Dive Brief:
- The first comprehensive assessment of how drug use affects transit in five U.S. cities found that transit workers are being forced to become de facto public health responders and exposure to overdoses, assaults and biohazards is traumatizing frontline staff.
- “On transit systems across the United States, rising rates of drug use along with deteriorating safety conditions for customers and staff have become increasingly pressing and complex issues for transit agencies to solve,” the Federal Transit Administration-funded report states.
- The five transit agencies that took part in the study — Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon — “universally stressed the need for sustained and broad support services: recovery, housing, increased staffing for outreach and enforcement, and harm reduction,” David Cooper, principal of Leading Mobility and a co-lead of the study, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Since the pandemic, drug use on public transit has become increasingly visible, eroding public confidence and perceptions of safety and prompting riders to avoid transit altogether or avoid certain times and routes, Jamaal Schoby, staff officer for the Transportation Research Board, wrote in the Transit Cooperative Research Program report.
“What we’re seeing on transit is a reflection of broader challenges—homelessness, drug use, and limited support services,” Emily Grisé, assistant professor at the University of Alberta School of Urban and Regional Planning and a co-lead of the report, said in a statement.
The study recommends a combination of harm reduction, enforcement and systemic change to address the problem. It identified seven “areas of opportunity” to help transit agencies address drug use…