Contrary to popular assumptions, public transportation has far lower crash and crime rates than automobile travel. For safer communities, improve and encourage transit travel.

A new Scientific American article shows the much lower crash and crime rates of public transit travel compared with driving. “According to the data, driving a car in the U.S. is far more dangerous than taking public transit—in terms of crash risk and crime.”
“Public transit travel requires people to travel with strangers in a confined space, and especially in large cities with very diverse populations, it’s easy to feel intimidated by that experience,” says Todd Litman, founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in British Columbia, who has published numerous studies on public transit safety. “Just from an experiential perspective, it feels unsafe, especially to people who don’t do it frequently.” Litman calls this dread: fearing a risk despite it having a low probability.
According to Litman, the risk of death or injury on public transit is about one tenth that of car travel. “And neighborhoods oriented more around public transit have about one fifth the overall traffic deaths per capita of car-oriented neighborhoods.”
FULL STORY: These Charts Explain Why Public Transit Is Safer Than Driving

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

San Diego Adopts First Mobility Master Plan
The plan provides a comprehensive framework for making San Diego’s transportation network more multimodal, accessible, and sustainable.

Walmart Announces Nationwide EV Charging Network
The company plans to install electric car chargers at most of its stores by 2030.

Seattle Builds Subway-Sized Tunnel — for Stormwater
The $700 million ‘stormwater subway’ is designed to handle overflows during storms, which contain toxic runoff from roadways and vehicles.

Feds Clear Homeless Encampment in Oregon Forest
The action displaced over 100 people living on national forest land near Bend, Oregon.

Is This Urbanism?
Chuck Wolfe ponders a recommended subscription list of Substack urbanists and wonders — as have others — about the utility of the "urbanist" moniker.
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