Light Rail Is Criminogenic

The Guardian reports that a movement has begun in Baltimore to shut down the city’s light-rail lines because of the crime they spread. The liberal Guardian makes this out to be a racial issue, but actually it is just a safety issue.

Architect Oscar Newman discovered several decades ago that some designs are criminogenic, meaning they attract crime, while other designs deter crime. While criminals are more likely to be poor, Newman showed that poor people of all races were much less likely to engage in or be victimized by crime if they lived in areas that were non-criminogenic.

Newman had noted that poor people living in some neighborhoods suffered from lots of crime while the same class of people living in other neighborhoods experienced almost no crime. To find out why, Newman compared design features with crime reports on thousands of city blocks. His work was successfully replicated on a much larger scale by later researchers. Continue reading

This Will Increase Transit Ridership–Not!

A woman videotaped a man exposing himself on a Los Angeles light-rail train. Another woman was “savagely beaten” on a New York subway train. A third woman was stabbed to death and her sister hospitalized at a BART station in Oakland.

These attacks received a lot of publicity, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Riders on the Los Angeles transit system suffer from several major crimes a day — “major” (“part 1” crimes) meaning homocide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or car theft — and a slightly smaller number of minor or “part 2” crimes, meaning simple assaults, vandalism, minor sex offenses, and drunk or disorderly conduct.

The good news is that, starting in July 2017, LA Metro increased the police presence on board its trains, which reduced the total number of crimes from about ten per day to about seven. But some serious crimes continued to increase in number. Continue reading

Transit Crime

Is there an upsurge in crime on and around transit, and if so, why? A few days ago, a Portland woman was stabbed at a light-rail stop, supposedly by a complete stranger. The very next day, a remarkably similar report came out of Tempe, Arizona, except in this case police said the victim and alleged perpetrator were acquaintances.

A month ago, a gang of at least 40 teenagers boarded a BART train and, while some held the doors to prevent the train from leaving the station, robbed seven passengers and beat up two or more who refused to cooperate. Continue reading