News and Culture

Looks like the prospects for limiting Fareless Square have ended.

Here’s what TriMet Director Fred Hansen said in a written statement today after the public pushed back during hearings this week about restricting the square’s hours: “One thing is clear: there is a lot of passion and strongly held views about Fareless Square.”

Grammatical problems aside, we can safely conclude that freeriders and drug dealers and panhandlers can breathe easy for now.

Here’s the complete release:

TriMet opts for comprehensive review of Fareless Square
rather than taking quick action on limiting hours

After evaluating more than 700 comments from the public regarding a proposal to limit the hours of Fareless Square, TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen has announced that at this time, there is no proposal being forwarded that would limit the hours of Fareless Square. Rather, it will be part of his planned comprehensive review of fareless that will be launched over the next few months. Following several high-profile incidents on the MAX system late last year, Hansen launched a comprehensive security plan that included hiring more police officers and contracted security, having a zero tolerance for those who break TriMet rules, establishing more enforcement tools for our police and security forces, adding more security cameras to MAX platforms, increasing lighting, fixing faulty Ticket Vending Machines, increasing fare inspections and limited the hours of Fareless Square.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.