Kevin Scott: I’ve lived here for 40 years, okay, I was kicking when MetroLink opened in 1993.
This is Kevin Scott, and he’s talking about St. Louis’ light rail system, which began operating in July of that year on 14 miles of track. At the time, Kevin was kicking it as a patrolman with the Police Department in Ballwin, Missouri, and over the next three decades, he worked his way up the ranks, finally becoming Chief of Police in 2016. And Kevin says that, for all those years, he kept hearing the same complaints about MetroLink.
Scott: Resoundingly, the conversation has always been it’s an open concept system — when are you guys going to put some type of security barrier system in place?
In other words, nothing has ever prevented anybody from entering a station and boarding a train, regardless of whether they’ve purchased a ticket or not.
But after more than 30 years of operations, floor-to-ceiling turnstiles are being installed at every MetroLink stop as part of something called the Secure Platform Plan. Bi-State Development — the umbrella organization covering all things public transit in greater St. Louis — says the SPP will improve system security and help riders feel safer on MetroLink. But some riders aren’t quite sure that these changes will have the desired effect.
I’m Janek Schaller, and this is In Transit: a Midstory series bringing you dispatches from the cusp of a new era in Midwest public transportation. Today’s episode: Minding the Gap on the St. Louis MetroLink.
While COVID had a negative impact on transit systems throughout the Midwest, St. Louis experienced the most significant drop-off by far. Ridership plummeted by 42.7% from 2020 to 2021, compared to an average decrease of 23.5% across the region. In the years since, Metro traffic has recovered a bit, rising to over 700,000 passengers in October of 2024. Still, this mark is over 100,000 passengers lower than pre-pandemic levels.
Enter the Secure Platform Plan, a $52 million initiative designed to grow ridership on the MetroLink by developing a more secure transit environment. The plan aims to upgrade security infrastructure at all 38 MetroLink stations by January of 2026, equipping each one with floor-to-ceiling turnstiles and cameras with facial recognition capabilities. These cameras will be monitored in real time by Metro Transit employees at an off-site location.
These changes were designed to reduce the rate of criminal activity on MetroLink property and reassure transit riders of the system’s safety.
Taulby Roach: You know, relatively speaking, according to the data, transit is safe.
That’s Taulby Roach, the President and CEO of Bi-State.
Roach: In looking at that fundamental…customer experience…piece, what we were trying to do is, not only if, if we’re trying to attract new people, not only do they feel safe, but even the next level, how do they feel comfortable, right? And some of those certainly are perception issues, right?
It’s certainly true that mass transit has an image issue in the United States. Two out of every five adults in this country think public transportation is unsafe, despite the fact that driving a car is statistically ten times more dangerous. So how does a transit organization show the riding public that their system can be trusted?
Bi-State decided to ask for feedback from the experts. In March of 2018, Metro Transit commissioned a comprehensive evaluation of their system’s safety and security measures from the consulting firm WSP-USA. The resulting report listed 99 recommendations for service improvements, ranging from updates to staff training programs to changes to the security presence on Metro property.
The report also highlighted the potential for more stringent fare enforcement and the expanded use of closed-circuit camera equipment throughout the system, as well as something called crime prevention through environmental design, or CPTED. The idea is that, with a little forethought, the physical footprint of MetroLink stations and their surroundings can actively assist in reducing the amount of bad behavior on the system. These fixes can be as simple as maintaining proper lighting, increasing signage on transit property and making sure that system repairs are completed in a timely manner.
The concept of CPTED first came onto the scene in the 1970s,, and by the end of the decade, everyone from architects and urban planners to elected officials and police chiefs were putting it into practice in communities across the U.S.
And there were some promising early results. One team of researchers concluded that “changes in the physical environment can reduce crime and the fear of crime”; another declared that CPTED tactics improved the overall quality of life and promoted “social cohesion” in a neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. These findings gave rise to the so-called Broken Windows theory of public safety, which posits that criminal behavior tends to be more prevalent in disorderly communities, and that an active neighborhood police presence can help foster more lawful environments.
But the theory is controversial. Critics have called attention to how vague the term “disorder” is, and say that this ambiguity allows for racial bias to dictate how a community is policed.
Kevin — now the General Manager for Public Safety at Bi-State — mentioned Broken Windows during our conversation, but he said the theory was just one component of a much broader philosophy behind the SPP.
Scott: We are building a security program based on community type security tactics, or security or community policing tactics. It is a customer-based approach.
Customer-based. Both Kevin and Taulby emphasized that the Secure Platform Plan was a direct response to input from MetroLink riders, who consistently rank safety as their biggest concern. Metro Transit held five open houses in May and June of 2023 for public comment on the proposal, and Kevin said feedback has been overwhelmingly positive throughout the project.
Scott: I would venture to say, within our region, the vast majority of the population, even those that have never been on the system, but have heard from other people that have that this is a phenomenal idea, and as we begin to build the Secure Platform Plan…the response has been, “Well, it’s about time.”
But not all MetroLink riders are onboard with the SPP.
Malik Lendell: Everyone who I’ve talked to on the Metrolink trains, they have reported that they knew nothing of the plan, and they tend to not support that plan.
This is Malik Lendell. He lives in the Benton Park West neighborhood of St. Louis. Malik is very passionate about public transit — in fact, he doesn’t even own a car, and commutes into work each day by bus or by bike.
Malik is a vocal critic of the SPP — his recent Op-Ed, entitled “By Spending Big to Lower MetroLink Access, Bi-State Shows Its Priorities,” leaves little doubt as to his impression of the plan. While Malik agrees that safety improvements can certainly be made to the MetroLink, he thinks the plan will do very little to benefit regular public transit users. Instead, he says the new turnstiles and fences will make it more difficult for riders to feel comfortable using the system.
Lendell: People should have that right to be able to get around, to be able to access health care and access food and access housing and more, and we need to stop viewing public transit as a business, and that is how bi State Development is currently viewing public transit.
Malik says that Bi-State doesn’t have its priorities straight. But to Taulby, it’s crucial that Metro has a sustainable stream of revenue to rely upon. And in a region where funding for public transit is hard to come by, robust fare collection can go a long way in ensuring a system continues to operate.
Roach: Revenue is key…When we get to light this whole thing up, SPP will be complete, new fare system in, and that gets me there where then we can drive revenue. Right now you can drive revenue when you have a product that people have belief in its value, right?… Those dollars are important to them. They’ll spend it on a system that they believe in.
Malik thinks that transit should cater to the needs of the people that use it — not the people that don’t.
Lendell: All the secure platforms plan is, is just theater. It’s just theater. It’s just to show people that don’t actually ride public transit and will never do so, that they’re listening to them rather than they’re listening to actual riders.
Bi-State spent heavily on wholesale changes to MetroLink that they believe will make the system safer for all of St. Louis. It’s unclear whether MetroLink riders will do the same.
For Midstory, I’m Janek Schaller.
