Santa Clara VTA seeks assistance for committee to ban "troublesome" riders
The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is looking for public citizens to help the department implement a program to ban "troublesome" riders from transit.
The program stems from a 2023 decision by the state Legislature adding VTA to a handful of transit agencies allowed to ban people from their systems. The law permits the agencies to issue bans if a person in a transit district is issued three separate citations, is arrested or convicted of a crime, or is caught loitering for drugs.
Santa Clara County is already partially covered by prohibition bans. BART has been included in the law since 2012, and the VTA helped BART extend coverage to its new Milpitas and Berryessa stations. But BART issued just 12 prohibition orders between the two stations in 2022, making them about middle-of-the-road compared to other stations throughout BART's network.
The state law compels the VTA to establish a "Transit Safety Advisory Committee" for which it's accepting applications from the public. The committee is supposed to oversee implementation of the prohibition program, including recommending training for enforcement officers.
The VTA is looking for applicants who are frequent transit riders in Santa Clara County and have expertise in social justice causes.
BART's prohibition program has faced some criticism in the past on social justice grounds. In 2022, about two-thirds of all prohibition orders given by the agency have been to Black people, and 40% have been to younger Black people. That percentage mirrors other years, according to a 2023 report from BART's Transit Security Advisory Committee.
The VTA is asking for potential applicants to its advisory committee to submit their applications by Aug. 23 at https://www.vta.org/transit-security-advisory-committee.