News & Blog
“How Transit/Transportation Investments Can improve Public Safety”
By Ken Stapleton
Community safety is primarily a function of how well community members keep each other safe and enforce acceptable rules of behavior, with police serving the role of enforcers of last resort. To do that, people must be able to recognize who belongs in a place and who might be there to do harm. They must also be motivated to act when they see problems to actually prevent crime. That happens best when people get to know each other, people actively use public spaces like sidewalks and parks, and the physical environment provides cues that people present will act in case of a threat. Some call this social cohesion or social capital.
Our auto-dominated transportation system works against these dynamics. People use their cars to get around – by themselves and usually with the windows closed. They don’t get to know their neighbors very well because they often never walk around enough to interact with anyone. Cars are psychological tanks – both protection and weapon – that keep us separated and strangers to each other. The huge popularity of SUVs in the 1990s has been attributed in part to the significant fear of crime that decade. We have also given over our streets to cars. It is often very uncomfortable to walk during the day due to traffic dangers and actually frightening to walk after dark – even when it is only 6pm during the winter months – due to traffic and fear of crime. Our streets are no longer designed and operated for pedestrian safety. This is particularly true of many urban places.
Carefully designed investments in Transit, on the other hand, can help change these “bowling alone” dynamics in several ways. First, by improving the walk to and from the transit stop or station, and by improving the safety of the stop or station both day and night, research has indicated that more people will use transit. Sometimes called “safe routes to transit”, such improvements must go beyond traffic safety and create strong natural surveillance of pathways and stops/stations particularly after dark. They must also improve what crime prevention experts call territoriality – an environment that communicates a sense of care and concern where people will act when problems arise. In such an environment, not only will more people walk to use transit, they will walk for other purposes and begin to positively influence both real and perceived safety in their community.
The second fundamental benefit is that people who are walking more and taking transit more will be much more likely to interact and get to know each other. This “informal social interaction” is enhanced if children or dogs are walking with adults as “conversation starters.” The interaction also improves when people take the same transit routes on a regular basis. People get to know each other, and after some time count on each other for the first line of protection from crime.
In contrast, police are often frustrated by feeling like the “historians of crime” that come after the criminals leave and write everything down – even when nobody saw anything. They are forced to drive from call to call, playing the role of the “pound of cure” after an incident occurs. Most of them would prefer an ounce of prevention approach, but most police have little influence over the design of our built environments and the ways to build social cohesion needed for crime prevention.
The final major benefit of this investment in this innovative approach to transit improvements is the use of increased ridership and fares to create a virtuous cycle of investment, making it easier for even more people to walk and use transit. In the process of spending much more time in the public space – getting to know the good people around them – the growing number of transit riders also become a major force for improving community safety, and their own physical and mental health.
So by improving transit this way, we can prevent more crime and build stronger and healthier communities.