A hamburger eaten on an Orange Line train on a Sunday afternoon. A handful of walnuts shared between two women on a Red Line train. Or a water slurped inconspicuously by a tired rider on a bus.
People eat and drink on the Metro system every day, despite the signs and station announcements warning against it. But transit police on average give just one citation for the crime a week.
Last year, Metro’s police force issued 584 written warnings for eating or drinking but issued just 52 actual citations. The transit system provided 356 million trips on its trains, buses and disability service in that time.
Through the beginning of April this year, the agency said, police wrote 14 citations.
“It is much more common for police officers to give verbal or written warnings to customers, especially during tourist season, when more people who might not be aware of the rules are using the system,” Metro spokeswoman Angela Gates wrote in an e-mail. “Typically police officers issue citations for eating and drinking as a last resort for blatant violations.”
Metro’s sworn force of 450 police officers has 86 stations, scores of buses and 1,500 square miles to cover. Enforcing the food and drink ban is “just one small part” of their duties, Gates said.
Metro does not make money from the citations, she said. Instead, the revenue goes to the jurisdictions where the tickets are written.
So, in the absence of law enforcement, some riders police each other, giving dirty looks or scolding scofflaws directly.
It’s a source of pride for the transit system and its riders that Metro has carpeted floors, cushioned seats and a lack of rodents compared with other systems, say, in New York. Still, the rail car upholstery shows a few spill marks here and there.
Metro hung new signs in station entrances in December to remind riders of the rules. The transit agency plans to start a new campaign this summer to discourage eating and drinking, Gates said.
Still, Metro doesn’t need to spend much on pest control each year. The annual bill combined between rail and bus is less than $50,000, according to the transit agency.
