Calgarians feel more safe taking public transit now than 6 months ago, city says

The City of Calgary says citizens feel safer in and around the public transit system now than they did six months ago.

This from the Perspectives on Calgary Survey, with a focus on safety, has run three times in the past two years, according to the city.

Data is collected from 500 randomly selected Calgarians, according to the city, and covers topics on the perceptions of safety in the city, including in one’s own community, downtown, and Calgary Transit.

Of those surveyed, 72 per cent said they feel safe riding a CTrain during the day, which is up from 67 per cent from May 2023 when the survey was last done.

Also up, according to the city, is the percentage of people who said they feel safer waiting at a CTrain station during the day (70 per cent in November versus 64 over cent in May).

“Calgarians want and deserve the very best — and safest — experience using our transit system, whether riding our LRT, buses or shuttle vehicles,” Kay Choi, Community Safety and Wellbeing Lead with the City of Calgary said in a statement. “I’m encouraged to see we have been able to move the needle on safety, and recognize we still have a long way to go to help Calgarians feel safe in and around our CTrains.”

Some Calgarians say they continue to avoid taking the bus or CTrain due to safety (49 per cent), which are relatively on par with information collected in May 2023, which suggested 47 per cent of respondents avoided taking public transit because of safety concerns.

Three-quarters of Calgarians say they feel safer using transit buses than riding the CTrain.

Despite this, 71 per cent of those surveyed says Calgary is an overall safe city — 75 per cent at night and 40 per cent of Calgarians say Calgary is more safe when compared to other large Canadian cities.

The city chalks this up to investments into transit public safety, which allowed it to hire more peace officers, enhance the cleaning of stations, improve infrastructure and increase partner patrols.

Additional funding was also approved to hire transit community peace officers and recruit security guards.

The city says Calgary Transit ambassador teams were also added to help with wayfinding and to be a visible presence for riders.

Calgary council also approved a Public Transit Safety Strategy in October 2023.

The number of report incidents caused by social disorder on public transit (such as verbal fighting/insults, open drug use, overdoses and drug poisioning) is down.

From Oct. 1 to Dec. 15, 2023, the city says a total of 3,450 social disorder incident were reported, compared to 4,146 reported from Oct. 1 to Dec. 15, 2022.

Public transit was also used to support the city’s most vulnerable during the brutal cold snap, according to the city. As part of the Co-ordinated Community Emergency Winter Response, shuttles ran seven days a week to take people living along the LRT line to available shelter space.

Since Dec. 1, there have been 1,024 transports to emergency shelters from LRT stations.