In a crowded world of strangers, civility and orderliness are important values.
Crime on New York’s vast subway system is like the weather. It waxes hot and cold, and everyone talks about it. It is a staple for headline writers and hurried pronouncements by political leaders promoting this or that immediate response. As tracked by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s latest performance metrics, felony crimes against straphangers have been relatively high during late 2023 and 2024, but, when accounting for ridership numbers, they were near the average since 2022. Every type of crime evidences a different pattern, with more serious and gun-involved offenses being by far the least frequent. Some far more frequent violations, like fare beating, depend on police presence to be officially noted, which is why the numbers tend to rise significantly when the number of officers on duty underground surges. People’s views of crime are also notoriously unrelated to the actual trend lines, and they cobble them together from a variety of sources. And, of course, riders’ routines are also shaped by the transit options open to them and how their jobs have been impacted by changes in the workplace.
Concern about serious victimization certainly affects New Yorkers’ transit choices, but focusing on crime counts skirts the reality that, in the end, perceptions of safety actually influence transit choices. When it comes to the fear factor, there are issues shaping those perceptions in addition to the portrait of crime that is being publicly painted.
Collectively, the most relevant of these fall in a category dubbed “disorders.” Disorder encompasses numerous persistent conditions and chronic events that touch riders on a daily basis. In February 2024, just half of subway patrons reported that they were satisfied with train and station cleanliness, and slightly more riders were more concerned about homeless individuals and “people behaving erratically” than they were about their “personal safety and security.” Around the country, it has been a pressing question whether some “low-level” disorders fuel more serious crime, and if that can provide leverage for policing and other prevention strategies. Neighborhood research on the broken windows thesis is decidedly mixed. However, in the neighborhoods a substantial list of social and physical disorders have clearly been implicated in generating fear of crime, suspicion of neighbors and strangers, withdrawal from public life and moving to the suburbs. Disorders are also part of the safety equation.
People’s views of crime are also notoriously unrelated to the actual trend lines.
From this viewpoint, trends in public opinion and reports of actual passengers’ specific concerns often get short shrift. The most recent of a series of polls by the Citizens Budget Commission indicates the percentage of New Yorkers feeling the subways are “somewhat” unsafe or worse during the day spiked from 16% to 51% between 2017 and 2023; when asked about the nighttime, the fraction feeling unsafe rose from 54% to 78%. The MTA also surveys patrons, who have already chosen to come down the stairs, and in January 2024 actual riders only split 50-50 on satisfaction with their transit experience. Asked over time to rate how safe they felt using the subway, respondents on trains and in the stations both score just above neutral, and they have maintained that view since early 2023.
The list of disorders prevalent in the city’s transit system is discouragingly long. There may be visibly disturbing people — perhaps harassing bystanders or asking them for money, appearing to be drunk and perhaps vomiting, exposing themselves, spitting and sleeping on the trains. Onlookers may react angrily to blatant fare beating. Persistent remnants of disorderly behavior include the stench of urine, graffiti and other vandalism, and syringes and loose litter kicked up by the crowd. The platforms and cars are often packed, challenging the collective civility of a crowd of strangers. In Chicago’s subways, an aging system that would look familiar to New Yorkers, smoking and alcohol violations rank first and second on arrests and citations combined, plus (unlike New York) eating on the subway is illegal.
Heaps of garbage in corners, burned-out bulbs, murky lighting, peeling paint, unintelligible announcements and broken escalators further stress passengers. There may be signs of unwanted activity down the dark tunnels, and the MTA reports about 70 fires every month.
Some disorders are really funding and management problems, and many others are not captured by crime counters or are not eligible for arrest by law enforcement. They may be dismissed as “low-level” problems, but they have an impact on consumer confidence. This points to the importance of considering the list of subway stressors more generally, and the role of passenger surveys and hotlines in responding to riders’ concerns.
The list of disorders prevalent in the city’s transit system is discouragingly long.
Because the basket of disorders afflicting various subway routes and stations varies, they resist one-size-fits-all solutions. They call for more flexible approaches that police researchers refer to as “problem-solving.” This requires identifying the issues at a particular location, mobilizing people and funding to address them smartly and tracking any progress.
Unlike neighborhood studies, there is surprisingly little rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of contemporary problem-solving in subways, but New York City’s story provides a backdrop for current efforts. In the early 1980s, the MTA inaugurated a highly visible car maintenance program that succeeded in tackling graffiti vandalism. This program was quickly copied by troubled systems around the world. The early 1990s brought dedicated station managers, redesign efforts for older platforms, better lighting and cleaner restrooms, and more vandalism-proof turnstiles and vulnerable surfaces. An extensive network of surveillance cameras came later.
By the end of the 1980s, a crucial view gained more support via legal changes, court decisions, negotiations between the transit authority and civil liberties groups, and changing politics: namely that, in a crowded world of strangers, civility and orderliness are themselves of value. It was apparent transit systems were not designed to be shelters, and defaulting to them as a social service was not doing anyone a favor. The subway was largely cleared of homeless encampments, so issues involving erratic and threatening behavior became an issue of wandering individuals, which was seen as a great advance.
Around the country, “co-response” models for dealing with behavioral health crises are being fielded and evaluated under a variety of conditions, but only occasionally in a transit environment. Systems in the U.K. have experimented (sometimes using random assignment) with adding uniformed civilian staff who are tasked with actively circulating through crowds, watching to preempt unwanted touching, harassment, menacing gestures, pushing and shoving, and threatening behaviors. Philadelphia’s multifaceted attack on transit system homelessness includes teaming civilian outreach workers with officers to offer shelter, treatment and support alternatives to distressed people. Transit systems can target-harden their turnstiles, but it remains the case that the primary disorder problem in subways today involves people’s behavior.
It is difficult to envision a full-blown attack on the problems facing New York City’s subway system as a whole. It is vast, with 472 stations and many more entrances, and the tunnels rattle with thousands of cars even during off-hours. However, there is evidence that disorders share the tendency of above-ground crimes to be heavily clustered. In the immense London Underground, half of all recorded crimes take place in 5% of stations. In one large Canadian light rail network, 16% of stops accounted for 50% of all recorded crime. While some disorder travels, it’s also true that, as with neighborhoods, places can be “hot spots,” and the lesson from crime prevention is to identify and focus relentlessly on those areas.
Some will lament that leaning on disorder hot spots will inevitably burden poor neighborhoods. For example, there is evidence (from a recent John Jay College study of fare evasion) that fare beating arrests are notably more concentrated near disadvantaged communities. However, these numbers are dependent on where officers are sent to observe and crack down on noncompliance.
In the end, improving conditions in the local subway through maintenance and design upgrades, offering more on-platform services and personnel and calming conditions on the platforms should be counted as a community win.
Also, crime and disorders may often not cluster together tightly. Some otherwise safe locations may be attractive to troublemakers looking for affluent passersby and tourists unfamiliar with three-card monte. Sleepers looking for a warm and safe spot to drift off may seek quieter places entirely. It is riders in areas that have now-historic stations and their antiquated infrastructure that must weather design deficiencies, including dark and perhaps dangerous nooks and crannies.
Further, it is important to acknowledge that residents of surrounding communities can be disproportionately the victims of disorderly conditions and events concentrated nearby. In an April 2024 survey of likely New Your City voters, more Hispanic and Black than white respondents called for more police in the subways. This essay has called for a broader conception of safety, and, in the end, improving conditions in the local subway through maintenance and design upgrades, offering more on-platform services and personnel, and calming conditions on the platforms should be counted as a community win.
No fixes to the conditions described here would be permanent. An aging and creaky system demands continual reinvestment, but the MTA’s budgetary hopes have recently been crushed. Ridership is still climbing back from the pandemic. The subway is not an island; what happens below ground has parallels with conditions in the rest of the city. As New Yorkers’ views of safety in the subway soured in 2023, reports that they felt unsafe walking alone in their neighborhood at night spiked by 20 points. The syndrome of afflictions we call homelessness poses a wicked problem above ground as well as below, and no one should be proud of cleansing the subway by pushing it upstairs. These are all problems needing solving, with the understanding that, for better and worse, New York will never resemble Singapore, where the subway is clean and quiet, and where — like above ground — everyone is very careful about their chewing gum.