In the push to eliminate the temporary Fare Free system that CTtransit and other public transit bus service providers had adopted during the Covid pandemic, some claimed that there had been an increase in altercations on buses when riders did not have to pay. These claims were made without any actual data released showing this alleged spike in threats of and acts of violence, and flew in the face of what I had experienced directly as a frequent passenger: well-used, but generally calm public transportation experiences.

Entirely separate from this, the Amalgamated Transit Union released a list of incidents that they say shows an increase of violence toward drivers, though their list only covers a few years — hardly much of a sample size to go on. There were four entries for Connecticut, though it should have been five for accuracy, spread out over several years. If you look up each incident independently, you will find variations from what the ATU presents and what went down, along with lots of publicly unanswered questions.

4 March 2019
Hamden
They say that a passenger hit a driver’s head with a “metal pipe.”
There is video of this online — I’m not linking to traumatic content — which allows you to see that the driver was beaten by a passenger with an object. What the ATU does not include is the detail about how once the passenger fled, the driver continued after him and turned what was self defense into an attack of his own. It’s curious that the ATU left out that information, given how the driver had been fired for his actions and the union was involved in getting his job reinstated. Several news sources described the passenger’s weapon as a cane, not a metal pipe. I could not find any explanation for this assault on the driver, and saw it termed “unprovoked.” This occurred before the fare free period.

4 April 2019
New Haven
They say that two drivers were spat on in separate incidents.
There is some news coverage of these separate incidents, which involved different drivers and different passengers. I could not find what, if anything, provoked these attacks. One news article stated that this prompted CTtransit to invest in 100 safety barriers on buses; I do not know what their timeline was for installing them, but the first I recall seeing any in Greater Hartford was not until well over a year later during the pandemic. At the time, CTtransit also said they would be providing deescalation training for drivers. This happened before the fare free period.

28 July 2002
Bridgeport
They say that a driver was pulled from her bus and severely beaten.
News coverage of this was inconsistent about whether assailant had been a passenger or not. Nothing was said that I could find about what, if anything, provoked this attack. This happened during the fare free period.

27 December 2022
New London
They say that the bus operator was threatened outside of the bus.
According to news coverage, she was indeed standing outside of her bus when someone who came from the train station and threatened her with a knife. Again, the union and the news are tight-lipped about what, if anything, might have provoked the attack . . . though in this case a quote from the driver hints that this was completely unrelated to anything she had done. There is no indication that the attacker was a passenger. This happened during the fare free period.

It is reasonable to want to decrease violence and threats of violence toward drivers, without resorting to making false claims about what caused those incidents.

It has been one year and four months since passengers have had to pay again, and I have witnessed now four heated disputes between drivers and passengers (or would-be passengers), along with one person outright denied use of the bus during a heat wave due to lack of payment — I name that last incident separately because the would-be rider did not escalate the situation; he simply removed himself from the bus after some quiet and calm back-and-forth with the driver, and then went to perhaps bake in the heat of the noon sun.

In July, I watched as a person boarded a CTfastrak bus at a city street stop and said, though in a mumble, that he was going to pay. He had his hands full of bags, and it is fairly standard for people to be allowed to put their bags down and then return to pay or show proof of payment. He probably should have put his bags down at the front of the bus, but didn’t. The driver told him to pay. Disrespectful words were exchanged in both directions. The driver said he would not move the bus until passenger paid. The passenger said “you’re not a fare inspector; drive the bus!”. A few moments later, the passenger must have thought better of this whole thing and asked for the back doors to be opened, and he left. This could have gone on much longer and with a worse outcome for everyone. This is also nothing that happened when people were just allowed to ride.

Rudeness aside, I felt for the passenger. When the CTfastrak buses are on the busway — the separated 9.4 miles of bus-only roadway from Hartford to New Britain — passengers are allowed to board using any door, and they do not need to show the driver anything. Sometimes fare inspectors will board to check payment. Part of what makes the CTfastrak fast is that the bus is not held up by everyone tapping cards, inserting passes, or showing the Token Transit app to the driver. It is understandable why someone would see a green bus and think this is how it always works. But, when the buses leave the busway and are on regular city streets, people are expected to board at the front and conform to standard payment procedures. I don’t get the logic for this inconsistency on the CTfastrak buses.

It is interesting that those who used driver safety to fight against Fare Free seem to have lost all concern for driver safety before or since that one-year period when people could ride public buses in Connecticut at no charge. Even more interesting is how the Federal Transit Administration released a document in 2021 — before Connecticut’s Fare Free trial began — which states that assaults on operators quadrupled since 2009. The period studied was 2008-2019. Before the pandemic, before fare free.

Within the document, there is discussion of identifying hazards, including motives, such as “fare disputes” and “detours or delays.”

What the anti-Fare Free folks ignored — besides the problems that existed before and after Connecticut buses were temporarily free to ride — was that other passengers and those waiting at stops/stations were assaulted at higher rates than the drivers. From this same FTA document, in 2019 there were 344 assaults on bus operators; at the same time, there were 1140 assaults on other passengers along with on those waiting for or leaving the bus.

The anti-Fare Free folks say nothing about what issues exist(ed) outside of the buses, at stops and stations: these are places people can exist at without having a bus ticket.

If the true policy were that only ticketed passengers could wait at the stops and stations, there would be no way to enforce this. The same folks who unironically want a cop walking every block of a city might support this idea without knowing what kind of funding would be involved to monitor every last bus stop and station in a system.

To be clear, I do not think we should be implementing any Penn Station attitude, the kind that means only people who buy tickets can enter the area where the benches are. For so many reasons, that’s not it. In a time when the Hartford Public Library’s downtown branch has been closed since December 2022, depriving locals of a cooling center and safe, public space where they can be without being harassed, we would have to ask ourselves what kicking people out for loitering meant for those trying to just have a place to be where there was some protection from the elements. Most park and other benches are not installed in shady spots. The options are not great, and if all someone is doing is sitting on a bench and keeping to themselves, why should this be an issue for anyone else? It’s not one. In my experience, people hanging out almost always try to keep a low profile and/or give up the bench when at a shelter that has just one or two.



From what I have observed as a frequent bus rider, there is a fairly liberal idea about how long someone can be at a bus stop or bus station before they are interrogated about their existence there. In Asylum Hill, I’ve seen a few elderly folks use the bus stop benches as a place to sit and socialize, or simply stop to rest while walking home. Nobody hassles them, because why would they?! Police will come through certain bus stations, which I know by the arrests made at the Parkville Station — usually for more than loitering.

But, there are times when people make unsettling actions. This is not exclusive to bus stations. I see it most often on Sunday mornings, and I have theories about why this is.

This month, at a suburban bus station, I waited for a Sunday bus. The only other person at the station was a disheveled man in very soiled clothing who was experiencing some kind of emotional distress. He was running around and hollering. He did not approach me or direct any of his commentary at me; however, the behavior was unpredictable, chaotic, and concerning. I stood by an emergency call box, ready to make the call if he became aggressive toward me. Thankfully, I did not have to use it.

Over a week later, I am thinking about the little failures here. It is rare that I feel like I might be in any danger from a person lashing out at me, and I think I am good at asking questions like is this a safety issue or is this a comfort issue before taking actions.

What are the failures? Mine were many, probably, including that I do not have any kind of training that would make me feel comfortable in speaking with someone who is acting irrationally.

But there is also the fact that he ran after a bus that did not stop to let him on. Perhaps that driver felt he was a safety issue. Maybe he was in the driver’s blind spot and simply was not noticed.

Shortly after, a CTtransit supervisor vehicle sped to the station. I thought this was going to be a response, but that driver just kept going without checking in with the guy who was clearly unwell. It may be hard to notice someone like this when a platform is crowded, but when there are literally two people at the entire station, I do not know how they missed a visibly agitated person.

Another failure: we get a call box that connects to 911, but I did not feel comfortable making that call unless the person made a clear threat toward me. I have not been asleep for the last decade; I know that bringing the police into a situation can escalate something if those police are not trained well, and in a town where 86.5% of the residents are white, I felt especially uneasy about calling cops when the person in duress was a Black man. I wonder why there aren’t other numbers posted at the station. If they can post information about sex trafficking, surely they can share what phone number should be called in that town when someone is in need of services, which he was, whether or not he was acting aggressively. His clothes were soiled and pants held up by a string or rope.

After that recent incident, I reached out to CTtransit through the “proper channels” to suggest that they post non-911 alternative numbers at their stations. I knew they exist, but in the moment could not recall what numbers they were and did not think that staring into my phone to figure it out was smart when I needed to keep an eye on what this person was doing. Since there was nobody else at the station, I really did not want to chance being distracted. I also imagine that many people have no idea that there are alternatives to 911.

My thinking is this: if this person was a family member or friend, would I want a response that might be sirens and lights and guns blazing, or would I want someone who would come in to assess the situation and compassionately try to help that person meet their needs? Would I want someone who could easily escalate a tense situation, or someone who could defuse it — and without deploying any kind of weapon?

There is another failure in all this. Sunday bus service is lackluster — even with so-called bus rapid transit. The most frequent bus on the route came through every 20 minutes. The less frequent bus routes on any other day become even more rare on Sundays. Aside from the major and always busy points — New Britain Downtown Station, Flatbush Station, and by Travelers — bus stations can feel lonely on Sundays, which has not been helped by the decrease in bus ridership since Fare Free was eliminated. When bus service was free, ridership in the Hartford area increased by 52%. During the year after its disappearance, ridership dropped 28%. There is safety in numbers, and those numbers are not there as much on a day when the transit overlords think that it’s fine that the 128 bus — a CTfastrak bus that stops at the West Farms Mall — does not need to run more than hourly.

Currently, there remains a contingent of people pushing for Fare Free, but in a limited way: for youth.

From conversations with various supporters, I gather that this is supposed to be a strategic foot-in-the-door maneuver, with the theory that people won’t want to say no to something that benefits youth.

How does that work?

In these conversations with advocates, it seems like the plan is:
1. Get free bus rides for youth
2. Something secret and magical happens
3. Everybody gets free bus fare

Some advocates had already leaned on the sob stories of youth not being able to participate in after school activities during the Fare Free phase, and then pushed again last spring. Lawmakers managed to find a bucket of money in the American Rescue Plan Act, but only for Hartford and New Haven students.

Again and again I hear advocates provide some version of “who can say no to kids.”

This is fascinating.

On the one hand, we have faux culture wars that include dramatic and untrue assertions that children are not allowed to exist in public. This usually comes from either a discussion about whether or not parents should bring their young children into bars where alcohol is the main draw at that establishment or it stems from a parent’s sensitivity/paranoia about being judged by others for their parenting. To put it another way: parents worrying about how others perceive their kid’s grocery store meltdown (and by extension, their parenting) greatly dwarfs the actual number of people who have even noticed a kid throwing a bag of chips in the aisle, and even more so, those who think anything at all about the situation besides “that reminds me, I meant to get chips.”

On the other hand, we have significant policy failures that suggest lawmakers have no problem saying no to kids. You’d expect stronger gun control measures after the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, but we did not care enough about the kids to tackle that. We could look at the fetus first, children last scourge sweeping the United States since 2022. Currently, there are fourteen states with total bans on abortion. There are eight states that have universal school meals, that is, free meals regardless of the students’ family’s income. None of the states with total abortion bans currently provide universal school meals, but that’s the kind of information that one knows without knowing. Connecticut has more lenient abortion laws, while also making some effort to move toward universal school meals — maybe. Our state gave it a go in 2022-2023, only to blow through the funds after a few months. Those funds came from the American Rescue Plan, which is what they plan to use to pay for Hartford and New Haven students’ free bus rides. It feels foolish to be confident that either the bus fare or the free lunches are going to work out for all youth. Going “need-based” continues to single out people who might not want their financial status spotlighted, and it ignores the needs of those who, for instance, live just over the town line in West Hartford or Hamden, but have no more cash than their peers in another zip code.

We should continue pushing for a permanent return of Fare Free public transportation, without age restrictions.

One issue I have noticed with advocacy has been that professional transit advocates who do not use public transportation with any regularity fail to understand how it functions already.

Bus routes are largely in the service of major employment centers, including universities. Stare into the heart of a bus system map, and see that routes have been developed and expanded to serve big business. For example, the 34 route ends at the Walgreens and Dollar Tree distribution centers; the 36 bus goes out of its way to service an Amazon distribution center; the 66 bus, rather than just drop off at the street, takes a lengthy detour through the UConn healthcare campus, adding about ten minutes to what is already a long trip between downtown Hartford and Tunxis Community College. There’s the 215X route created in 2019 to serve the Amazon North Haven Fulfillment Center. When it comes to expanding service, money seems to always be found to ensure that workers have bus routes to the Amazon distribution centers popping up like dandelions.

When people recognize and prioritize something, they will change policy to allow it and find money to support it. We could ask why the plan all along has not been to make large employers pay and pay and pay, thus funding a Fare Free For All system. Considering the environmental damage caused by freight distribution and building huge warehouse buildings and huge parking lots, not to mention all of the things, asking major employers — including-but-not-nearly-limited-to Amazon — to offset their damage by completely funding our public transportation statewide still feels like letting them off the hook easily.

If that feels too icky, like public transportation might not fare well if it relies on corporate funding, then we can return to other ideas, like weaving this funding into everyone’s taxes. My taxes already pay for the roads, whether I ever drive a car on them again or not. They pay for public schools whether I send my children to them, or not. If we fully fund bus service as the public service it is, it will serve those teens we have heard so much about over the last year, but it will also serve their parents who need to get to work and the grocery store, it will serve those teens’ teachers and coaches, it will serve the babysitters that those teachers and coaches need so they can serve those teens. Fare Free For All recognizes that society is a web and that everyone needs others to literally be present.

We know that Fare Free dramatically increased ridership, completely eroding the myth that nobody rides the bus. It added eyes on the street, including at non-peak commute hours. It sped up boarding times. It reduced interactions with drivers, removing a major motive for disputes: the fare box. It was one of those times when our actions aligned with the vision Connecticut residents have of ourselves as being more liberal, when we did something meaningful rather than merely performative. We can return to that vision of ourselves, and then some. Fare Free For All can mean not paying at the door, and it can mean more frequent bus service and routes that serve more people. If we want this change, we can make it happen.