At Friday’s City Club luncheon, guest speaker Fred
Hansen—general manager of TriMet—made a big announcement:
In January, he plans to ask TriMet’s board of directors to limit
Fareless Square’s hours.
In a speech focused on safety and security issues on
TriMet—largely in response to the early November beating of
Laurie Chilcote, whom a suspected gang member knocked out with a
baseball bat at a Gresham MAX stop—Hansen argued that downtown’s
Fareless Square “provides a free ride for panhandlers, who go back and
forth [on transit] between downtown and Lloyd Center, and drug dealers
and rowdy gangs of young people, homeless people, and drunks who are
using the train as a shelter and place to do their business.
“This type of undesirable behavior—that intimidates our riders
and leads to crime—is being subsidized by regular TriMet riders,”
Hansen added.
TriMet’s seven-member board, appointed by the governor, meets on
January 23. At that meeting, Hansen plans to ask the board to cut back
Fareless Square’s hours, cutting the fare-free hours downtown and at
Lloyd Center from 24 hours a day to 7 am to 7 pm. And after the board
considers limiting Fareless Square’s hours, Hansen will launch a public
process to determine Fareless Square’s ultimate fate.
“It’s a broader discussion,” says TriMet spokesperson Mary Fetsch.
“Fareless Square’s been around for 31 years. It’s an icon in the
community. But it’s also something that impacts the business
community—you have to have a conversation” before ditching the
fare-free concept altogether or making other changes.
Indeed, a pay-per-ride system gives transit operators and security
an easy way to kick off someone who’s being obnoxious and hasn’t paid.
But is TriMet jumping the gun, and limiting Fareless Square before
thoroughly discussing the issue?
Portland has examined the opposite scenario—eliminating fares
system-wide—in the past, at former Mayor Vera Katz’s behest. That
study, done in 1998, looked at three cities—Denver, Austin, and
Mercer County, New Jersey—who tried going fareless, and concluded
that safety problems increased when those transit systems were
free.
But TriMet’s evidence about its own fareless system is largely
anecdotal, and doesn’t make a clear case that limiting or eliminating
Fareless Square will make the system safer.
For starters, Fareless Square is used by a wide variety of
people—not just panhandlers, drunks, and gangs—who would be
impacted by new fares.
“We think that riders tend to use it more for shopping, dining,
personal business, and to some extent to get to hotels/lodging,” Fetsch
says. “Fareless is also likely used for work-related purposes, but
probably not at levels that are any higher than anywhere else on the
system.”
The fareless area is also used for special events, Fetsch adds, at
the Rose Quarter and Convention Center.
As for safety problems on TriMet, the high-profile Chilcote beating
in Gresham—at the 14th MAX stop beyond Fareless
Square—prompted TriMet to convene two safety summits, in Gresham
and Hillsboro. At those summits, held far from Fareless Square, TriMet
heard “customers mention rowdy youth, panhandling, and drug dealing,”
Fetsch says.
But the connection between those problems and Fareless Square is
unclear. In the Chilcote beating, the suspect, Abel Antonio
Chavez-Garcia, boarded in Rockwood, Gresham—just a few stops
before exiting the train, and miles outside of Fareless Square.
Non-violent but annoying behaviors could be tied to riders who
haven’t paid—but that’s a case for cracking down on fare evasion
(which Hansen has also pledged to do), not necessarily cutting back
Fareless Square.
“TriMet crime stats do not indicate that crimes are higher in
Fareless Square,” Fetsch says, adding that the crime data may be low
due to “the inability for officers and supervisory folks to interact
with customers by asking for proof of payment.”
Customers, however, interact with other customers whether they have
a reason to or not—and they don’t seem to be noticing a
disproportionate problem with Fareless Square. In the past 11 months,
TriMet has received 18 comments regarding the fareless area—half
complimenting it, and half suggesting it be reduced or eliminated
“based on complaints about drug dealing, homeless, and panhandling on
the train,” Fetsch says.