Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia ScienceDirect www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia Transportation Research Procedia 25C (2017) 3237–3256 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia World Conference on Transport Research - WCTR 2016 Shanghai. 10-15 July 2016 The Impact of Mass Transit on Public Security - A Study of Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco a WANG Dia* a a Shanghai Jiguang College, 2859 Shuichan Road, Shanghai, 201901 Abstract In the United States, mass transit is considered to be related to crimes in some cases, on which scholars focusing on different cases have drawn different conclusions. In this research, spatial relation analysis between 12 types of major crimes and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations in San Francisco were conducted on different spatial levels from city, block groups to blocks and streets. It is demonstrated that mass transit and crimes are closely related in San Francisco. On the macro level, the extension direction of whole crimes and the BART service alignment are similar. On the meso-level, BART stations are significantly correlated with most types of crimes. No matter in the downtown area or not, the neighborhoods around stations are high criminal regions. On the micro level, crimes tend to cluster obviously around the stations. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. ©Peer 2017-review The Authors.under responsibili Publishedty by of ElsevierWORLD B.V. CONFERENCE ON TRANSPORT RESEARCH SOCIETY. Peer-reviewPeer-review under responsibilityresponsibility of WORLD CONFERENCE ON TRANSPORT RESEARCHRESEARCH SOCIETY.SOCIETY. Keywords: Mass transit; Crime; San Francisco; Bay Area Rapid Transit 1. Introduction The vehicle holding is 0.8 car per capita in the US in 2013 (U. S. Census Bureau, 2014), while each car’s average travelling distance is more than 20000km per year (Federal Highway Administration of U. S. Department of Transportation, 2014), which means each individual has a daily driving car averagely. Public transportation is therefore always seen as the last resort of travels (Lusk, 2001) especially outside downtown and is not popular in some neighborhoods for its attribute of welfare. According to the summary of researches (Dunphy et al., 2004), at least one third of the land values go down when transit stations open. As far as mass transit is concerned, it is * Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-13611977976; fax: +86-21-59889644. E-mail address: [email protected] 2214-241X © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of WORLD CONFERENCE ON TRANSPORT RESEARCH SOCIETY. 2352-1465 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of WORLD CONFERENCE ON TRANSPORT RESEARCH SOCIETY. 10.1016/j.trpro.2017.05.145 10.1016/j.trpro.2017.05.145 2352-1465 3238 Di Wang et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 25C (2017) 3237–3256 2 Author name / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 Author name / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 3 generally acknowledged that this main type of public transportation brings large amounts of strangers, who will In addition, the change of crime is influenced by some important factors around transit rather than the transit break the peace of neighborhood, thus worsening public security and community environment. Therefore, there used itself. For example, the land use, infrastructures, population structures, forms of neighborhood space, time node, to be rejections and resistances to mass transit in history for diverse but similar reasons. For example, the norward critical events and so on. When these objective conditions change, the relationship between transit and crimes seems extension of BART in San Francisco was vetoed twice in 1990 and 1998. However, does mass transit really lead to to be changed. Thus some researches don’t interpret the relation between them and only describe the tendencies with high crime rate and worsen public security? This research is aimed to shed some light on the relationship between different conditions. crimes and mass transit. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system of San Francisco is selected as the empirical case, for the city is isolated geographically with developed neighborhoods and mass transit. Spatial relation analysis 3. Research Object, Data and Methodology between 12 types of major crimes and BART stations will be conducted on multi-levels. On the macro level, the research analyzes overall distribution features of crimes of the whole city; on the meso-level, the research analyzes 3.1. Research Object and Scope attributes and criminal clusters of blocks; on the micro level, the research focuses on spatial details of criminal spots. Along with different levels of spatial analysis from city, block groups, blocks through streets, the impacts of other This research is focused on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the city of San Francisco (the same scope with factors such as population, land use intensity, neighborhood attribute and street scale are also partly taken into the county of San Francisco) to analyze the criminal impact of mass transit, taking following advantages: (1) In the account to make comprehensive analysis in order to reveal whether BART really has close relation to crimes. north of the peninsula, the city’s location effectively resist crime from exterior by natural barriers such as the sea to the north, west and east, five city parks and one state park along the south border. The data is independent in spatial 2. Literature Review analysis, free from externalities. (2) Population density of San Francisco is only second to New York in the U.S. Most districts have been developed, featuring stabilized social-spatial characteristics and criminal distribution Scholars in different cases have drawn different conclusions on this question. The first kind of viewpoints (often pattern. (3) BART has been under operation over 40 years, whose lines and stations are familiar to most people. based on common sense) is (mass) transit will increase crime rate. For example, the existing studies show that busy Passengers travel regularly, contributing stable ridership. places often generate higher numbers of criminal incidents. These busy and high crime areas are often served by mass transit (Yu, 2009). The crimes come from interactions between transit and its surroundings (Block and Block, 2000). These crimes seem to be related to overall crimes at the neighborhood (Loukaitou-Sideris et al., 2002). In addition, mass transit may increase convenience for offenders the same as normal passengers. It helps them get over distances (Liggett et al., 2003) and carry them to the destinations around mass transit (Brantingham et al., 1991). It can be seen from the cases that new transit station will worsen the security around it at least in short term or in some types of crimes (Poister, 1996; Liggett et al., 2001; Newton, 2004). Most of these crimes are in stations but not during travelling (Degeneste and Sullivan, 1994) and fear levels are higher while waiting (Crime Concern, 2004). The fear rather influences people not to choose transit (Hartgen et al., 1993; Lusk, 2001). This negative change of passengers’ attitude will have a negative impact on the regional environment which is associated with increased number of criminal incidents (Yu, 2009) and it will be a vicious spiral. The second kind of viewpoints is (mass) transit doesn’t have significant correlation with criminal increase. It is often the falsification of the first kind. For instance, the busy places such as stations will have more police equipped (Frischtak and Mandel, 2012) especially for preventing terrorist attacks. Most offenders prefer to select a familiar place (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1993; Willits et al., 2011) for ease of committing crime such as their residences rather than strange places by (mass) transit (Desroches, 1995; Tilley et al., 2004). It can be seen from the cases that the security around mass transit is not worse than even residence (Walker et al., 2006). New built mass transit will not increase number of criminal incidents significantly (Poister, 1996; LaVigne, 1996; Liggett et al., 2003; Sedelmaier, 2003) and the peacekeeping activities depend more on whether well-organized communities are established (Krivo and Peterson, 1996). The transit crime incidents are less serious (TCRP, 1997) and tend to be concentrating into small places instead of dispersing among the blocks (Tseloni and Pease, 2003). These two viewpoints are not independent. Some researchers appear in both two viewpoints. Furthermore, researches on same theories or hypothesis may draw tremendously different conclusions according to the empirical evidence because data’s integrity and reliability will impact the results. Data in different researches differ much in time, location, area, sample size and accuracy. The accumulated effects of these impacts may contribute more than the logic established in theories. Therefore, these empirical analyses only provide supplementary evidences for hypothesis or theories under certain circumstances. Both the viewpoints are based on same basic theories oriented from Chicago school. The most popularly employed theory to analyze transit crimes is routine activity theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979), which lists three crime premises: motivated offenders, suitable targets