Edmonton using $5M provincial grant to address transit safety concerns
Funding includes upgrades to over 700 doors and windows and close to 25 new security cameras
The City of Edmonton is using $5 million in provincial funding to make system-wide improvements as calls continue for targeted measures to address safety and cleanliness on the city's transit system.
Funding is going toward more frequent cleaning, upgrades to more than 700 doors and windows to prevent property damage and close to 25 new security cameras.
The Alberta Transit System Cleanup Grant is a one-time provincial sum of funding, announced in April, to address violence on transit systems in Edmonton and Calgary.
Part of the grant includes 100 more police officers, 50 each in Edmonton and Calgary.
Two vacant cafés are also being renovated into workspaces for city and transit peace officers (TPOs) to work with Edmonton Police Service and transit community safety teams.
One new location will be at a former café on the south end of Churchill Square.
Another site will open inside the Central LRT Station in 2024. This location will serve as a partnership between the City of Edmonton and Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society that pairs transit peace officers and outreach workers.
"Increasing that visibility of the officers and the staff and everyone else goes a long way in restoring some of the disorder that we see on transit," Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said at a news conference at Churchill Square Thursday.
There are currently three transit community safety teams, each consisting of seven police officers who work within LRT stations and other transit hubs.
"Proactively, we always focus on places where our data guides us," said Duane Hunter, director of transit safety with the city, when asked how it will be decided to plan patrol routes.
Edmonton Police Service Insp. Angela Kemp said safety teams are deployed throughout the transit system, including areas adjacent to transit routes.
"Our teams are gonna be working proactively with the TPOs, as well as making sure that all the projects and the community stakeholders are informed of what we're doing, how we're going to be doing it, and essentially creating those safer public spaces that we're looking for," Kemp said.
Reaching out to vulnerable communities
Robbie Kaboni, supervisor and community transit outreach worker with Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, said having an established transit location was essential to serve better and connect vulnerable community members to resources.
"Identification, housing is a big one, but they need ID to get into housing and ... supports through Alberta Works," Kaboni said.
"So just kind of connecting them with the little things first, and then getting them out there to connect with Alberta Works and housing programs."
Kaboni said the hope is that once community members are connected with support, they won't have to rely on transit hubs and vehicles as make-shift accommodations.
Transit worker concerns
Steve Bradshaw, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 569, reinforced long-standing calls for investments into housing and health care to address the root causes of social disorder.
"We need to see transit, declared and enforced as a zero-tolerance zone," said Bradshaw about the role of law enforcement when it comes to violent individuals.
The work being done to doors and windows has been another long-requested action, according to Bradshaw.
"The way our security door system on the transit system is right now, they're not secure at all."
In January, a union representing 35,000 transit workers in Canada called for a national task force involving all levels of government to tackle violence against workers and riders on public transit systems across the country.
The Amalgamated Transit Union Canada estimates some 3,000 reported transit operator assaults happen each year nationally.
"Transit workers are desperate to see improvements to the disorder problems on the system," Bradshaw said.
"We need that to stop. It can't be the norm anymore."
Watch: Edmonton invests in transit safety
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With files from Travis McEwan