Los Angeles County Metro could make its transit ambassadors a permanent fixture and bring the team in-house after surveys show that riders believe that the pilot program led to a safer, more enjoyable riding experience.
Metro’s 300 ambassadors, who wear highlighter-green polo shirts, are tasked with helping riders navigate the Metro system. They also help keep the system clean and working smoothly by reporting things like dirty trains and broken escalators.
But Metro staff told the agency’s Operations, Safety and Customer Experience Committee Thursday that they have also added a layer of perceived safety even though the ambassadors are not armed and do not have the same authority as the agency’s security and law enforcement teams.
Between October 2022 and September this year, the team was credited with saving 72 lives, according to Metro officials, with 52 of those being attributed to the administration of Narcan to people who have overdosed on opioids, something that has become a problem for Metro this year. Twenty other people were saved through CPR or suicide prevention, according to the report.
Metro staff pointed to a survey that showed most riders agreed to some extent that they’d like to see more ambassadors on the agency’s trains and buses and that a majority of riders agreed that they felt safer when they saw an ambassador.
There was some apprehension about the cost of making the program a permanent part of Metro instead of delegating it to a third-party provider.
“This is a big very expensive program that we’re making permanent after a trial period,” said Director Paul Krekorian. “We have to kind of know that all these possibilities have been assessed.”
If it becomes permanent, Metro staff told the committee that the program should stay under its current $20 million annual budget. The full board is scheduled to meet Oct. 26 at 10 a.m. to consider the idea.
There were a host of potential improvements to the program that staff said they’d look to incorporate, including spreading the ambassadors out more, having them available at night and giving more clarity to riders about what help they’re able to provide.
The transit ambassadors and Metro’s security guards are part of the agency’s effort to reimagine how its public safety network is constructed after repeated calls from riders to increase the amount of unarmed Metro employees and decrease the number of police.
Metro is also looking at the potential of ending its contracts with the three agencies (Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Long Beach Police Department) that currently provide law enforcement services on its buses and trains in favor of creating its own police force.
The agency began looking at what that could cost after an internal report showed that the agency can’t track how officers were being deployed across the system. In some cases, it couldn’t even verify if the officers are actually boarding trains or buses to provide the services it has paid over $900 million for since 2017.
The board of directors is expected to get a report back in January about the feasibility of creating its own police force. Metro staff have estimated that it could save the agency nearly $40 million annually.