It’s time to start enforcing the rules on the CTA

You can’t maintain public services unless you maintain public order

Last week, Alderman Bill Conway introduced an ordinance to push the CTA to take a tougher line on smoking. I think it’s a good step, for reasons I’ll get to shortly. But it’s also a nice opportunity to talk about some broader issues of safety and disorder around public transit.

Violence and disorder on public transit remain major threats to the health of the CTA. Transit advocates are often uncomfortable to engage with this topic or the solutions necessary to actually move the needle on public safety. But the status quo doesn’t do anyone any favors. If we want to make sure public goods are used - and valued - by the public, we need to do a better job of enforcing standards of conduct and behavior.

Disorderly conduct is a big deal

As WBEZ reported last year, violent crime on the CTA spiked during the pandemic, and still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. Even as transit ridership began to recover from 2023 to 2024, rates of violent crime per million trips actually increased.

Source: WBEZ, September 2024

Things have only improved marginally in 2025. As of June 8^th, CPD reported that violent crime on CTA property was down 2.9% year-to-date relative to 2024, but up 1.9% relative to 2023. That’s a lot worse than our overall rates of violent crime, which are down 22% so far this year.

It’s worth noting that if you just look at serious injuries, transit is a lot safer than driving. But potential riders don’t just care about serious injuries. Disorderly conduct, like smoking, shouting, or harassment isn’t captured in the FBI’s index crime data, but has also spiked following the pandemic. Data here is fuzzy, because so little of that behavior is reported, and enforcement tends to be spotty. But since the pandemic, perceptions of personal safety have plummeted.

Source: CMAP Plan of Action for Regional Transit, 2023

In addition to being dangerous and unpleasant, this is also a major threat to ridership. A 2019 reports from the Transit Center, which included focus groups of Chicago riders, noted that safety was the second most important issue for riders. In Los Angeles, more than 80% of riders who stopped riding the LA Metro after Covid indicated that they didn’t believe the system was safe. This also means that the RTA’s 2022 survey data presents a wildly optimistic picture. If ridership has cratered in part due to safety, and only 54% of current riders think the system is safe, then the percentage of pre-pandemic riders who think the system is safe today is far lower.¹

That’s a disaster for the long-term health of the system. Even if the CTA does get reliability back to 2019 levels, safety concerns will put a hard ceiling on ridership. And a smaller, less appealing system that only serves those with no other options will have a harder time winning support and funding in Springfield – during this year’s fraught fiscal cliff negotiations and in the future.

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas

Unsurprisingly, the CTA and City of Chicago’s approach to-date on this issue has been woeful. The CTA has spent more than $100M on unarmed security guards, who appear to be instructed not to confront bad behavior, and generally seem to stand around on their phones. And while the CTA is also paying for CPD overtime, sworn CPD officers on the Public Transportation Section are down by almost a third from 188 in May 2020 to 132 in May 2025.

Communications are also woefully inadequate. There is still not a way to discreetly alert CTA or CPD personnel about an issue. In a fraught situation on a train, riders are expected to put themselves at risk by either calling 911 or pressing an emergency button and speaking to an operator via loudspeaker. Neither is a particularly appealing prospect while being trapped in a small metal can with someone who appears to be a threat to others.²

Unfortunately, transit activists haven’t produced much better ideas. Groups like the Active Transportation Alliance have argued that more frequent and reliable service will help attract additional riders, resulting in more eyes in the system to report or discourage crime. They’ve also argued that the CTA should hire transit ambassadors: unarmed personnel to de-escalate issues and watch over the system.

I don’t think these are necessarily bad ideas, but they’re not sufficient to address the problem we’re facing. Safety is a clear impediment to more ridership today – and while higher frequency service might bring back more riders, it could also reduce the number of people in an average train car or bus, especially at off peak hours. The evidence for transit ambassadors also quite thin, and civilian employees are generally unwilling to risk their personal safety to enforce rules. If ambassadors are unarmed and without arrest powers, it’s not clear why they’d be any better at enforcing the rules than the security guards the CTA hires today.³

You have to enforce the rules

This is a hard set of problems to address. But there’s also a clear set of actions that the CTA and CPD could take to start bringing safety in the system back to pre-pandemic levels.

First, the system needs a more visible police presence, at times and places where violence and disorder are most likely to occur. There’s an enormous amount of research that indicates that hotspot policing – the regular positioning of officers in high-risk areas - dramatically reduces crime.⁴ That requires more officers in the system. It also requires that those officers don’t just show up on platforms to hand out flyers, but spend time actually walking trains and hopping on buses during hours when issues are most prevalent.

This won’t just directly deter bad behavior – it will also reassure riders and employees. Greater officer presence is directly tied to better perceptions of safety on the part of riders. And if CTA employees regularly see officers in the system, they’re also more likely to be comfortable deterring low-level incidents, knowing that officers can arrive quickly to have their backs.

Second, CTA riders and employees need better communication tools. Riders need to be able to discreetly communicate emergency situations to CTA personnel who can actively monitor cameras, issue announcements in stations or cars to deter behavior, and alert police officers where necessary.⁵ A functioning emergency text line is the bare minimum here – but BART’s Watch App also enables riders to share locations and pictures directly with transit police. This is not rocket science: BART launched this tool more than ten years ago.

Finally, officers and employees need to actively enforce the rules. Officers and personnel need to believe that elected officials will have their back – if they do their job appropriately. We’ve seen this in other settings as well. In 2020, San Francisco Police almost completely abandoned traffic enforcement. After significant public pushback, amid concerns over the impact to public safety, citations are now climbing back up.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

We need to send a clear message to riders and officers about what’s acceptable

That’s why I think that Ald. Bill Conway’s recently-introduced resolution to crack down on smoking on the CTA was a good idea. The bill itself doesn’t do much besides require more CTA reporting on the issue. But sending a political signal to the CTA that disorder needs to be taken more seriously is a helpful message, that can be heard by leadership.

Of course, San Francisco PD stopped issuing citations for a reason. Following the murder of George Floyd, there was an outpouring of concern about the impact of police violence on black and brown communities. No one’s better off if we spend our time targeting a subset of transit riders, instead of working to protect them.

There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done to address these issues. For these purposes, I think it’s especially important that law enforcement targets behavior – and specifically disorderly or disruptive behavior - rather than appearance. I also think it’s fortunate that the plethora of cameras in the system makes it easier to monitor officer behavior in difficult situations. And the CTA should be doing more to partner with social service agencies to address individuals struggling with mental health issues or homelessness that do not require the intervention of an armed officer.

But we cannot respond to challenges around disproportionate or undue force by simply abandoning any effort to enforce rules in public spaces. If we do, we’ll watch those spaces degrade – turning into services of last resort, instead of high-quality goods.

Transit advocates need to come to terms with this

I think transit advocates have done the system a real disservice by being unwilling to insist on enforcing the rules. The issue extends to transit researchers and policy shops as well. Transit Center is an important funding and research group. Here’s what they have to say about police officers in their 2019 report on public safety:

Transit agency responses to rider concerns defined broadly as “safety” need to be nuanced. The role of law enforcement officers is the most visible issue that transit officials must consider carefully. At the Philadelphia focus group, some participants expressed a strong desire for more police presence on transit. Similarly, enhanced security on buses in Detroit seems to correlate to ridership gains, indicating that to many potential riders, additional law enforcement is welcome.

On the other hand, some activists suggest that police officers on transit make some riders uncomfortable rather than comfortable.

Focus groups and ridership data tell us one thing about police officers and safety. But some activists don’t like that conclusion. So who’s really to say if police officers help boost safety and ridership?⁶[6]

Transit advocates are generally a pretty left-leaning bunch, and I understand the desire to avoid breaking ranks with allies on other issues. But the stakes here are too high.

It’s also telling that the heaviest users of the system have also been the most vocal advocates for more police and enforcement. I’m talking about the CTA’s front line workers, who have spent the last few years facing unprecedented levels of violence and abuse. Here’s what the head of the union that represents the CTA bus drivers, told the State Senate Transportation Committee earlier this year:

“We see the individuals day after day, the same threats, the same violence, because the word is out, there’s no one coming to help us. Not because [the Chicago Police Department] doesn’t care, but because they are overwhelmed and they are stretched thin, and we are paying the price.”

An agency that fails to protect its employees is anti-worker. A government that fails to keep public services safe is cutting them, just as if it failed to maintain infrastructure, or reduced operating hours.

Of course this isn’t unique to public transit. Last month the Tribune reported that the Chicago Public Library is struggling to handle disorderly patrons, who are abusive to librarians and other users of the system.

If we care about maintaining high quality, well-funded public services, we have to be willing to enforce basic standards of conduct. If we don’t, we’ll slowly watch those services wither.

1. You can also see this in the weekend ridership data, which strips out the impact of remote work: by 2024, Metra’s weekend ridership was back to 2019 levels, but CTA bus and train ridership had only at 75% and 66%, respectively.

2. Calling 911 can also be impossible in a tunnel.

3. BART’s Transit Ambassadors are at least trained along SFPD, and have police radios, which may help at the margin. But I’m not sure why someone willing to assault a CTA train or bus operator wouldn’t be just as willing to assault a transit ambassador.

4. Crucially, these studies also indicate that there isn’t simply spillover – crime falls most dramatically in areas officers are present, but it falls generally throughout the system.

5. Special shoutout to the CTA Station Attendant who keeps a watchful eye on the Grand Blue Line station platform during evening hours, and will call down to the platform if she sees anything suspicious on camera.

6. As you might expect, the Center’s 2021 safety report, published in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, is even worse.