Ross: Ex-football players would convince people to pay for transit

Yesterday, the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Zachary Meredith, who in 2018 boarded a Community Transit bus without paying his fare.

As luck would have it, county sheriff’s deputies were enforcing the fare that day – and they found three people who hadn’t paid – including Meredith, who had no fare receipt, and no ORCA card.

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It might have ended there, but since he had no ID, an officer ran his prints and found – he had two outstanding warrants, and he was arrested.

So he sued, saying he was unlawfully detained.

And sure enough, he won.

But is this a victory for the shoplifters? Or, in this case, the transit lifters?

Well, let’s see what the majority of the State Supreme Court actually said.

“We hold only that this particular method of fare enforcement, as used in this case … lacked lawful justification,” the ruling said.

And the opinion also states, “Transit operators must be able to charge and collect fares from passengers. Therefore … passengers using mass transit must pay their fares, or they may be ejected.”

So even the justices who gave Meredith a pass – this time–  agreed that he deserved to be kicked off the bus, just not by an intimidating police officer.

In fact, the court actually complimented other transit systems like King County Metro and Sound Transit for their unarmed fare “ambassadors.” The court says that if an unarmed fare ambassador discovers a transit lifter, they could call an armed officer to kick the guy off and issue a citation.

And I think that’s exactly what needs to start happening.

Sound Transit is supposed to get 40% of its operating budget through fare collection, but the closest it got was 32% in 2019. By 2021 the figure was down to 5%.

You can’t run transit on the honor system. That only works in Public Radio and Scrabble.

The fare ambassadors need to be everywhere. The court says they can’t intimidate passengers, but if it so happens that Sound Transit can recruit a bunch of former defensive linemen as ambassadors – or linewomen – I see nothing in this court decision to prohibit that.

So that either you pay your fare, or give your ID and arrange payment, or–  a beefy transit ambassador assists your prompt departure and introduces you to the nearest armed police officer.

Politely. This is the Northwest, after all.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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