It's been one month since a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled transit police had illegally stopped and arrested a TriMet rider during a routine fare enforcement mission, and the transit agency has something to say.

Yes, you still have to pay to ride the MAX or bus in the Portland area, and no, TriMet has no plans to change how it enforces fares on the public transit system.

TriMet's new education campaign comes as Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum decided Tuesday not to appeal Judge John Wittmayer's ruling, which found transit police had violated the state's constitution by stopping and arresting Ana del Rocio at an Old Town Chinatown light rail station in March.

Roberta Altstadt, TriMet's communications manager, said employees have noticed a lot of confusion in the past month on the tri-county system, and it hopes to educate riders about the rules. "Fare is fair," she said in an interview Wednesday, adding, "we don't want anybody to get a citation because they are confused."

Next week, TriMet will ask its Board of Directors to amend the agency's rules for how it enforces fares. The tweaks are more clarifications, Altstadt said, and they will directly state riders must pay to take a train or bus and point out the agency has every right under state law to enforce those rules, despite the court ruling. Violating fare requirements is grounds for a citation and not a criminal act in and of itself, the new rules will clarify.

Last month, the ACLU of Oregon said Wittmayer's ruling confirmed what it had already believed, that "these dragnet searches violate the rights of all people that are stopped."

The civil rights organization praised Rosenblum for declining to pursue charges against del Rocio. Mat dos Santos, the group's legal director in Oregon, said TriMet has subjected all riders "with or without fare, to suspicionless searches that violate the constitution."

"We hoped that TriMet would embraced the changes that are called for here. It is beyond disappointing that, since the judge's ruling, they have continued their flawed fare enforcement approach without addressing the underlying problems with this unfair system," he said.

Del Rocio issued a statement saying she would now work on "putting this nightmare behind me."

"The focus now should be on our continual efforts to make transit more accessible to those who need it," she said.

TriMet said it believes clarifying its rules will satisfy the judge's opinion that riders had a reasonable concern they would face potential criminal charges, including jail time for theft of services or other charges, if stopped during a fare sting.

Wittmayer's ruling also argued TriMet's authority for conducting random fare stops was thin and "unpersuasive."

But TriMet believes clearly articulating its authority in its own rules and ensuring riders won't face criminal charges for fare evasion alone will satisfy the judge's concerns and ward off any future cases arguing similar grounds.

The agency in July enacted new rules decriminalizing fare evasion and reducing the fines levied to riders who are caught using the system without paying. TriMet also instituted a low-income fare program thanks to funding from the 2017 statewide transportation package.

The Wittmayer ruling appeared to raise the possibility TriMet could change its fare tactics, partly because stopping passengers randomly on a platform was criticized in the opinion as an action without "reasonable suspicion."

Two Washington County cases previously found TriMet fare missions on moving trains were legal searches.

But Altstadt said TriMet was unlikely to limit its fare stops to moving MAX trains because it keeps staffers or transit police confined to one area and it could lead to "unwanted consequences" such as only stopping passengers who happen to be next to a fare enforcement officer on a crowded train.

"We want to be able to enforce fares in a random way," she said, "It's the same process used by light rail systems across the country."

The transit agency issues an average of about 20,000 citations for fare evasions every year, and its estimated fare evasion rate was 13.1 percent in 2017.

TriMet's board meets Oct. 24 and will discuss the rule changes.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen



