Perceived link between mass transit, crime tough to dispel
The headline wasn’t subtle: “Stop Metro from coming to Spring.” The article, published July 15 on the website Spring Happenings, warned that bus service would “give criminals an easy way in and out” of the north Harris County suburb.
A range of experts I interviewed this week agreed that little evidence supports the “buses lead to crime” idea. (This is also true of its cousin, “Lowincome housing leads to crime,” the subject of a column I wrote last year.)
Yet the perception persists that mass transit is the first step in the ruination of a community. It’s an attitude that could complicate the challenge of meeting the mobility needs of the vast, rapidly growing Houston region.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority is holding public meetings to gather input on a new regional transit plan. Metro officials say the plan is needed to prioritize options for adding bus and rail service, along with van pools and potentially bus-only lanes or highoccupancy toll lanes.
More than 300 people showed up Tuesday night at a Metro meeting in Spring. My colleague Dug Begley, who attended, said many residents expressed the same concerns as those reflected in the Spring Happenings article.
Zach Karrenbrock, who runs the website, published the article as an “editor’s note.” In a phone conversation with me, Karrenbrock pointed to the FM 1960 corridor in northwest Harris County as an example of the detrimental effects of public transportation.
“Before Metro came along, it was a great area to live,” Karrenbrock said, “but as Metro came in, the area increased in crime.”
The factors that turned the FM 1960 area into a poster child for suburban blight — community leaders have rebranded the thoroughfare as “Cypress Creek Parkway” to escape the stigma — are complicated. Barbara Thomason, who is leading a revitalization effort in her role as head of the area’s chamber of commerce, said it’s frustrating that so many people want to blame a single issue, whether it’s bus service, large apartment developments or economic
downturns.
“That’s ludicrous,” she said.
Antipathy toward mass transit isn’t limited to suburbs. After 11-year-old Josue Flores was stabbed to death on Houston’s near north side in May 2016, some residents said the 2013 extension of Metro’s light rail line had increased danger by bringing homeless people and drug users into the community. (Authorities this week dropped murder charges against a man accused of killing Josue, citing insufficient evidence, but police said the man remains a suspect.)
‘Like a moat’
Metro’s president and CEO, Tom Lambert, said the agency’s police chief, Vera Bumpers, had met with north side community leaders and taken steps to increase officers’ visibility in the neighborhood.
Lambert, himself a former Metro police chief, said he had seen no evidence that buses or rail made a neighborhood less safe. On the contrary, he said, increased scrutiny by drivers, security cameras, passengers and transit police can have the opposite effect.
Notwithstanding the concern on the near north side, suburbs are where opposition to mass transit seems to find its fullest expression. Transit researcher Todd Litman has an idea about why this is the case.
“Automobile dependency has been used for generations as a moat to keep poor people away from certain areas,” said Litman, the founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization.
Other options
Crimes involving vehicles — car thefts, vandalism, road-rage violence — are far more common than those associated with public transportation, Litman said. Imagine the reception a campaign to keep cars out of a neighborhood would receive in Houston.
In a report last November titled “A New Transit Safety Narrative,” Litman noted that transit often serves low-income people and communities, and some types of crime tend to increase with poverty. But this doesn’t justify a blanket statement that transit makes a place less safe.
In reality, Metro isn’t likely to introduce new, fixed-rate bus service in a community like Spring; the demand isn’t there. Park-and-ride service, commuter rail, or doorto-door service through some form of ride-sharing are more realistic options in some area suburbs, according to Lambert.
Exploring these options with the public is a vital part of the process. This conversation will be more useful if it’s based on facts rather than myths.