I am a daily bus rider in Snohomish County and I ride Community Transit’s Swift bus quite frequently. I notice when I ride the Swift there are a lot of problem bus riders who don’t pay the fare and cause trouble on the buses by harassing other passengers who are just trying to get from point A to point B minding there own business
On the Swift you pay fares offboard before getting on the bus so it’s real easy to get on without paying, and before the covid-19 pandemic I notice they had regular fare enforcement inspections picking off the fare evaders which often are the ones causing other problems on the buses like harassing, assaulting passengers and obstructing their property. I’ve noticed since this pandemic and since buses started charging fares I haven’t seen fare enforcement at all and if there was more monitoring by transit police then there would be less incidents on these buses.
I have witnessed an incident of bad behavior and been affected by this also On Dec. 30 on the Blue Line when some guy was harassing passengers including me so I reported him to the driver and went back to where my bike to protect my property and the guy causing trouble clubbed me over the head with his bag. Luckily nothing was damaged and nobody was injured in this particular incident but it just shows that more security monitoring and fare enforcement is necessary.
Elijah Edens
Everett
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