As Sun Tran drivers threaten to strike over safety, the Tucson City Council approved funding Tuesday for a new transit ambassador program and increased police patrols, the first year of a safety plan backed by $43 million in voter-approved transit funds.
In 2015, when Sun Tran drivers went on strike for 42 days, driver safety was one among a host of issues, including pay and mold contamination on some buses, that pushed drivers into a labor dispute.
More than a decade later, as the drivers union votes to authorize another strike if a contract isn’t reached by the end of June, safety concerns remain one of the most prominent issues.
The proposed budget approved Tuesday puts numbers toward the first year of a transit safety plan adopted by city council in December 2025. The plan was shaped through city meetings with union leadership and city transit advisory committee members.
City council voted Monday, 5-2, to send the funding plan to the Regional Transportation Authority, or RTA, for spending approval.
Pima County voters approved the RTA Next transportation plan in March, extending a half-cent sales tax to fund regional road and transit projects for the next 20 years. That included $43 million for Tucson transit safety over the next two decades, or about $2.15 million annually.
The Sun Tran transit system covers about 323 square miles with more than 2,200 bus stops and three transit centers. The most common incidents noted by officers are open-air drug use, possession, loitering, vandalism and assault.
The budget directs $700,000, its largest allocation, toward employing eight off-duty police officers who would work 25 hours a week. It also includes money for bus cameras, radios, survey tools and an additional cleaning crew.
It also introduces funding for a pilot program to hire four transit ambassadors who would be stationed at high-traffic areas along major routes to engage with riders, help with navigation or direct people to shelters or mental health providers, if needed.
Reception was generally positive, though many council members and Mayor Regina Romero wanted more funding for the positions than the plan included.
“For me, it’s important to have immediate investment in operator safety,” Romero said. “I do see you have funds for additional investment of the private security company that we have been using for years now. I would much rather see additional funds allocated for the ambassador program.”
Several council members mentioned the possibility of volunteers supplementing the work of paid staff in the program.
The version of the motion that passed included an amendment by Council member Lane Santa Cruz to increase funding for transit ambassadors, barrier improvements and panic buttons — as well as plan for regular updates to both the transit advisory committee and mayor and council.
The Tucson Transit Advisory Committee voted to support the plan, though in their May meeting members noted some concern about the balance of enforcement and outreach efforts, and asked for concrete ways to assess the success of the ambassador program.
During Tuesday’s study session, Andy Bemis, the deputy director of the Department of Transportation and Mobility, said he would use reductions in calls for service and incidents to judge the success of the transit safety plan in the future.
Ray Jordan, a member of the transit advisory committee and a regular transit rider, said he has not felt unsafe while riding transit but has at times while waiting for the bus. “Most of the transit issues are not really transit issues; they are public safety issues,” he said.
The reality that many of the concerns around safety on transit take place around stops and not necessarily on transit is reflected in the safety plan, which notes that more than 80% of incidents occurred outside transit centers.
Jordan also said the transit element that makes him feel most unsafe is limited visibility from the bus, or into the bus, due to advertisements on the side of vehicles. As a rider, “it’s difficult to see out the windows so you can’t read a street sign when you arrive at a bus stop and it’s difficult to see who or how many people are there,” said Jordan, who uses a wheelchair. “If there is some kind of incident on the bus, police officers can’t see who is on the bus.”
For riders, some enforcement elements of the transit plan are already in place, Bemis said. Some buses have new types of barriers between drivers and passengers which, after more feedback from drivers, will help direct which type are purchased with future funds.
The Tucson Police Department has been implementing special deployments on the transit system, with a presence of officers around transit lines six days a week, since March. In that time, their presence has resulted in 730 warnings, 127 arrests, 88 citations, 28 referrals for services and 15 deflections. Sun Tran has also expanded its private contracted security hours, Bemis said.
That is in addition to security guards contracted by Sun Tran who are present but do not physically remove passengers from the bus or detain people.
The RTA must still say whether the items proposed for the $2.15 million budget, which reflects the annual amount set aside for Tucson transit safety, are eligible for funding.
Among the questions looming behind the transit discussion were the broader ones about safety in society, as well as the role that the transit system plays in offering an immediate cool option for many unhoused people in the city.
“The other aspect of safety is how hot it’s getting in Tucson,” Council member Miranda Schubert said. “We need more shade, we need more benches where people can sit.”
Amid extreme heat, buses remain a key way for unhoused communities to access cooling centers as well as a place that is air conditioned and accessible around the city.
“We have the proof to show that crime is going down in Tucson, but it’s also about how people feel,” said Romero.
Gator-Aid, a mutual aid group that distributes food and first aid supplies through a mobile distribution downtown, said they had been asked several times by police and security guards to leave the Ronstadt Transit Center when they were sharing materials.
“If our community wasn’t loudly supportive of our presence, we feel that we would not be able to continue our distributions there. From what we have witnessed in and around the transit center, police presence has only ever escalated tense situations,” the group, who answered the questions collectively by email, told Arizona Luminaria. The organizers answering the questions included Bethany Bones, Laura Ruiz and Brenna Bailey.
The group also said they understood that bus operators should not be placed in enforcement roles, but that the issues that created conflict aboard buses were broader ones that they believed wouldn’t be addressed primarily through more police presence.
The group said they wanted to see resources that addressed people’s immediate needs for cooling and hydration, comfortable seating at bus stops, accessible public restrooms and safe drug-use and needle disposal sites.
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