Public Transit – Risky facilities and ‘busyness’
This lecture will explore the extent to which public transit environs can considered as risky places for crime. Drawing on a range of empirical studies by the author and other colleagues in the field, it will firstly examine how the ideas presented in previous seminars, namely risky facilities, crime generators and attractors, crime absorbers and radiators, and space time budgets can be used to explain crime at public transport. It will then refine these ideas to consider how some of the unique and complex characteristics of public transport systems contribute to their risk. These include: the periodicity and regularity of travel; the variety of users on the system; the multi-functional nature of many transit settings; the position of a transit setting within a transit network; and the concept of the ‘busyness of transport settings, for example comparing peak to off peak travel times. It will conclude by considering the implications of this for crime prevention, before identifying some key yet perhaps unanswered questions for future research.
