A string of horrifying assaults within the subway amid a broader improve in crime within the system to date this 12 months 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 mentioned her purpose was twofold: to battle crime and to make riders really feel secure. 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 the town’s post-pandemic restoration.
However simply days after the reinforcements arrived, a taking pictures on an A prepare in Brooklyn underscored how fragile any sense of safety may be and undermined officers’ message, supported by information, that the subway is secure. It additionally stirred a dread acquainted to many riders, who’ve witnessed a number 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, legal justice and social providers typically disagree about one of the simplest ways to make the subway safer, with some calling for extra police and others suggesting a softer strategy.
Listed below are 5 concepts that consultants say might assist ease riders fears concerning the subway:
Strengthen gun checks
Some consultants imagine extra have to 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 option to obtain that purpose, mentioned Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, the interim dean at U.C.L.A.’s Luskin College of Public Affairs.
Professor Loukaitou-Sideris, who makes a speciality of transit security, mentioned 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 mentioned that though doing so could be troublesome and costly, the Shanghai Metro does it effectively.
The authority, she prompt, might additionally experiment with utilizing sensors to detect weapons. Transportation officers around the globe have been learning the concept of including such sensors to fare-collection units 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 convey the gun on the prepare,” she mentioned.
Professor Loukaitou-Sideris cautioned that any further screening ought to have an effect on service as little as attainable. 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 partially from high-profile assaults by which mentally unwell homeless individuals have seemingly focused riders at random. There’s, nonetheless, no information to counsel that folks with psychological sickness usually tend to commit violence than these with out it. Mentally unwell individuals are truly extra prone to be the sufferer of a violent crime.
A visual presence of social and transit employees may help deter crime and de-escalate tense conditions, advocates mentioned.
Some mass transit supporters have urged the M.T.A. to create a extra strong inner division for serving to homeless individuals. 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 individuals may be directed to the Hub of Hope, a drop-in heart throughout 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 individuals out of the system, some activists mentioned one thing just like the Hub of Hope might give attention to offering a secure, snug place for getting assist throughout the system.
“Psychological well being points, poverty, trauma — these are all issues that we all know are drivers of violence,” mentioned Jamila Hodge, the chief director of Equal Justice USA, a nationwide anti-violence group based mostly in Brooklyn.
Alter the bodily atmosphere
Vibrant 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 could convert all 150,000 fluorescent lighting fixtures within the system to LED lighting by the center of 2026. The undertaking is supposed to make riders really feel safer and extra snug. 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 thought,” mentioned 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 adjustments to enhance security and make the system really feel extra orderly, testing new fare gates to cease turnstile jumpers and steel platform limitations to maintain riders from falling onto the tracks.
Assist riders be ready
When one thing horrifying occurs within the subway, riders typically 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 the best way to help somebody being victimized. Transportation security leaders say the M.T.A. might undertake an analogous 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.)
Commercials circulated throughout the BART system encourage individuals to evaluate a state of affairs by observing, as an illustration, whether or not a harasser has a weapon. Witnesses are urged to strategy a sufferer once they really feel it’s secure to take action or to in any other case name for assist.
The marketing campaign has had promising outcomes. A survey performed from October by December confirmed that 7 p.c of BART riders had just lately 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, mentioned the rise of social media and high-definition cellphone movies had magnified the perceived scale of violence within the subway. He added that the problem of subway security had change into intertwined with politicized disputes about crime in a method that risked creating an inaccurate portrayal of the system’s general security.
Enhance fare enforcement
Dorothy Schulz, a retired captain with the Metro-North Police Division and emeritus professor at John Jay Faculty of Legal Justice, mentioned legislation 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 legislation enforcement officers imagine generally is a precursor to violent crime.
The M.T.A. has struggled for years to rein in fare evasion, and it has begun contemplating choices apart 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 the town’s most susceptible individuals and will not be efficient.
Transit leaders have responded by making an attempt different ways, together with experimenting with growing fare subsidies, media campaigns urging riders to pay, and new fare gates which might be tougher to bypass.
“For those who cease individuals on the fare gates — significantly those that are clearly not desiring to pay — you’ll choose up numerous weapons and lots of people with warrants,” Ms. Schulz mentioned. “That’s the answer.”