Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek takes a transit safety ride-along

A spike in crime along transit lines all across Canada and North America has raised concerns on safety for transit users.

An increase in stabbings on Calgary Transit has prompted city council and other organizations to change the service model for safety on the transit system.

“Council made an initial investment of $32 million last summer and an additional $33 million was invested in the four year budget strategy for this year alone,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek.

Continuing on their collaborative relationship with Calgary Police, 28 peace officers have already been added this year, ensuring more patrols, more often.

Council has also approved 36 more community peace officers for transit.

“We got corporate security working on the platform they are on patrol here, there are some of our staff on bike patrol that we’ve seen through the downtown core and we are just in the process of setting our downtown safety unit,” Calgary Transit safety officer Aaron Coon.

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City Hall has invested in infrastructure improvement to provide more safety on C-Train platforms, including lighting along the 7 Avenue corridor, tactile strips for the vision impaired and more signage like stickers inside train cars to indivate the transit watch number — 74100 — to report emergencies discreetly.

“There’s a lot of strategies around clearing up some of the excess furniture to keep those visible lines so that ouir teams back in the command centre have a clear view of what’s happening and can send help when required,” Calgary Transit director Sharon Fleming.

Calgary Police are working on tackling violence on public transit in relation to people with addicitions, mental health problems, and economic issues.

“There’s 1,700 unique individuals we’ve dealt with the last couple of months on transit of that, about 100 ot more are involved in harm offences so it’s a relative low number, the other ones we want to get supports with social services, the others we want to deal with and if it’s enforcements, we’ll go that way,” Calgary Deputy Police Chief Chad Tawfik.

City officials add, they hope these measures will have a positive impact on transit safety in times to come.