If you live in Charlotte, the light rail is one of two things: It could be a gimmick to exploit on Panthers game days and New Year’s Eve, getting as wasted as you want without fear of being pulled over. Or, it is a suffocating nightmare, trapping you with strangers whose mental state and intentions for the ride are a total mystery to you. What people fail to understand is that it’s that mystery, not some essential truth of public transit, that breeds the fear of the light rail and lessens the quality of the ride for everyone.
A panicked hush has swallowed the city of Charlotte after a man fatally stabbed a woman on the LYNX Blue Line two weeks ago. Charlotte’s less-than-savory reputation for safety has collided with an anti-transit sentiment that paints the mode of transportation as being innately more dangerous than cars. The problem with this claim is that on a factual level, it simply is not correct.
According to data published in April of 2025, driving a car is more dangerous both in terms of crash fatalities and incidents of serious crime. On the side of crashes, public transit’s death and injury rate was one-tenth of that of car travel…