OP-ED: Turnstiles For The Blue Line Are a Half-Solution

Photo courtesy of la.streetsblog.org

By Matt Dupree

Long Beach has pushed for turnstiles at the entrances of all of the Metro Blue Line stations in the city, and at first glance it seems like a great idea. As a Blue Line commuter myself, I love any idea that increases security and usability for the Metro in Long Beach. But ultimately, I think this is the wrong choice long-term.

Okay, let’s talk about it.

The turnstiles are in use in most of the downtown L.A. stops for the Metro lines. My personal exit stop is Civic Center, which has a pair of turnstiles covering each entrance. For a long time however, none of these turnstiles were locked. Only through a trudging roll-out over the summer did the turnstiles finally become actual turnstiles, and that roll-out took months and required a large security and volunteer presence to show people how to obey the new regulations. In fact, any time anything changes on the Metro it has to be a slow and painful and involved process. The switch to TAP Cards from paper tickets continues to vex infrequent Metro-users, and not a month goes by that I’m not at some point tasked to help a stranger figure it all out. 

From what I can tell, the turnstiles work Downtown. There are certainly still fare-jumpers, of course. But now they actually have to make a committed physical action, to actually ‘jump’ their fare. Civic Center’s jumper-modus is to approach the turnstile closest the emergency exit gate and then quickly unlatch the gate from the other side and walk through. The emergency exit gate isn’t alarmed, though its signage says otherwise. But what’s encouraging about even these sneaky riders is the psychology that goes on during the fare-jump. The jumper always carries some expression of either frustration or just out-and-out guilt. This kind of active fare-jump precludes the usual, sheepish excuses that guilty parties offer when confronted. There’s no “sorry officer, I had no idea” any more. 

Of course, there are other problems to implementing turnstiles here in Long Beach, and one of which is space. Most of Long Beach’s Blue Line stations are small platforms designed to meet the absolute minimum amount of space required for wheelchair ramps, fare-purchasing kiosks, and of course, the train. Most of the stations simply wouldn’t be able to accomodate turnstiles (especially wheelchair-accessible turnstiles) in their current configurations, and would likely require substantial renovations before they could be implemented.

And since all of Long Beach’s platforms are only about four feet off the ground, even locked turnstiles only close off a small percentage of the accessible perimeter for a station. Real security for these platforms would require either a below-ground set-up (which isn’t possible in Long Beach) or a raised platform (which would require even more incredibly unlikely renovation work).