REPORTING FOCUS

For example, although the major transit modes carried over 9 billion trips and provided over 47 billion passenger miles of service in 2003, there were only 5,290 crimes against people (e.g., assault, robbery) in the entire country, across all major modes. This translates to only .57 incidents per million trips, and only .11 incidents per million passenger miles.

Of the four major modes, motor bus had the most incidents overall (2,500). This is not surprising, since motor bus served the most trips and traveled the most passenger miles of all the modes.

When we normalize the data on the basis of trips or passenger miles, light rail emerges as having somewhat higher crime rates than the other major modes. However, since all modes have less than 2 incidents per million, passenger trips, traveling on any mode is considered very safe.

Any amount of crime is cause for concern, so it is important to understand the nature of the incidents that occurred. When we look across modes, informative differences become apparent. Most significant, the location of security incidents varies between bus and rail.

The pie charts break down incidents by mode and then by location. The majority of motor bus security incidents (76%) occurred in transit vehicles, whereas rail incidents occurred mostly at revenue facilities (66% - 76%). Bus stops along a route are not considered facilities and, thus, are not counted here. These differences indicate that motor bus security efforts should emphasize strategies and technologies to make the vehicles themselves more secure – such as installing on-board cameras or increasing police presence on buses – while rail security efforts should focus on making stations and platforms more secure through such means as the installation of better lighting, and more passenger emergency call boxes, and increasing police presence.