Anna Balla, 47, has tolerated for months the unruly behavior that she says has become common among passengers on the “L” (Chicago’s elevated subway): people smoking, harassment, and even a time when a stranger used her shoulder, without asking permission, as support to jump into a seat on an overcrowded train.
But it was something that happened one day in March that caused her to abandon the subway once and for all. At a busy station in the Loop, the city’s financial hub, during rush hour, Anna saw a shirtless young man grab a woman by the arm and hit her with a bottle of beer as she cowered on the platform, screaming. Anna hurried out of the crowded car and ran up the street.
“I was afraid someone would pull out a gun or, if the police came, a gunfight would start,” says Anna, a secretary at a museum in Chicago. “That was the mood.”
As several major American cities seek to draw people back to once-busy downtown areas, city leaders are grappling with public transit crime rates that have already surpassed pre-pandemic levels in New York City, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
This month, a shooting incident on a subway train in Brooklyn, New York, injured 23. In other cities, reports of violent assaults, armed robberies and stabbings on buses and trains dominate the nightly news and conversations on messaging apps among residents.
The drop in ridership has led many people to say they feel more vulnerable than before when using public transport. In Philadelphia, the number of serious crimes reported is higher today than before the pandemic, and in New York it is more or less the same, despite the fact that the number of passengers has fallen sharply in both cities. Fewer crimes are being reported in other cities than in 2019, but the crime rate has risen because there are so few passengers.
The crisis in transport systems jeopardizes the national recovery from the pandemic. Officials say restoring people’s confidence in subways, metro trains and buses would help rescue local economies from two years of stagnation, encourage more people to return to urban offices and make tourists feel comfortable moving freely.
In densely populated places like Chicago and New York, where public transportation is essential for millions of people, the well-being of the system is felt to be representative of the well-being of the cities themselves.
Mayors, businesses and the police are looking for ways to reduce crime and restore passenger confidence, but experts say the destinations of public transport and central urban areas are intertwined in complicated ways. If more people use the system again now that they return to their offices and stores, trains may seem safer. At the same time, if people do not feel safe, they are reluctant to return to areas emptied by Covid.
In Chicago, where in March the country’s second-largest public transport system was used by an average of 800,000 passengers a day, crime on trains and buses has increased this year — even before the pandemic, cases were on the rise. Last month, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced increased security measures and the use of additional police officers to reassure passengers.
“This is one of the most important things we can do to change the perception of the city as a whole,” said Kevin Ryan, vice president of safety at the Chicago Transit Authority, speaking of safety in the public transit system.
“It’s one of the first things many people see when they come to the city. It’s crucial for many of the poorest or underserved communities whose residents don’t own private vehicles and rely on public transport. Security at the CTA is imperative.”
The number of reported crimes on Chicago’s public transportation today is about 50% lower than before the pandemic, but the number of passengers has also halved. The drop in many systems is essential when analyzing crime rates on them: in Los Angeles, the gross number of crimes recorded in 2021 was lower than pre-pandemic years, but, as the number of users also dropped a lot, the crime rate per passenger is higher today.
In other cities, such as Philadelphia, incidents have been growing over the course of the pandemic. In 2021, police officers at Septa (a public transport company in southern Pennsylvania) recorded 86 aggravated assaults, up from 46 in 2019. In the same period, assaults rose from 118 to 217. The figures in the first months of 2022 indicate a small drop.
According to Philadelphia City Councilor Jamie Gauthier, the problems are not limited to public transportation, but are part of a larger upward trend in violence in the city. “We have an opiate crisis and a housing crisis,” she says. “The biggest problems we see in the city have also migrated to our transportation system.”
Experts say the growing concern about crime may partly reflect a shift in passenger perceptions, many of whom have interrupted their usual commutes on buses and commuter trains during the pandemic.
The prospect of getting back on public transport is prompting some people to assess safety in a way they would not have done in the past, when the daily commute between home and work was part of the routine. One factor raising tensions for some passengers was the retreat in many cities on the issue of wearing a mask, after a judge in Florida overturned the mandatory item of protection on planes and public transport.
Christopher B. Leinberger, a professor emeritus at George Washington University who studies urban spaces and public transport, says the best way to reduce violence on public transport is to get more people to use it again.
“The best way to suppress crime is to have a lot of people, from many income groups, on mass transport. Of course, the police have an important role, but the most important thing is to have a lot of people keeping an eye on other people.”
