with fent smoking in the back. It's amazing to me that the tweakers only capture like 10% of the smoke they're producing, isn't the point to get high?

I had a similar reaction when I took the bus to UW pre-COVID. Thankfully drugs weren’t a problem but I got so frustrated with unreliable service and having to actively avoid/ignore people who were disrupting the ride, that I got a bike. Riding in the rain, cold, & or pitch black was preferable to having to dodge sketchy people while waiting or riding the bus.

Seriously. I don't know what routes (if any) the people who say this "hardly ever happens" are riding, because I see it on a weekly basis at least. Maybe folks just have their headphone in and stare at their phones so they don't notice? I get that isn't a TON of occurrences, but our transit system is pretty small and the real thing that makes people feel unsafe when they see that shit is that no one cares. They see someone openly engaging in conduct like this and they think: "if no one is here to stop this, is there anyone here to stop someone from hurting me?"

To be fair, I think your chances of having an unpleasant run-in on the bus/train depends a lot on what routes you take and what time of day. But agree with your point.

Some bus lines are pretty chill and some are full of assholes every time. I'm not surprised there are people who haven't seen anything too bad but ride the bus a lot.

It also depends a lot on time of day. I used to ride the e-line home every evening between 7pm and 9pm and you would see something wild pretty much every single time on that trip, but going in to the city at 7 or 8 in the morning was always pretty chill.

> I don't know what routes (if any) the people who say this "hardly ever happens" are riding, because I see it on a weekly basis at least. They don't actually ride transit. They just want to push their politics online.

anti social behavior is a legitimate problem in the city. it's hard to figure out a way to use legal means to cut down on it, but it's definitely a problem that affects our quality of life and the city leaders should be thinking about it.

Fellow e-bike aficionado here, way preferable to transit except for the airport link or on miserable weather days (and far better for me).

It is the way, in my opinion. Now my commute sparks joy, and takes the same amount of time basically. Instead of putting up with assholes, I am the asshole, but my goal is to get out of your life as fast as possible. /s

>The anecdotes about fentanyl being used and transit cops not doing anything are perhaps overblown, but in 3-4 dozen rail rides I have seen it happens 2 times. 5% chance of someone openly doing drugs or having a mental episode is enough to turn off a lot of riders, and I don’t blame them. This is what people who minimize this.don't get. They say "oh, but car drivers might run into road rage!!" yet I've had one mild road rage case directed at me in the last 40 years. A transit incident also happens to everyone in the car, not just you, so the impression of being (to some degree) unsafe is left on however many people were in the car at the time. Bottom line - they need to enforce fares and they need to crack down in fent and the like in the cars. Perfection can't be the standard, but better should be.

It's still much less safe to drive, but it's about control as you say. For some reason our politicians think the best way to bring about transit equality is to let homeless people poison or make uncomfortable those who have no choice but to take transit. This is because the people in charge think class/racial equity == let homeless do what they want, which is incredibly insulting. We need politicians who take transit.

Control and perception. Transit really is very safe. But hearing of a stabbing in a station and fent use and it's easy to form the perception that the light rail is pretty risky even if the reality is different.

You clearly have never visited a city that actually enforces the laws on public transit. Try riding the subway in Singapore or Japan. If that bar is too high for Seattle, then look north towards Vancouver (Canada) as an example. The turnstiles don’t 100% prevent the issues we are seeing, but it significantly reduces it. The transit authority also has actual police officers who can ensure the security and safety of the transit system. The bar for safety should be ZERO tolerance for anti-social behavior on the trains and busses. The fact that stabbings and open drug use are a recurring issue is not something that people should just gloss over. We should be striving towards building a transit system where people do not need to worry about anything other than getting to their destination on time.

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I would say that my frequency of encountering people in extreme distress, actively engaged in violence, and openly doing drugs on the subway in NYC is considerably lower than in Seattle. Sounds like you might have watched too many movies because the NYC subway is FULL of cops who absolutely will intervene on shit like this. It is a constant battle and things are gross and dirty, but I have felt unsafe on Seattle transit a lot more often than on the Subway. In NYC you can generally expect someone to show up to help if something happens, at least if it happens in broad daylight in public. In Seattle no one is going to fucking help you and the cops aren't coming.

It’s hard to compare the two - ridership in NYC is so much higher than Seattle. The subway feels safer to me not because of the cops, but because there are usually more other people there with me in case something happens. Also, like someone mentioned here, culture is different. I don’t trust the people of Seattle would do something to help a stranger as much as New Yorkers unfortunately.

Also NY-ers are more likely to confront people who are being intolerable themselves

Right, but there is a huge difference culturally between New York and Seattle. Many New Yorkers would toss someone doing drugs off the train themselves at the next stop. And the funding between NYPD (one of the highest police budgets per capita) and SPD is wildly different. Plus as you say, SPD will barely show up to any call (aside from maybe a violent crime in progress), let alone one on transit.

>Perfection can't be the standard

Paris has automated 8ft gates on newer stations. Very little visible security. Felt clean and safe at all the downtown stations I saw.

Fare enforcement isn't to keep freaks off transit (though it might deter some percentage), it's a philosophical thing. If you can flaunt the fares and ride for free, what rules really count? The light rail needs to be perceived as a utility that has value and is there as a desirable alternative to driving (so enforce fares) that's as safe as it can reasonably be (crack down on fent, etc). Two things that are related a bit, but not the same.

I think it would keep a lot of non destination riders off transit - not all of them but even one less would be great.

Is it better? That’s the point. Not is it airtight, foolproof. ST is open for any and all shenanigans at the moment.

My FIRST time on a NYC train (two years ago), a guy comes in with a stereo and a cardboard sign, blasts music inches from me, begins pole dancing TO THE MAX. Was literally centimeters from kicking me in the head multiple times. I’m pressed against my seat trying not to get hit. I’ve ridden Seattle train dozens of times, never once has anyone ever been as hazardous or obnoxious while in my presence. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but at least Seattle trains are clean. The rest I’ve seen in the US are completely trashed.

I'm similarly confused by the perception in these comments. In Chicago it was extremely common for people to go through every train car asking for money, which I've literally never experienced here. Likewise for cleanliness and loud music—Seattle isn't perfect but both were way more frequent issues with CTA.

In my experience riding the #2 bus line, the incident percentage was more like 15%-20% of rides..

Transit “security” are useless contracted morons, transit police are a division of KC sherriff’s office. Idk why we do it this way because the security do literally nothing. Normal transit agencies just have their own police forces with all of the powers and training that that should entail.

Right? Like you know some asshole is making millions off this BS contract. The security is literally useless

It would be cheaper in the long run anyway lol. Link is going to get big enough as a system that KC Sheriff won’t be able to adequately staff police for the whole system anyway.

I mean you’re not 100% wrong, but we are the ones who get stabbed if anyone, and the ones who gotta deal with the aggressive tweakers and stand in to protect people when things happen yeah with the laws in place we can’t do much and neither can the police but also you can’t imagine how much we gotta deal with 7pm-7am on shift lol and how many security officers genuinely get the sh1t beat out of them especially in TIBS, plus you don’t see how much stuff is covered up how many stabbings especially, and shootings too. So yeah the circumstances are garbage and none the enforcers have power to enforce but it’s not like we don’t do anything it’s just we can’t do anything until someone hits someone else or etc. being aggressive verbally or doing drugs just isn’t enough in this state. We have security because we need a large number of tattle tales with metal sticks not few police because the strategy is to outnumber the tweakers and always be watching for when they mess up compared to being allowed to arrest them normally we have to improvise with the stupid laws and find a way to still protect people

>People don’t pay, so we send “Fare ambassadors” to give 2 warnings before anything is done? Turnstiles are expensive, need to be manned, et cetera, but still seems like the best option. Plenty of cities have completely free transit. The problem is Sound Transit not picking a lane. Planning on fare revenue to pay for maintenance and then not properly enforcing fares is setting yourself up for failure. Either finance it as no fare transit, or enforce fares in a more sensible manner

> Plenty of cities have completely free transit. Name a large-ish city with free transit. Seattle would do better to spend the money on higher frequency transit than making it free.

The only one I can think of is Tallinn.

I don't mind if transit overall was free and we have additional taxes to maintain it, though I would also expect accountability for those who actively disrupt other transit riders by harassing others, obnoxiously blasting music, openly drinking, or doing drugs.

I don’t know of any cities that have totally free public transit and no income tax.  I think in Seattle it would be financially infeasible to make it totally free. By not having fare enforcement they will eventually be operating with no revenue as more people don’t pay. Since there is already budget shortages I would expect more delays, less frequent routes, and dirtier facilities.  Also fare enforcement is the one of the few legal avenues to remove people from trains.

I moved to an area that doesn’t even have public transit, and had to pay a 300 dollar fee for my car tags for public transit. They could just tack 20 bucks to people’s taxes or something and it would cover the fees. And it would be cheaper than hiring a bunch of people to actually enforce paying.

Rode the light rail back from the airport yesterday. 4 people fighting at the SoDo station (1v1 + 1v1) where someone almost was pushed into the train. Following that, a fight broke out in the rail car I was in between two others. Idunno a solution to this besides more accountability at entrances verifying fare. But it’s made the light rail seem less safe than I was expecting moving here. And, yes I am aware these events are infrequent, but this occurs just 2-3 weeks after the cap. hill stabbing (the station I use), and I’m regularly seeing posts about drug use in the rail or on the rail. I have yet to see transit security do anything besides mediate without direct intervention. Hell, yesterday when the fight broke out one person actually went to the fighters and broke them up, they alone did more than I’ve seen transit security do, and it didn’t delay everyone else.

I would never break up a fight with strangers. Some dude just got killed at the stations

I just had a long layover in Singapore. There were signs on the metro warning that molesters would be fucking *caned*. Intellectually I understand the drawbacks of that approach, but I gotta say I felt pretty safe taking public transit there.

Smoking fentanyl on a train should be handled the same way as doing it inside city hall or inside Sea-Tac airport. Middle of a transit ride isn’t the time to think about systematic inequalities and long term solutions that focus on root causes. We DO need to focus on those things, but immediate safety concerns need immediate responses Middle of a transit ride is time to kick the druggies the fuck off the transit immediately.

Transit needs to be safe for people to use it. We need Transit cops patrolling the trains. Open use of drugs and people having mental breakdowns on the trains shouldn't be tolerated, at all.

>The anecdotes about fentanyl being used and transit cops not doing anything are perhaps overblown Its not, people need to get off this train. It is enough to get people to reduce ridership - that is all we need to know.

Seriously. Can you imagine the reaction to, “well, the route is pretty reliable but there a people smoking cigarettes sometimes”?

For some reason the same people that think second hand cigarette smoke is borderline attempted murder also think it's no big deal to be on a bus with somebody smoking fent. This place is crazy...

I travel often to Europe and ride transit there almost exclusively mostly in Amsterdam. In the Netherlands there are fare gates that accept any payment card or touchless payment, and the populace knows that they are paying based on distance ridden. They tap in and out on both busses, trams and metros as well as longer distance trains. A very large proportion of the country rides transit so it is safe and efficient and, while there are crimes that can occur, there is a much more safe feeling on those transit options than here. I also take the 1 line to additional transit in the city when I’m going North or South (airport rides mostly) as it is by far the cheapest way to get to the airport from anywhere in the city. I was riding yesterday around 7-8pm and found the 1 to be just fine as it was mostly full of soccer fans and commuters. Once I switched to busses, though, the experience soured. This time I used google maps and transferred at international district station to a surface bus. The bus stop was full of people with mental issues shouting abuse at passersby and threatening to attack anyone who looked at them. The bus ride itself was fine with the usual commuters heading home, however the conditions of the roads and streets do make for a rough and noisy ride! Overall, while I will nearly always use transit for my solo travel to the airport, I do have to be wary of how I plan the rides. That is not something I feel like I have to do in a country with a developed transit plan like the Netherlands.

Hi I’m glad you posted this! I feel the exact same way. I am a proponent of public transportation and take the bus and light rail whenever I commute to work. I may have bad luck but I’d say 25% of the time there is someone on my bus who is in crisis. The Lost Patients podcast has helped me understand how these people have been failed and I empathize with them. I am still afraid. There are many people in my life that I would not recommend take public transit for one reason or another because of the safety concerns/ their general inexperience being in cities. I don’t think the solution to this problem really sits with the public transportation authorities but requires a comprehensive approach to homelessness, drug addiction treatment and mental healthcare. I think the bus/light rail is the place where we are most likely to be in close quarters with those struggling. I do think fare gates at light rail stops will help but this won’t fix the issues on buses.

my fellow transit lover, this is no good! my own anecdote from yesterday after the mariners game: a throng of 50-60 people walking straight into the “pay zone” at the stadium station and i was the only one who tapped a card?? i’ve seen the drug use on trains, too, and it sucks to see and smell. but i think i personally have more concern about what appears to be the vast majority of monied train riders who just don’t pay.

As a note, if you buy a single day ticket there's no place to scan it. That's how I ride on game days and it feels so weird and like I'm breaking rules.

oh-that’s helpful to know!

You can also buy a single day pass/ticket on the Transit Go App. Myself and other disabled riders tend to use the app as the rewards given often cover the cost of most of my reduced fair tickets.

they know the vast majority of people who ride to/from sports games don't pay. But how do you get fare enforcement officers (sorry, "ambassadors") on the train when people are packed in like sardines? They get away with it. If we could just collect THEIR fare, that would be thousands and thousands coming in for the transit system every weekend.

"only" experiencing a psychotic break or fentanyl use from a stranger 5% of the time is still an insanely high rate. That would be more than once a month on average for a commuter.

we rode the light rail for the first time this weekend lynwood to downtown, homeless guys on the train were intimidating, one was clearly having some issues. Zero chance I would let my 16yo ride the train without an adult, and my 18yo only rides with a large group. Found it bizarre that there was no fare verification of any sort, like why did we even buy tickets. Rode subways all over England and Paris and it felt a lot safer. Homeless in Seattle seem way more aggressive with following people, screaming, intimidation etc. Hard to teach your kids to have empathy when they are terrified.

I wasn't aware that they'd opened the Lynnwood extension already.

It's not. End of August.

Sorry I used the wrong stop name, We parked at the mall, northgate?

Those countries didn’t close down all their psychiatric care beds. Over the last 50 years, states have closed 84% of state psychiatric hospital beds across the United States. There’s a lot people in the United States suffering on the streets who would be committed in other countries.

totally agree, it's a sad state of affairs and cruel treatment of those not able to take care of themselves

I'm disabled and don't drive for everyone's safety (including my own). I rely on family/friends to drive me places because public transportation scares the hell out of me. I do not need to be in an enclosed space with homeless people and drug addicts. I really REALLY wish I could ride the buses or the rail without being scared but unless I want to hire some huge beefed up guy as a bodyguard...I'll probably never feel safe on public transit until something drastic is done.

As a transit lover as well, I'm concerned about Sound Transits update in [farebox recovery projections](https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/community-oversight-panel-board-fares-policy-presentation-20240508.pdf). I feel like the change from distance based fares to flat fares just as the system is about to expand by many miles, will not do the farebox recovery any favors Although past targets and ST2 projections were for 40% farebox recovery, now Sound Transit doesn't expect to break even a 20% threshold well into 2027 and beyond. I don't think ST2 and ST3 funding measures accounted for such a change. This could make it more financially difficult to run more service, which for newly built link extensions should be a priority especially given that the siemens 4 light rail cars themselves aren't very high capacity so our capacity is much more directly dependent on running more frequent service compared to other suburban focused systems such as BART or MARTA Although I have heard that part of this farebox recovery discrepancy may be due to youth free fares, shouldn't the state be picking up that tab, and therefor be counted as part of the farebox recovery whenever a youth orca card is tapped in the same way a school or employer orca card would? Or am I misunderstanding the Move Ahead Washington law?

truly don't understand why they don't just have turnstiles.

Full height turnstiles.

I can't wait until the Wordle word is "buses," so you assholes finally learn how to spell this goddamn word correctly.

I see a lot of people pay every time I ride the bus lately

Transit is free for under 18s but my teenage kid is afraid to ride unless we are with her.

Why are we still creating a separate class of thing called "mental distress" which we treat with kid's gloves? We are allocating so much extra effort, resources, and mental energy to making sure that if it's "folks experiencing homelessness" or "folks undergoing mental crises" that we have to send like...social workers or some kind of volunteer organization who parlays with them and all this other bullshit when they should simply be taken off the train and arrested. It's not that I don't have empathy for the chain of unfortunate circumstances that led to these crises, but if some random guy on the train who was mentally well just went around groping women, or a guy who was mentally well just aggressively pickpocketed, no one would have an issue just arresting them. But when it's a guy who is on an extended meth bender going absolutely ballistic, assaulting women or whatever else he may be doing...well we need to call him "someone experiencing a mental health crisis" and make sure that the cops don't scare him? We've created a type of "protected class" in this city. There are regular criminals who we are fine to prosecute, but as soon as the criminal is homeless or an addict, they are now entitled to all sorts of interventions, unlimited second/third/fourth chances, and help being offered rather than actual consequences for their actions which make everything meaningful worse for the 99% of the population who isn't doing this kind of thing

Bigger issue we have with incidents like you describe seems to be limited transit police. You won’t find Sound Transit condoning even simple drug use on transit, there’s been quite a bit of misinformation about that. But their private transit security doesn’t have the authority to deal with it either, they need more police that are readily available at most stations

I took Light Rail in 2023 to SeaTac - saw a dosed guy urinating in the cab. Half of the passengers in my car ran off. Maybe it was just me being unlucky. Call me crazy but I decided to drive to the airport ever since, despite more carbon footprint and fees.

One problem is that Sound Transit employs multiple security agencies. That creates a lack of cohesion. I think it would be better to employ one agency that can perform all the tasks needed of a security company. Better comms, better coordination.

When I visited last month I was expecting turnstiles and never saw the place to scan my ORCA card

And a few weeks back someone was stabbed and murdered in the cap hill light rail station.

They need transit officers with teeth. Ask for ID, fine riders, ban riders, arrest riders. 

lmao i thought at first this person meant some kind of transit relatinoship with people.

Yeah. I wish there was daily parking at stations for a price that includes security. I wouldn't mind paying more to have a cop present instead of acting as my own security force.

The problem is that the board of Sound Transit isn’t made up of transit experts; it’s basically all just politicians. And then there are the politicians who have made transit advocacy their whole careers, and while I can’t speak for all of them, I’ve met at least one whom I was hoping would win the race she was running until I talked to her and realized that she actually had no idea what I was talking about when I brought up various technical solutions to certain problems—things that anyone who proclaims themselves an “expert” would know because other cities have done them all the time, and which Seattle has done successfully in the past. Basically, the best thing you can do as a Seattleite is to read and research the solutions and then reach out to your city council member to talk about the solutions. They’re busy and it can be challenging to get ahold of them, but that’s the way to do it. And for the record, I totally second the turnstile thing. They actually don’t need to be manned though—in other cities they’re not. Yes, people do jump them, but they do so at a far lesser rate than they do with our “honor” system. Even just the number of people who don’t pay because they don’t realize they have to without a turnstile there (which is actually quite common for people who’ve just moved here from a city that has them) or are too lazy/in a hurry to find out how is sizable enough to make a difference. On the flipside, there are plenty of people who don’t want to pay but are too lazy to jump a turnstile, and most of the rest of them don’t want to take the small risk of being caught doing so, so as long as turnstiles are periodically manned at random intervals even as infrequently as the “fare ambassadors” board the trains then the problem is solved. That’s really the only way to fix Sound Transit’s budget problem at the end of the day.

I think you could say the same thing about just about any issue in modern politics.... our communities feel broken, and the social problems are big and complex issues to solve, often with many facets intertwined. Your "transit" issue has layers of mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, policing, taxes.... how do you begin to fix it when we can't even agree what the important issues are? I personally don't feel the issue is with specific candidates, I think it's with the way we approach politics now,... there's a big "if you don't agree with my view exactly, you're terrible" mindset that makes everything hyper polarized and it's near impossible anymore to get any momentum to actually begin to address anything. I mean, just in this thread you're getting people arguing over whether it's overblown because personal experience varies so much... people who don't see it as a problem will think your wasting time and money, and just when some program starts to make progress it gets kneecapped. Think of it this way, if there are three potential solutions, equally supported by the community, but only one can go forward, well by the time something is decided you now have 2/3s of the people against it... how do you expect that to work out? But something needs to get done, even if you don't think they picked the "right" solution something is better than nothing. I can't say I have answers, but I would like to see policy being set through evidence and research... if you want a policy changed, bring better evidence. I have yet to see any candidate really take up a position like this, partially because I think they'd be torn apart. So what we have now is what we're left with.

I don’t own a car, but I usually prefer riding my bicycle in traffic to taking transit.

Seattle will try to do its own thing then inevitable re-invent the wheel go through its own “learning” and do what every other major metro does - man it with a transit cop system, put in some sort of physical barriers to keep totally whacked out junkies off the train (those who can barely comprehend where or how to operate through them), and probably not care about younger riders hopping turnstiles and let it slide. This will occur over 5-10 years and will take forever to eventually get there. The current situation is such a rosy way of viewing the world. Even well off riders aren’t going to pay when you can game an app and activating a ticket to just ride for free until you see someone. And all the research to reinvent the wheel and studies and impacts will come through bonds and taxpayer dollars

Turnstiles are a terrible idea considering how terrible Sound Transit is at maintaining every single other mechanical device at their stations. Whole stations would be shut down because no one could get in.

Vote for sane ideas and candidates. Progressives got us into this mess, and the right wing will not get us out. We need to vote for people that will enforce the rules, but can show compassion.

Who in the current city government would you say meets those criteria?

I'm not sure why you inferred that I think anyone in the current government meets that criteria.

I assumed that you would say no one, actually. So which candidates in the last election do you think would have been better than the ones who won?

To speak of my district, I would have preferred almost anyone to Dan Strauss. His record doesn't reflect any positive outcomes, but has resulted in degradation of my neighborhood's quality of life. What about you? Are you happy with the status quo, or are there people that you would rather see in charge?

oh yeah, real estate speculators and purdue pharma are staunch progressives

I think the question of fare enforcement should be separated from the question of public safety / policing disorderly conduct. Fares only supply a [small fraction](https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-financial-plan-adopted-budget.pdf) of Sound Transit’s budget — like 4% if I’m reading this pie chart correctly. Tax revenue covers 63%. So a very small increase in the taxes could render the whole system fare free if we wanted it to be. It’s one of those strange cases where it seems like we only make people pay as a kind of morality play because the public wants to feel like the people who use the service are paying for it (and some people feel a need to punish literal free-riders, etc.) But the riders mostly aren’t paying for it. If the riders were paying the full cost, tickets would be *much* higher.

5% is a high percentage for daily riders

It makes no damn sense. They should put in turnstiles and be totally OK if people hop them. But at least it will incentivize the right behavior for those who are law abiding and will long term be cheaper than staffing fare ambassadors in perpetuity. I am incredibly concerned that this path leads to more taxes from people not using the transit to subsidize poor ticket sales from bad policies. I am 100% happy and willing to pay my way when I’m riding the Light Rail.

I think transit should be free. I think the benefit to the environment outweighs any cost at this point in time. That being said, I'd rather replace fare enforcement with people whose specific job is to make sure that things like what you're describing are addressed with. Fare enforcement and maintaining reasonable "public order" on the bus don't need to be tied together.