EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill-Bi-State’s rollout of security gates to access to MetroLink platforms begins Monday afternoon at the Emerson Park station, with three other St. Clair County stations to follow later this month.

Under the agency’s “Secure Platform Plan”, gates will come on line at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee station next week, with Washington Park and College MetroLink stations in successive weeks.

On the Missouri side of the river, security gates at the Delmar Loop, Forest Park-DeBaliviere, Central West End, Cortex, Grand, Union Station and Civic Center will be ready later this fall.

The Secure Platform plan will ultimately include a new ticketing system that will likely be in a test phase by next summer. In the meantime, MetroLink security staff will operate the gates. For now, passengers will need show staff their pass or valid ticket to access the platform.

It's a big change for a mass transit system that was designed with an open concept when it first launched more than three decades ago. 

"The challenges that we face now as opposed to what we faced in 1993 are completely different," Kevin Scott, Bi-State's General Manager for Security told Spectrum News on Monday. The goal of the system is to keep incidents and situations that happen off of MetroLink property from making it to the platform.

"All of our customers want to feel safe and so what we’re trying to do with this process is articulate to the region that we take your safety and security seriously and we’re exhausting all of our options to provide as much of a safe environment for you to catch these trains as possible," he said. 

The redesign also means a massive increase in the transit system's closed circuit camera capacity, which will have roughly 2,000 cameras in use.

The gates will be installed at all 38 existing Metrolink stops by January of 2026.