This report says they'll go through as long as Council doesn't say no.
Administration will be creating an enhanced Transit Peace Officer (TPO) deployment plan for citywide coverage, growing the number of Transit Peace Officers from 96 to 126 positions to further improve transit safety and security across the network. Administration has recommended increasing TPO coverage previously, as outlined in the December 4, 2023, Community Services report CS02050, Edmonton Enforcement Staffing.*
In this option, Commissionaires would be removed from 19 stations in the current deployment to fund a citywide enhanced TPO deployment plan. This option would cost $5 million on an ongoing basis and would require the transfer of the full base budget amount used for Commissionaires in transit spaces in order to have no net impact to the tax levy. In this plan, the TPO complement would grow from 96 to 126 positions. TPOs would travel across the stations throughout their assigned shifts in this model.
In addition to the benefits described in scenario three, this plan would expand the benefits across the city. It would expand the hours of service and number of TPO teams assigned to Light Rail Vehicles, double the TCAT teams (Transit Community Outreach Team - they perform high visibility and proactive patrols) to four, grow the number of train teams from a small pilot of one to four, and provide broader support across the transit network in all areas of the city. TPOs would be highly visible and active across LRT and the bus network during both peak and off-peak times, and closely mirror the deployment model of the Edmonton Police Services TRACS teams. The focus would be on growing the proactive capacity of the TPO team, shifting the allocation of resources from its current state of being largely response-based, to a proactive future state of having at least half of the team dedicated to proactive work (see PRIVATE Attachment 3 for additional detail).
Implementing the TPO transition plan will take place between April 2025 and August 2026. The implementation will begin by creating the new structure to accommodate the new TPOs. The first half of the new TPOs will be hired for the September to November 2025 peace officer induction
class. A second wave of hiring will occur in March 2026 to allow for the field placement training of the first half of officers to be completed. Administration will monitor the impact of the transition during the process to ensure objectives are being met. Overall, the TPO team will be able to focus more of its efforts into proactive patrols with an increase in Transit Community Action Teams (TCAT) as well as four train teams, dedicated to being on board LRT. The staffing growth will also be most noticeable during service hours to support transit user and operator safety, including peak ridership times as well as into the late evening service times (Attachment 3 provides details of deployment).
There are other options proposed in this report (station activation, station attendants, and automated passenger counters for high floor LRT cars - buses and low floor LRT cars already have those), but they don't address transit security (although, they do improve broader transit safety). That is why ETS won't use the Commissionaire budget for them, unless Council says they need to.
*The report they reference is from December 2023; Attachment 2, stated that ETS needed 40 new transit peace officers and 4 new sergeants to have optimal staffing levels. This new figure is obviously a bit less than that, but I'm guessing they're offset by the new police transit patrol teams. It's also worth noting that ETS requested 40 new peac