Rider's Almanac Blog

From GM Lesley Kandaras

Expanding our focus on cleaning and repairs so you can ride in comfort 

Posted by Drew Kerr | Thursday, July 3, 2025 9:09:00 AM

From General Manager Lesley Kandaras

We know having clean and well-maintained shelters, stations, and vehicles helps you feel more comfortable riding with us.  

We also know we have a lot more work to do in this area – in our most-recent customer survey, 42% of you said our buses and trains felt clean and comfortable; 28% agreed stops and stations felt clean and comfortable.  

To move us toward a more consistently clean ride, we are:    

  • Expanding our maintenance teams so we can spend more time at stops and stations and cleaning vehicles between trips.  

  • Making easier-to-clean vinyl seats standard in new buses and gradually replacing cloth with vinyl on some older buses used primarily on bus rapid transit lines.  

  • Advancing a program of improvements designed to make light rail stations feel more inviting, like recent efforts to refurbish worn benches.  

  • Expanding our use of public art that discourages graffiti and vandalism.  

Our cleaning and repair efforts will become even more important as more shelters and vehicles arrive across our region.  

You can support our efforts by putting litter where it belongs, adopting a stop or station, and reporting issues like broken glass by texting 612-900-0411.  

I also invite you to keep an eye out for open facility worker and cleaner positions. Workers in these roles lead our efforts to keep our system looking its best.  

Thank you for helping us keep it clean, and as always, please don’t hesitate to let us know what more you think we can do!