A string of horrifying assaults within the subway amid a broader enhance in crime within the system to this point this yr has put some New Yorkers on edge.
When Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed Nationwide Guard members and State Police troopers to the transit system this month, she stated her purpose was twofold: to combat crime and to make riders really feel protected. The subway is essential to New York’s vitality, and passengers’ wants are a high precedence for her and different public officers as they navigate town’s post-pandemic restoration.
However simply days after the reinforcements arrived, a taking pictures on an A practice in Brooklyn underscored how fragile any sense of safety may be and undermined officers’ message, supported by knowledge, that the subway is protected. It additionally stirred a dread acquainted to many riders, who’ve witnessed a few of the metropolis’s largest issues — untreated psychological well being points, unlawful weapons, homelessness — being amplified within the confined areas of platforms and trains.
Leaders within the fields of transportation, prison justice and social providers usually disagree about the easiest way to make the subway safer, with some calling for extra police and others suggesting a softer method.
Listed below are 5 concepts that consultants say might assist ease riders fears concerning the subway:
Strengthen gun checks
Some consultants consider extra should be carried out to maintain weapons out of the system.
Rigorous and widespread bag checks, which the police already conduct at random, are an efficient strategy to obtain that purpose, stated Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, the interim dean at U.C.L.A.’s Luskin Faculty of Public Affairs.
Professor Loukaitou-Sideris, who focuses on transit security, stated the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state company that operates the subway, might take into account looking out riders at each station utilizing steel detectors and X-ray machines. She stated that though doing so may be troublesome and costly, the Shanghai Metro does it effectively.
The authority, she advised, might additionally experiment with utilizing sensors to detect weapons. Transportation officers world wide have been learning the concept of including such sensors to fare-collection gadgets and ticketing machines for a while, as she and a number of other coauthors wrote in a chapter of the 2015 e-book “Securing Transportation Techniques.”
“You need to get rid of the chance to deliver the gun on the practice,” she stated.
Professor Loukaitou-Sideris cautioned that any further screening ought to have an effect on service as little as potential. And civil libertarians have warned that any extra surveillance dangers compromising riders’ privateness.
Present extra assist for many who want it
Fears about subway security come up partly from high-profile assaults during which mentally sick homeless folks have seemingly focused riders at random. There’s, nonetheless, no knowledge to counsel that individuals with psychological sickness usually tend to commit violence than these with out it. Mentally sick individuals are really extra prone to be the sufferer of a violent crime.
A visual presence of social and transit staff will help deter crime and de-escalate tense conditions, advocates stated.
Some mass transit supporters have urged the M.T.A. to create a extra strong inner division for serving to homeless folks. These advocates cite the company that operates Philadelphia’s transit system and runs a program that employs about 50 social service outreach specialists. In Philadelphia, homeless folks may be directed to the Hub of Hope, a drop-in heart inside the transit system, that gives showers, medical care and meals.
Though the M.T.A. already sends a small variety of outreach groups into the subway to maneuver homeless folks out of the system, some activists stated one thing just like the Hub of Hope might focus on offering a protected, comfy place for getting assist inside the system.
“Psychological well being points, poverty, trauma — these are all issues that we all know are drivers of violence,” stated Jamila Hodge, the chief director of Equal Justice USA, a nationwide anti-violence group primarily based in Brooklyn.
Alter the bodily atmosphere
Vivid lights, see-through staircases and different structural options could make the system really feel much less claustrophobic.
The M.T.A. has already carried out some work on this space, asserting final month that it might convert all 150,000 fluorescent lighting fixtures within the system to LED lighting by the center of 2026. The venture is supposed to make riders really feel safer and extra comfy. The brand new fixtures may also assist seize higher video utilizing the subway’s roughly 15,000 safety cameras.
“It’s the safety-in-numbers concept,” stated Chris Van Eyken, the director of analysis and coverage at TransitCenter, a analysis and advocacy group. “There’s additionally a little bit of a deterrent.”
Transportation officers are additionally experimenting with different structural modifications to enhance security and make the system really feel extra orderly, testing new fare gates to cease turnstile jumpers and steel platform obstacles to maintain riders from falling onto the tracks.
Assist riders be ready
When one thing horrifying occurs within the subway, riders usually have no idea what to do.
Transit officers within the San Francisco area have sought to assist feminine riders on the Bay Space Speedy Transit, or BART, system keep away from harassment with a marketing campaign that teaches bystanders methods to help somebody being victimized. Transportation security leaders say the M.T.A. might undertake the same program. (The Bay Space marketing campaign focuses on ladies and ladies as a result of they’re extra prone to be involved for his or her security on public transit than male passengers.)
Ads circulated inside the BART system encourage folks to evaluate a state of affairs by observing, as an example, whether or not a harasser has a weapon. Witnesses are urged to method a sufferer once they really feel it’s protected to take action or to in any other case name for assist.
The marketing campaign has had promising outcomes. A survey carried out from October by December confirmed that 7 p.c of BART riders had not too long ago skilled gender-based sexual harassment, in contrast with 10 p.c throughout the identical interval in 2020, earlier than the marketing campaign started.
However some transit activists warned in opposition to encouraging something that may resemble vigilantism, which they are saying has led to lethal penalties within the subway.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group in New York, stated the rise of social media and high-definition cellphone movies had magnified the perceived scale of violence within the subway. He added that the difficulty of subway security had turn into intertwined with politicized disputes about crime in a manner that risked creating an inaccurate portrayal of the system’s total security.
Improve fare enforcement
Dorothy Schulz, a retired captain with the Metro-North Police Division and emeritus professor at John Jay Faculty of Prison Justice, stated regulation enforcement officers ought to stand at gates and cease individuals who didn’t pay the fare.
She echoed complaints by Mayor Eric Adams about “a way of disorderly habits,” which some regulation enforcement officers consider is usually a precursor to violent crime.
The M.T.A. has struggled for years to rein in fare evasion, and it has begun contemplating choices aside from counting on the police. Left-leaning politicians and advocates for poor New Yorkers have denounced aggressive policing efforts, which they are saying unfairly goal town’s most susceptible folks and will not be efficient.
Transit leaders have responded by making an attempt different techniques, together with experimenting with growing fare subsidies, media campaigns urging riders to pay, and new fare gates which are more durable to avoid.
“In case you cease folks on the fare gates — notably those that are clearly not meaning to pay — you’ll choose up lots of weapons and lots of people with warrants,” Ms. Schulz stated. “That’s the answer.”
