High‑profile incidents make transit feel dangerous, but per passenger‑mile it is among the safest ways to travel. The bigger ridership drag is that many U.S. systems are slow and poorly connected, so extra policing alone won’t move the needle.
— This reframes transit debates away from crime and toward service speed, frequency, and network design as the real levers for ridership.
Matthew Yglesias
2025.09.23
100% relevant
Yglesias’s three claims: transit is comparatively safe, safer trains wouldn’t drive big ridership gains, and transit crime isn’t a major driver of national crime.
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