When Molly Jamison rides the light rail Green Line to get to her job at Goodwill in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood, she says she takes “extra safety precautions.”
When asked if she feels safe riding the light rail, she said she does only because: “I carry a pocket knife with me whenever I take the light rail,” Jamison said. “If I didn’t have my knife, I wouldn’t feel safe; I’ve seen some scary things on the light rail.”
The scariest incident she witnessed was a stabbing. “Nobody did anything,” Jamison recalled. “I stayed in my seat and kept my head down because I was scared.”
A more common occurrence, Jamison said, is seeing people abusing drugs and alcohol, which makes her feel “uneasy.”
Jamison said if she had a car, she would “never take the light rail again.”
Crime on Metro Transit trains and buses reached its peak in the late spring/early summer of 2022, fluctuating until winter of 2023, when the numbers surpassed the 2022 peak.
As of this past month, the overall total of Group A violent/nonviolent crime on the Metro Transit system, ranging from simple assault to drug violations to robbery, including at light rail and bus stops was 961 for 2023. In the first four months of 2022, the overall total was at 595.
Similarly sized metro areas, like Portland and Denver have seen decreasing crime on their light rail and bus systems, with the exception of narcotics use.
This raises an important question on Twin Cities transit riders’ minds: What is going on with the Twin Cities Metro Transit system?
One answer to this could be how low ridership numbers have been. Since the pandemic, Twin Cities light rail trains and buses have struggled to pull people back in.
In 2019, Twin Cities ridership was at 77,927,642 people. In 2022, ridership was roughly half that — 38,794,249 people — according to Metro Transit.
Yingling Fan, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in urban and regional planning, said there is a connection between crime on transportation systems and ridership: The more riders there are, the safer people will feel.
“There is no silver bullet solution; it has to be multidimensional,” Fan said. “[Metro Transit] needs to think about how to attract riders back, need to solve their workforce issue, address their shortage of bus drivers, and need to have both police and non-police oversight to make people feel safe.”
She added the short-term solution to increasing ridership is focusing on safety and security while riding Metro transportation while a potential longer term solution is focusing on expanding on the services Metro Transit offers.
In a conversation with a reporter at the West Bank light rail station, Jack, who wouldn’t give his last name for fear of his safety, recalled being assaulted and robbed by two men a couple of months ago at the Franklin Avenue light rail station. The men took his wallet, his watch, and his shoes, he said.
Since the assault, Jack has been hesitant to ride light rail.
“I’m always looking over my shoulders,” Jack said. “I’m not sure who attacked me, and I’m always scared they’ll come back to finish me off.”
Another larger issue facing Metro Transit is drug violations. Metro Transit reported 74 drug violations in March 2023, the highest number recorded since September 2020.
The chart below shows the trends for four examples of crime: drug violations, vandalism, simple assault and robbery:
Daylon Prochaska, the transit justice organizer for MN 350, said the group is advocating for a transit ambassador program that would connect people with resources for housing, health care, and/or mental health services in attempts to alleviate some of the social issues occurring on the Metro Transit system. This program would have an emphasis on having social systems on the light rail and buses instead of increased policing, Prochaska said.
He said many Metro Transit riders have vocalized problems with smoking, people in crisis, and homelessness.
“These are symptoms of a greater problem,” Prochaska said. “Any type of real solution for our transit system has to come from real solutions for these people.”
He added that the Metro Transit system has become a place for the unhoused population and people in crisis in the Twin Cities to seek shelter, because many homeless shelters around the Cities are inaccessible to them and many encampments have recently been cleared.
“Simple kindnesses” towards those who take refuge on trains and buses goes a long way, Prochaksa said. Along with this, he encourages people to speak out to their legislators and Metro Transit officials to enact a greater change.
“We all have something to contribute in terms of fighting the struggle over how we understand and carry out our transportation,” Prochaska said.
For transit riders like Jack, the crime rates “could not go down fast enough.”
“I shouldn’t have to live in fear when I take public transportation; I wish it wasn’t like this,” he said.
Madison Roth is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment with MinnPost in spring 2023.
One of the challenges is that those services are voluntary. Even with outreach workers, many have not accepted the presenting options of shelters, treatment. Before putting more money into outreach, I would like to see some evidence based practices coupled with having a better set up of turnstiles. Preaching to people to be accepting of annoying or what some perceive as behaviors that are uncomfortable/bordering on troubling as they are unsure of what is going to happen next has only gone so far.
Just because these programs are voluntary doesn’t make them ineffective. In fact, I’d argue that forcing people into programs would be even less effective than voluntary programs. Also, how do you know these programs aren’t evidence-based? Considering many have been around for a while, I’d assume there are plenty of data and studies out there to determine what is and isn’t effective (ex. voluntary vs. involuntary treatment…).
Of course riders are staying away from the transit system, it is dangerous!! I thought adding “transit helpers” and getting rid of police was going to help. I’m still waiting for reducing police having helped when dealing with crime. The good news is we will have plenty of opportunities to see if reducing police presence ever works with the Lefties running Twin Cities. Sadly for residents, all of these liberal experiments in getting rid of police hurt the folks living in fear…..
The fact that Republican-run states have significantly higher levels of violent crime is the most straightforward way to show that conservatives have zero credibility when discussing reducing crime. Add to it the fact they think that simply locking up more people is the answer for a country that already locks up more people than anyone else. All while the person who leads their political party is a rapist, and their saint Ronny Reagan sold cocaine by the ton to buy guns so his foreign paramilitaries could butcher civilians. All while having the audacity to blame black people for the drugs he sold so he could lock them up at will. That isn’t even mentioning the fact that Bush purposefully lied to start a war and kill hundreds of thousands of brown people.
Those are the people conservatives elect because they represent the qualities conservatives admire. Empathy is the only crime conservatives feel is unforgivable.
Remind me what this has to do with transit safety ? Just like the article, it doesn’t address the immediate need to address transit safety so that people will use it.
It shows that conservatives have zero credibility on the issue, and that their policies have been verified to make crime worse rather than better. Part of getting to a good solution is pointing out where the bad ones are coming from.
I don’t see this as a Democrat or a Republican problem. The problem is we are spending billions on transit systems that people are unwilling to use because they feel unsafe.
The solution isn’t to try and fix all of society’s woes including homelessness, mental health or addiction. Nor is a political rant a solution. The obvious and immediate solution is increased security and law enforcement. If we can’t get to that then stop spending money on transit systems that no one will use.
All of the solutions are political as that is the system that will determine what actions are taken. Conservatives have zero credibility on crime because it has been shown that across the country over decades, their policies have resulted in higher levels of violent crime. Enforcement first policies always fail and implementing them as the primary solution will make the problem worse in the long run.
But crime is rampant on the light rail and your solution is??????
A starting point would be to provide housing and basic necessities, including mental health care, to everyone. Poverty creates crime; it always has. So as long as the bottom 40% hold less than 1% of our country’s wealth while the top 5% have 75% of it any other solution is just a distraction.
This isn’t true. I avoid using Metro trains, but Metro buses are just fine
https://spokesman-recorder.com/2023/02/15/metro-transit-continues-hiring-despite-driver-assault-concerns/
“at least 10 drivers have been hospitalized for fentanyl exposure.” Wow.
First, I wanted to acknowledge that Yingling Fan is an AWESOME professor and it brought a smile to my face to see her name pop up in this article. Second, even as a card-carrying Lefty, I openly acknowledge that the transit system, though more particularly the trains, have gotten out of control. I think there are a lot of dynamics at play, including a historical lack of investment into poverty prevention and a lack of law enforcement on the trains, but I also think that each of the problems we see have their own internal dynamics that require a lot of nuance in how we deal with them. Resolving drug addiction is not the same as resolving homelessness, for example. Even though there is overlap, there are different measures that need to be put in place to prevent their occurrence, as well as preventing these social issues from affecting people’s experience on our public transit systems. I feel like I say this a lot, but this is the kind of issue that will take time and investment to resolve. All I would ask for from my fellow Minnesotan’s is for patience with the process and empathy for those struggling with things like poverty, addiction, and homelessness. And yes, I admit that we need a greater law enforcement presence on the trains because we can’t allow other people to feel threatened by the prospect of taking public transportation.
Tyler, are you recommending empathy for criminals also?
In some cases, yes. People aren’t born criminals.
Of course people are not born criminals, everyone knows that! Becoming a criminal takes a person to make a decision to violate a law or worse yet violate another person. It is a personal choice to become a criminal. You should be held accountable for decisions, both bad and good. Which criminals are you asking empathy towards?
Nonviolent criminals. People aren’t doing drugs or sleeping on the train because their life is going great. They may technically be criminals, but punishing them doesn’t really seem like it would do a lot of good. Also, a lot of people aren’t in that situation truly “by choice” as you put it, but by circumstance. What if someone became a drug addict because their doctor overprescribed painkillers? What if someone lost their job because their company moved work overseas and they suddenly weren’t able to pay their rent and became homeless? I choose to feel empathy first because I don’t know their life and I would rather see them helped than punished.
Tyler, so every body who had a bad break in their life turns to drugs, crime and homelessness?? That is just not true. It still is a choice.
Joe wants everyone to believe that the world actually reflects his simplistic view. But since the most fundamental and verifiable driver of crime across human history is poverty. Something that is going to manifest in a society where the least wealthy 40% of the population hold less than 1% of the wealth. His narrative would have you ignore that and instead simply believe that communities that have higher rates of crime are made up of people who are inherently flawed. The irony is that since red states have higher violent crime and are poorer it feels more like a self-own.
This is what happens when you quite enforcing fares and other laws and turn our transit system into homeless shelters. Nothing some serious law enforcement can’t solve.
“This program would have an emphasis on having social systems on the light rail and buses instead of increased policing, Prochaska said. ”
Wait, wait, don’t mug this guy. Here’s a voucher for dinner…
I agree we have lot of societal problems in need of solving and the solutions are not free. It’s the either / or side of things that I disagree with: Fix the societal root causes and in the meantime have a cop at every station and cameras on every car: break the rules and you are detained at the next stop.
Arrest ’em and then give them the voucher for dinner…
No turnstiles is the primary driver of all this. Too costly, they said. How much is all this crime costing us? My guess is less than turnstiles would have.
Turnstiles in New York don’t even stop fare evasion on the NYC subway much less other, violent incidents on trains there. Installing turnstiles at our outdoor stations would be a pointless expense (fare evaders can simply go around by crossing the tracks) and would create safety issues for other Metro passengers when their queue spills into the crosswalks across the road at peak hours
I think part of the solution is to put gates at all the stops requiring riders to buy a ticket before getting on the platforms would make a dent in the crime rate
A gating pay-before-entry system would help.
And, to remind folks once again that our planners unfortunately don’t know the difference between LRT and streetcars, the latter offers better policing because the motorman can oversee the entire equipage.
Crime on the transit system has to be addressed with law enforcement. The writer advocates for various longer-term solutions that may reduce crime in the future, but won’t protect riders in the present. Riders need protection.
We have a separate police force for the transit system mainly because transit crosses jurisdictions, much like the highway system, for which we have the state patrol. We don’t view crime on the highways as a “highway problem” and we don’t include the cost of the state patrol in our highway budget.
Our highway system is a vital asset the the whole state that requires adequate patrolling. Similarly our transit system is a vital asset to the entire metro area and demands adequate policing, which it is not getting.
Crime on the transit system is primarily a crime problem, not a transit problem. We need to address it as such.
It’s too bad that the people who can’t afford a car or can’t work from home are stuck taking the vomit comet.
I live in downtown Minneapolis and work in the Lowertown area in downtown Saint Paul. I have two options: 1) the 94E or 2) the Green Line. The Green Line is a mess.
I don’t pretend to have a solution to the metro’s homeless crisis, so I’m not going to comment on the homeless folks who use the trains.
Most of the disruptions/unsafe behavior I see on the Green Line appear to be related to drugs/drug deals. One of my biggest questions is this: when you can actually get a transit cop to ride the full length of the Green Line, why are they mostly hanging out in one train car? Maybe there’s not enough transit officers to place one in every car, but there are enough platform stops along the way, the officer on the train could quickly exit one car and enter another. This problem is not new; this was common before the pandemic/reduction in ridership. Transit officers would ride a short distance and exit the train altogether. For transit officers the light rail should be seen as an opportunity to engage with passengers.
Clearly there are some dire issues with Metro Transit but I just wanted to throw in one positive note, the A-line from Roseville to Allianz Field has been great.
John Evans recognized one part of the problem- we fixed the 394 carpool thieves (riding with dummies) with more highway patrol and more squad cars for them- done deal. Honor system did not work.
I think we have to admit the honor system doesn’t work and look at St Louis where they are now adding gates. Just the cost of delays alone is horrific- I get them daily for medical and police. It appears that most of the problem is from people who don’t pay their fare. Author did not even mention turnstiles or free ride issue- that is a core issue.
No matter what, to fix the light rail will take a massive initiative as the “free lunch rides” are hard to reverse and the mobile homeless shelter has been in place for years. Neither current policy has not helped these people nor our Twin Cities. A line someone mentioned is safer due to driver in the same space as you are. I don’t know how many actually pay to ride the A-line. I do feel safer on the A-line.
Honor system is not working in retail either as “customers” walk out the door with carts full of unpaid merchandise. We need to rethink this Honor System.
Those of us with a functioning brain said this was going to happen when the light rail was being proposed and planned. Some of us have lived on the east coast and know about mass transit systems in cities and what has to be done to make them work. But nooooooo. The democrats in charge knew better and ignored all the advice. Now here we are, too late to do anything about it and hoping those in charge are at least not dumb enough to replicate this nightmare by extending the “service” even more. And now pot smoking is legal so there’s no cause to provide these people with “treatment.”
Fortunately, most people don’t need or want mass transit and will continue to avoid it.
In the meantime we are raising taxes and building/planning more light rail.
“Fortunately, most people don’t need or want mass transit and will continue to avoid it.”
“Although Metro Transit is one of the smallest transit systems for a large metropolitan area in the United States, it has previously been ranked as one of the best. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 38,794,700, or about 124,600 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2022.”
I guess we should try and make it work…
People seem to forget Governor Ventura is the reason the light rail ever got built. it wasn’t a DFL project.
“I want to ride a train by the year 2002” – Jesse “The Body” Ventura, 38th Governor of Minnesota
That was after Republicans and outstate Democrats had stalled it for 25 years.
First this seems to me to be a maintenance issue. Just like greasing wheel bearings or fixing tracks safety on these trains is another issue of day to day maintenance and as such should be properly funded. After all we invested a lot of money in these trains, properly maintaining them protects that investment. As to what that budget is spent on is the big question. Obviously we are not the first city to have issues like this, so lets look to others and see what’s worked for them. Mike makes a comment about the transit officers and if I am reading his comment clearly he alludes to the fact that these officers aren’t interacting with passengers or distributing themselves effectively while riding the trains. Could this be a training thing, maybe not every person in law enforcement it cut out for this kind of duty? Finding the right persons for the job could be key. Again could we look to other systems and their successes to see what might work here. Other commenters are talking about turnstiles, that seems to me something that could be explored. Having only ticketed passengers on the platforms seems to me to be a decent idea, but can it be practically done. Lastly there are those asking that the homeless folks be treated with empathy and compassion. Do we really need to a reminder to do that? Yes we have a problem, but not one that can’t be fixed.
What I don’t understand about this, and no one ever seems to ask (including this Minnpost reporter), is where are all the Metro Transit cops? They have their own dedicated police force so where are they and what are they doing? I know they’re down in numbers like every other force in the county but there’s what? 29 trains and 70 cops, and all those trains aren’t running 24-7 so what’s the deal? Even if you don’t have enough cops to ride every train all the time, you’ve got radios right? You could have security monitors on the trains and stations that could radio in for support when they need it, and if cops could rove around in the meantime they should be able to respond in a matter of minutes. How do you pay for it? Well, just spit balling here but you could use all that money your currently NOT spending on the cops you don’t have eh? They have something like 70 salaries sitting around collecting dust right? AND since this is a metro county responsibility can’t they get a few sheriffs to help out? Since this is all happening in MPLS or St. Paul can’t they coordinate with the city cops? Is it just me or is there a boat load of common sense being left on the table here?
I commented on that above … transit officers rarely ever ride the full length of the green line, and if they do they typically stay in one car. There are enough stops between the two downtowns … exit the first car 1/3 of the way through, get on the next one, then repeat the process. Even though they’re down in numbers … a transit cop riding in one car the whole trip isn’t going to know what’s going on in the other cars. This problem predates the pandemic … Ideally when the light rail was constructed, the platforms would have required turn styles to enter AFTER fare has been paid. Open platform construction was always going to be a problem.
Nobody asks about the cops anymore because at this point it is taken for granted cops are not going to do their jobs. However, in this case they probably are doing their job which doesn’t include actually going on the trains, buses or even the stations. They just sit in squad cars like any other cop. Sheriff Hutch was a sergeant in Metro Transit Police which gives an idea of the caliber of their personnel.
We have a huge investment in our public transit system. The consensus seems to be that crime on the system is keeping a lot of people from using it. So by failing to police it properly we are letting this enormous asset go to waste.
Not to forget the 300 plus buses they also must police
I was just in London. Again. A city many times the size of Minneapolis. We rode the “Tube” at all hours and NEVER felt unsafe (no cops anywhere), saw any drug deals, people using the cars as bathrooms, etc.
The Brits must just be better people than Minnesotans…
The British Transport Police has over 5,000 officers. That’s why you felt safe.
Dude, the Brits have hundreds of miles of track, and hundreds of trains. You can’t compare the London Tube system to the the metro LR. Of course they have thousands of (unarmed by the way) cops.
“The Brits must just be better people than Minnesotans…”
Perhaps you’re referring to their state run healthcare. Getting people with mental illness proper care probably keeps them off the street. Similarly, in the UK, going on the dole can prevent homelessness. In this country we have chosen not to offer those benefits, and thus have different problems to solve. In other words, lower taxes aren’t always a better deal.
The author made a distinction between healthcare and mental health care. I beg to differ. They are in the same category, and when people begin to accept this, we will have fewer problems and high achievements in quality of life.
I started taking public transportating fifty-four years ago when people were more well behaved and when a driver of a bus didn’t think twice about taking an abusive person by the scruff of their shirt and the back of their pants and summarily ushering the malcontent passenger off the bus with a fond farewell.
These days, I see Minneapolis Police Deparmtent Precint 3 crime reports on Facebook and see how bad the drug and violence problem is at the Lake Street Station at Hiawatha. I live near the Cedar Riverside Station and see people smoking controlled substances and fighting with one another. Hence, I am no longer a rider. I am content to remain in my home-office and live a contemplative and monastic life, working with children in Africa over the Internet who desire educations and who thrive on love and guidance from a man eight thousand miles from them.
It will be interesting to see what kind of fights occur at transit stations now that marijuanna has become a legal recreational intoxicant. I, for one, don’t want second hand smoke of any kind affecting me, and weed creates neurological abnormalities which those of us who do not use pot can see in people who have been using it for some time. Sarcasm and paranoia follow with this drug use. Stupor and poor neuromotor control also follow. How many people will we see fall onto the tracks?
I had the opportunity to ride on public transit in central and northern Europe, and was fascinated by how well regulated it was. The officers who walked through the trains were polite, but they meant business; and order was required. I am a language coach for a Chinese engineer in Shenzhen, southeastern China. We talk about riding the subways in his nation. People are self-controllled and polite. People who are using drugs such as the kind that the hapless DFL just permitted end up in jail and with fines. In Singapore, a ten year jail term and up to a $20,000 fine is possible. For all their talk about how police officers go after Blacks who smoke, I, as a White man from a family who has been close to two metropolitan commissioners and twe Democratic U.S. vice presidents, suggest that they go after more people and scare the living shit out of users and sellers of marijuanna, and not let up on the enforcement of pro health and safety laws.
I was a Democrat for over forty-years. I served as an officer in a senate district. However, I’ve concluded that the Democratic Party, as it has morphed into the current day, is ingorant, arrogant and sloppy in the way it conducts business. I look forward to the day when the Progressives leave the Democratic Party and stand on their own. They are farther to the left and lacking maturity than the Democrats of the variety who were in place when I began in 1979. We need fewer intoxicants, not more, and the presence of this and the poor modeling of parents in many neighborhoods is going to be a contributing factor to even worse experiences on public transit.
The other thing that baffles me about this Barry, is the impression that Metro Transit has been sitting on this problem for years, as if it’s Just NOW become an issue? You’re not the only one to have stepped off the trains and busses and people have been reporting these issues since the end of the pandemic lock downs almost three years ago. Yet just NOW they seem to “considering” solutions? I’m not saying this is easy… but what have they BEEN doing all these years?
Well the Met Council is run by a bunch of political appointees. You reap what you sew. Nobody is responsible or accountable, including city and state governments. It is somebody else’s problem.
Actually, you sew what you rip; but you reap what you sow.
Sorry; I fat-finger a fair number of posts too; but in this case the pun was too good to pass up.