The $62 million effort to equip all MetroLink platforms with turnstiles and technology requiring riders to pay fares is now complete.

After a nearly two-year buildout, officials from Bi-State Development, which operates the St. Louis region’s public transportation system, said on Monday that the effort to transform MetroLink from an open to a closed system at all 38 platforms has been finished.

“To say that we’re done with security enhancements and the evolution of our overall security program, I don’t believe that’s going to ever end,” said Kevin Scott, Bi-State’s executive vice president for public affairs and security. “I think that we have to be fluid and functional every day, but today is a good day to have these gates in place.”

But Bi-State Development leaders and elected officials across the region believe the changes will help improve the public transit’s overall safety and public perception. In turn, they believe that will encourage more ridership.

“We are restoring that trust in this system as we build it,” Bi-State president and CEO Taulby Roach said.

Bi-State made the first changes at four platforms in the Metro East in September 2024. The agency completed construction at the remaining stations in January 2026, and the new fare system launched last month.

The new fare system requires riders to either pay for a ticket on their phone or buy one at a kiosk, then scan it and enter through a turnstile.

The St. Louis MetroLink is the first public transportation system in the country to move from an open system to a closed system, Roach said. Leaders from other cities — Seattle, Dallas, Charlotte, Minneapolis and Toronto — have all been in town to look at the changes, he said.

Connor Torossian of the Federal Transit Administration said the changes made to MetroLink make it a national model for other public transit systems.

“Safety, as you all know, drives ridership,” he said. “If people don’t feel safe on a system, they’re not going to get on it, and that’s going to hurt the system’s overall efficiency and overall greatness.”

When Bi-State began designing the secure platform and new fares in 2022, the MetroLink system’s crime rate was 17 incidents per 100,000 riders. Now, it’s 9 per 100,000, according to Scott. While the drop may not be directly caused by the secure platforms, the trend is encouraging, he said.

“I’m hoping that we will continue to see that with the gating system,” he said.

The number of criminal incidents at the first 11 locations in both Illinois and Missouri, where Bi-State put in the new secure platforms, dropped by 50%. At the same time, ridership increased by 300,000 across the system from 2024 to 2025.

While those numbers are also encouraging, it’s important to remember they are preliminary, Scott said.

“It’s too difficult right now to get a gauge on total system incident rate because the system just became gated, so it was unfair just to take a snapshot. The next six months will be telling,” Scott said. “When we get into January, we’ll have a better understanding of what those numbers look like.”

At a time when affordability remains a top concern for many Americans, improving public transportation is important, Illinois U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D- Springfield, said.

“When we invest in public transportation, we’re investing in the people who rely on it,” Budzinski said. “We’re building a system again that is safer, more convenient and better equipped to serve all of our communities.”

St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said the changes will benefit more than the region’s residents.

“They benefit our tourists, our business leaders, our employees and our employers who rely on public transit to get their employees to and from work every single day,” she said.

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