Meeting_Body
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
OPERATIONS, SAFETY & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE COMMITTEE
JANUARY 18, 2024
Subject
SUBJECT: BUILDING ON THE SUCCESS OF PILOT INTERVENTIONS AT WESTLAKE/MACARTHUR PARK STATION
Action
ACTION: RECEIVE AND FILE
Heading
RECOMMENDATION
Title
RECEIVE AND FILE the status report on the next steps for implementing pilot intervention strategies to improve community health and safety at additional Metro stations, building on the recent improvements from Westlake/MacArthur Park Station.
Issue
ISSUE
In early 2023, Staff developed and implemented pilot intervention strategies at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Station, which is served by both B & D Lines, with the purpose of restoring safety and improving the experience for our riders, employees, and the surrounding community. A report on these interventions was provided to the Board in July 2023. A focus on safety through environmental design resulted in a decrease in crime, with a reduction in loitering, drug use, and other illicit activity. Consequently, the station is substantially cleaner and safer, resulting in customers also feeling safer than before and providing a safe environment to support placemaking activities. This report is a status update on the next steps to expand the successful elements of this program to additional Metro stations with similar challenges.
Background
BACKGROUND
In response to the worsening public health crisis that resulted in substantially deteriorated conditions at Westlake/MacArthur Park Station (WMP), Metro Operations convened a multi-departmental taskforce in January 2023 to quickly reimagine how the Westlake/MacArthur Park Station could better serve Metro riders and the community. Its focus was on improving public safety and cleanliness through pilot interventions centered around environmental design. This taskforce includes System Safety & Law Enforcement (SSLE), Countywide Planning & Development (CP&D), the Office of the Chief of Staff, Customer Experience (CX), and Program Management.
In February 2023, the Board approved Motion 30 in response to the efforts at the WMP station and directed the CEO to report back on extending successful WMP care-centered strategies to improve community safety and health to other existing and future transit stations and stops (Attachment A).
Throughout Spring 2023, Metro initiated a comprehensive intervention pilot program at WMP to deter illicit activity and restore appropriate uses of the station. The improvements included:
• New, brighter lights at platform ends, closure of secondary entrance and passageway, increased fresh air circulation and music played through station speakers were implemented to improve visibility, reduce hiding areas for illicit activity, and keep people moving through the station between train arrivals
• Revised station entry/exit plan to consolidate entrances through a single faregate array to improve fare compliance and access control in paid areas of the station (including train platforms)
• Human-centered approach that reimagines traditional policing strategies by layering Metro Ambassadors, Homeless Outreach, reduced fare initiatives, TAP Blue Shirt ambassadors, security, and law enforcement partners as part of an overall blended approach to address the larger, complex societal challenges impacting the station
At the July 2023 Board Meeting, staff provided an update on the interventions and their positive impacts, including the significant improvement to public safety and customer experience. This report shares a status update on the next steps for expanding these successful interventions to additional Metro stations.
Discussion
DISCUSSION
Organizational Change - New Station Experience Unit
Given the successful results seen at Westlake/MacArthur Park Station, staff recognizes the urgency to accelerate these efforts to restore public safety and confidence at other rail stations with similar challenges. Therefore, the CEO created a new “Station Experience” unit, which will spearhead collaboration across Metro departments to expand upon the successful elements from Westlake/MacArthur Park Station to improve public safety, cleanliness, operations, and customer experience to all Metro stations.
The Station Experience unit will play a role in all public safety, cleanliness, and customer-facing aspects related to existing and future stations, with an emphasis on collaboration with System Security & Law Enforcement, Customer Experience, and other key Metro departments. This new unit will report directly to the Chief Operations Officer and will recruit for two new Director-level positions (listed under Staffing Needs) to provide accelerated project management and administrative support capabilities. Further, the Station Evaluation Program team, which is exceptionally knowledgeable of Metro station conditions through their quarterly audits of all 140+ Metro stations and bus transit centers, will be housed under this new unit.
Recently Implemented Interventions to More B & D Line Subway Stations
Staff is expanding effective elements of the WMP strategy to other stations, including 7th Street/Metro Center and Pershing Square, both of which are near the WMP station, Skid Row, and the associated epicenters of the opioid drug crisis.
BRIGHTER LIGHTING ON ALL SUBWAY PLATFORMS
An immediate, effective, and strongly supported intervention was brighter lighting to provide improved visibility for customers and frontline personnel, and to also reduce dark, hidden areas challenged with loitering and illicit activity. Therefore, across the entire Metro B & D Line stations, Traction Power crews have proactively upgraded platform lighting to brighten passenger waiting areas.
• All 16 B & D Line station platforms have been 100% completed
• Crews are also underway to brighten the other station levels, including mezzanine/concourse and street-level entrances, at 30% completion
SECURING MAINTENANCE ELECTRICAL POWER RECEPTACLES
Further, Facilities Maintenance crews have made substantial progress on securing maintenance electrical power receptacles that have been persistently tampered with and vandalized.
• All 16 B & D Line stations have been 100% completed
UPGRADED LIGHTING FOR THREE ENTRANCES AT 7TH ST/METRO CENTER
In collaboration with the Central City Association and its members representing properties directly connected with station entrances to 7th Street/Metro Center, Metro has begun an initial set of interventions, including:
• Retrofitted nearly 100 existing lighting fixtures with brighter, LED bulbs to brighten entrances to improve safety and wayfinding
• Initial design underway to improving lighting and rightsizing the Flower Street elevator entrance with plans to implement in Spring 2024.
SAFE, SMART PUBLIC RESTROOM PILOT AT FOUR STATIONS
Metro’s Office of Strategic Innovation (OSI) received an unsolicited proposal from Throne Labs to implement four, smart public restrooms for a 6-month period at no cost to Metro. Four locations were implemented in October 2023 at Westlake/MacArthur Park B/D Line Station, Willowbrook/Rosa Parks A/C Line Station, Norwalk C Line Station, and a bus operator layover at the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink Station (served by frequent Metro bus service), with stations subject to change during the pilot period which runs through April 2024. These smart restrooms are being tested by both passengers and frontline employees for cleanliness, customer experience, and reliability. The pilot will evaluate uptime availability, durability, maintainability, safety, and customer satisfaction. They are currently in use in Washington DC serving local transit riders and bus operators.
This pilot intends to provide a safe, hygienic, cost effective, and reliable amenity for Metro riders, bus and train operators, and the community, incorporating design elements that encourage user accountability, and deter illicit activity which results in unusable conditions for others. These smart restrooms are data-driven and incorporate real time communications on cleanliness, functionality, and access control, which seeks to avoid design deficiencies from traditional restrooms and increase user accountability by requiring users to create a free account via text message or QR code, in which Metro’s latest passenger survey data reveals that 93% of transit riders use cell phones. In future use cases, authorized access with designated care-centered partners could be made possible. Repeat offenders engaged in illicit activity and causing substantial damage or downtime for passengers could receive warnings or have access revoked to preserve restroom access for others. If this pilot is successful, staff intends to issue a competitive solicitation for larger rollout of smart public restrooms.
Within the first two months of the pilot, there are very promising indicators that this amenity is improving safety, cleanliness, and the customer experience.
• Nearly 13,500 total uses have been recorded in the first two months of operation
• Over 3,700 unique users have enrolled in the free program
• Users have reported an average 4.3 out of 5-star cleanliness rating
• Restrooms had an overall uptime of more than 90%, far exceeding Metro’s pilot target of 70%
• Although each visit is allotted 10 minutes per session, Throne data shows the vast majority of people are completing their visits significantly faster
o 1 in 2 people complete their restroom visit in under 2 minutes
o 3 in 4 people complete their visit within 5 minutes
o By comparison, BART’s public restroom program enforces a 5-minute limit (compared with this pilot’s 10-minute limit)
o Time limits help deter inappropriate uses (i.e. drug or sexual activity) while maximizing availability to more people, improving safety and cleanliness
• Zero incidents of misuse that have taken any of the restrooms out of extended service
• Zero incidents of medical emergencies or calls for first responders (i.e. drug overdoses)
• Zero calls for police response (i.e. criminal activity)
• 50% reduction in public urination and defecation around each station at the pilot locations open to the public, meaning these stations are also substantially cleaner through a reduction in biohazard waste, based on Ambassador reports
New Interventions Under Consideration
In addition to the interventions already implemented, staff is exploring the potential future strategies:
LATCHING FAREGATES UPON EXIT
Metro faregates, which are in place at roughly half of all Metro Rail stations (58 out of 104 stations), are currently only latched upon entry (tap-in). However, Metro faregates also can be latched upon exit (tap-out), although this function was never activated during the original rollout, since the presumption was that customers would have already tapped their card at their station of origin. This results in diminished access control and missed opportunities to validate fares and ensure fare compliance, as customers entering from an ungated station and exiting at a gated station may never encounter a latched faregate.
Latching faregates upon exit is commonly used in transit agencies with distance-based fares, however, is also employed with a flat fare structure similar to LA Metro in the faregates at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). This technique would also reduce bottlenecks that occur from fare inspection teams manually checking fares for each passenger today. Fare inspection teams can then focus on addressing those without valid fares instead of checking all fares. This technique is technically already in place at the transfer faregates at Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station, where passengers are required to tap to exit the C Line before transferring to the A Line platform, and vice versa. Latching faregates upon exit can also provide improved ridership data on where customers are exiting, which can be used to optimize service for customers.
Staff is working to implement this as a pilot at Union Station and North Hollywood, in conjunction with the ongoing multilayered deployment strategy. Because Metro faregates must also be compatible with a separate Metrolink fare system, there are additional equipment and programming reconfigurations that must take place to ensure compatibility, particularly at Union Station where a high volume of Metro-to-Metrolink transfers occur. Staff estimates that this pilot will take approximately 90 days to implement, and therefore could begin in March 2024.
Staff will work with Customer Experience on a robust multilingual outreach campaign of customer messaging, signage, and staffing that will inform customers with advance notice of this new feature, similar to when Metro seamlessly latched entry faregates station-by-station previously in 2013. Passengers who have valid fare would NOT be double charged upon exit, but passengers who did not tap at their origin station would be charged when exiting.
STRENGTHENING FAREGATES TO IMPROVE PUBLIC SAFETY
Metro shares with many other transit agencies in the challenges associated with faregate misuse, including individuals who tailgate/piggyback behind fare paying passengers through the accessible faregate, or those who jump over the turnstiles. Recent data provided by Metro’s law enforcement partners reveal the following:
• 93% of individuals arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) do NOT have valid fare
• 87% of individuals arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) do NOT have valid fare
Therefore, strengthening the faregates could be an effective additional layer to improve overall system safety.
As such, staff are monitoring the outcomes resulting from other agencies currently upgrading their faregates to deter this behavior, including Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Preliminary reports from Washington DC indicate a 70% to 85% reduction in fare evasion at stations where they have implemented faregate improvements. At the future LAX Airport Metro Connector Station, an improved paddle gate design will be implemented to improve fare compliance while facilitating travelers with luggage, so we will monitor those results also.
RELOCATING FAREGATES AND STATION CLOSURE GATES
As part of improving access control to improve public safety and cleanliness, staff are exploring the feasibility of relocating faregates and station closure roll gates from inside the station and out to the station entrances, which would improve access control by expanding the paid area of the station and reduce loitering and vandalism during overnight periods when stations are closed. This is consistent with the station design of the recently opened Regional Connector stations in Downtown LA.
IMPROVING ELEVATOR SAFETY & RELIABILITY
Metro’s Vertical Transportation unit maintains nearly 150 elevators systemwide and typically spends over $1 million each year in broken glass repair attributed to vandalism. Furthermore, loitering and illicit activity inside station elevators can prevent and deter passengers with disabilities and parents with strollers from accessing Metro stations. Previous passenger surveys have indicated that Metro passengers, particularly women riding transit, avoid using station elevators to access trains, even if an alternative bus journey takes longer. As a result, staff is exploring new features to deter misuse of elevators.
In Portland, Oregon, TriMet is piloting the required use of tapping a valid fare card to use the elevator which is a commonplace practice in hotels and office buildings. Their preliminary findings have shown a reduction in misuse and an increase in elevator uptime.
Staff is also looking at keeping elevator doors open when not in use, facilitating fresh air circulation and reducing hidden privacy inside the elevator compartment.
ENHANCING SECURITY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES
While the blended approach of ambassadors security, and law enforcement provides substantial improvements to public safety, the number of stations and public areas remain a challenge to maximize visibility. Therefore, it is also important to layer a technology component that allows uniformed personnel to better respond to locations where they are most effective, using a data-driven approach. This can include:
• Additional CCTV cameras and intrusion detection systems for all emergency exit doors leading to ancillary areas
• Upgrading existing CCTV cameras to higher resolution and network communications for better response and insights
• Expansion of video analytics software to assist in real-time flagging of security events and to improve investigations
Staff is planning to present a separate funding request for these technology upgrades in the coming months.
Planning Underway to Expand Efforts to Light Rail Stations and Bus Transit Centers with Similar Challenges
Looking beyond the B & D Line subway stations, staff will be considering a range of criteria for future deployment of station interventions throughout the Metro service area, including ridership, public safety data, cleanliness and functionality data, homeless outreach data, frontline employee feedback and rider input, with the understanding that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire system, as each station is uniquely designed, and community needs are not always identical. A tiered list of stations is described in more detail in Attachment B.
Menu of Environmental Design Interventions
• Brighter lighting
• Rightsizing entrances, passageways, and other areas where illicit activity was taking place
• Increased fresh air ventilation (for indoor stations)
• Station music or ambient sound
• Strengthening and reorienting faregates and station roll-gates
• Improved wayfinding and other signage
• Safe, clean, and reliable public restrooms
• Elevator access control modifications
Menu of Care-Based Strategies
• LIFE pop-ups
• Department of Health Services Mobile Health Clinic
• Homeless outreach teams
• Ambassador teams
• Crisis interventionists
• Substance abuse counselors
• Homeless Connect days
• Station activation events
• Community resource fairs
As much was learned about successful interventions at WMP, Staff is also looking to test interventions at other rail stations with persistent public safety and cleanliness challenges. While WMP has had a diverse range of challenges from medical emergencies, criminal activity, and people experiencing homelessness, other stations may not experience the same issues in equal proportions. Staff is now turning to a station-by-station approach to improve public safety further, using similar strategies to Westlake/MacArthur Park Station to develop further and implement tactical design interventions and staffing adjustments for other stations.
Potential stations for initial pilot interventions include (subject to change):
• Lake Av in Pasadena (A Line)
o Persistent loitering and illicit activity around station entrances
o Tied for second lowest A Line score in appearance (2.83 out of 4.00)
• Hollywood/Highland (B Line)
o Persistent loitering and willful blocking at the station entrance
o Inappropriate activity in and around station elevators, presenting continual concerns from customers requiring elevator assistance
• Downtown Santa Monica (E Line)
o Excessive fare evasion and trespassing from emergency exit, creating safety issues along trackways with frequent train movement
o Third lowest E Line score in appearance (2.92 out of 4.00)
• Norwalk (C Line)
o Dim waiting areas at connecting bus bays
o Loitering on platform, behind I-105 Freeway pillar structures and under stairwells
Equity_Platform
EQUITY PLATFORM
The goal of this work is to provide public safety and reliability improvements to Metro riders using the B & D Lines, in which 8 in 10 transit riders are BIPOC, 8 in 10 do not own a car and therefore rely on Metro service, and 8 in 10 are below HUD’s “Very Low Income” threshold. Further, 75% of Metro B & D Line stations reside within Metro's Equity Focus Communities (EFCs), including Westlake/MacArthur Park, 7th Street/Metro Center and Pershing Square. Staff has conducted hundreds of extensive, multilingual passenger intercept surveys that are controlled for the demographics of B & D Line riders and the surrounding community, receiving overwhelmingly strong support to continue and expand these initiatives to improve their actual and perceived feelings of public safety. Staff will continue surveying transit riders throughout this process and communicate interventions made to the stations, which includes updates to the Public Safety Advisory Committee and Regional Service Councils. Further, staff has continually coordinated all work with Civil Rights & Inclusion, ensuring that proposed changes, including station redesigns, lighting upgrades, and restroom facilities, are intentionally designed with accessibility in mind.
Implementation_of_Strategic_Plan_Goals
IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC PLAN GOALS
The above recommendations support the following strategic plan goals:
Goal #2: Deliver outstanding trip experiences for all users of the transportation system. These initiatives help to move more people within the same street capacity, where currently transit users suffer service delays and reliability issues because of single occupant drivers.
Goal #3: Enhance communities and lives through mobility and access to opportunity. With faster transit service and improved reliability, residents have increased access to education and employment, with greater confidence that they will reach their destination on time.
Goal #4: Transform Los Angeles County through regional collaboration and national leadership to address the larger societal challenges that are acutely impacting the Metro system.
Next_Steps
NEXT STEPS
The new Station Experience unit will continue to build on the momentum of this program. As much of the illicit activity within the Metro system is reflective of larger societal challenges, Metro must continue to rely on key partners and support so that the agency can focus on operating a safe and reliable transit system. The Station Experience unit will develop program level solutions to evaluate individual station conditions with its partners as well as develop resource plans and capital projects to ensure program-wide benefits of these early efforts remain in place for Metro riders and frontline employees moving forward. Staff plans to provide another update in April 2024.
Attachments
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A - Board Motion 30 WLMP
Attachment B - Tiered List of Stations
Prepared_by
Prepared by: Stephen Tu, Deputy Executive Officer, Station Experience,
(213) 418-3005
Reviewed_By
Reviewed by: Conan Cheung, Chief Operations Officer, (213) 418-3034
Gina Osborn, Chief Safety Officer, (213) 922-3055
Jennifer Vides, Chief Customer Experience Officer, (213) 922-4060