David Kirton says he wants people to feel safe on Saskatoon's buses and thinks transit police could be the answer.

The Ward 3 councillor is planning to put forth a motion at Monday's city council meeting that would ask administration to investigated the idea.

“We have had situations, of course, through COVID, where the masks were mandated and it was at first up to operators to try to mandate that that wasn't fair. We also had a situation where fare boxes had been failing in the buses. So people have been getting on for free, not having to use the fare boxes. But people have taken advantage of that. And again, operators at first were expected to police that,” he told CTV News.

Kirton said there are also situations where "riders are unhappy with other riders."

"So we're having situations on these buses where violence can occur. I'm concerned about that. What I want to do is be able to tell everybody in Saskatoon that Saskatoon Transit is a safe, clean and reliable service.”

Previously, council heard that there was an increase in safety incidents on Saskatoon transit, including assaults on drivers.

“Drivers have been given, I don't know, maybe an afternoon of training on de-escalation. And it's not what they're trained to do,” Kirton said. “They're trained to safely get people around the city. We shouldn't be asking them to do any more than that.”

Bus Riders of Saskatoon spokesperson Robert Clipperton said the idea is something his group has asked the city about before.

“Having individuals who have the role of providing sort of this non-driver transit presence on the buses, and in perhaps some of the main transfer points. We've advocated for that in the past,” he told CTV News.

“What we were thinking was, you have two or maybe four officers to the whole city,” he said. “Some of the major urban centers that have rapid transit of some kind often have officers who are outside. Officers who do random fare checks, as opposed to somebody collecting the fares all the time. And we thought that kind of model might work really well.”

Kirton said if the idea moves forward, he would want to see Community Support Officers (CSOs) in the role.

“They're the people who really know how to help people who are in need, as well as just enforce things. So I'm thinking our CSOs would be the correct people to do that," Kirton said.

Kirton believes the plan could help the city meet its goal of introducing some form of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).

"We need increased ridership if we're going to spend this money on BRT.”