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The line of crime: Dismantling fears and concerns of crime along Vancouver SkyTrain’s Canada Line

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Abstract

The expansion of mass public transportation systems has often been resisted due to fears and concerns over an increased level of crime. Public settings such as transit stations tend to attract and generate crime due to their ability to gather larger crowds of people traveling to various parts of a city along a limited number of pathways. The current research explores whether such concerns should be merited or disregarded in the study of crime and transportation. The study offers a preliminary evaluation of the impact on crime at seven stations of the Canada Line, a recent addition of Vancouver’s SkyTrain system. Time-series regression techniques are utilized to analyze crime data from the Richmond Royal Canadian Mounted Police from January 2006 to August 2011. Results demonstrate that the number of reported crimes has decreased since the Canada Line became operational. The study illustrates the importance for planners to consider the relationship between crime and transit systems.

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Notes

  1. Vancouver was the host city for the XXI Olympic Winter Games in 2010. Sporting events and ceremonies took place from 12 February 2010 to 28 February 28 2010. The Paralympics portion of the event took place from 12 March 2010 to 21 March 2010.

  2. August 2009 was selected as the Canada Line debuted on 17 August 2009.

  3. Violent crime includes crimes such as homicide, attempted murder, assault, sexual assault and robbery. Property crime includes crime such as theft, break and enter, and fraud. Other criminal code offences include mischief, disturbing the peace, arson and prostitution.

  4. Crime counts were selected opposed to crime rates as they are the desirable measure used in policing to allocate appropriate resources to reduce crime and fear of crime.

  5. The size of the buffer zone, 250 m, was selected by the Richmond RCMP. This buffer size is an adequate size to use and to capture offences closest to a transit station (for further discussion, see Robinson and Giordano, 2012).

  6. The specialized police force, the Transit Police, was implemented before the study’s time period and therefore the study could not account for their implementation in the regression models when analyzing the trends.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Martin A. Andresen, the Richmond RCMP and Richard C. Bent for assisting with this research.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Figure A1

Figure A1
figure 1

Map of Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain Routes.Source: UrbanRail.net, Schawandl (2012).

Appendix B

Figure B1

Figure B1
figure 2

Maps of Canada Line stations in Richmond.Source: Used with kind permission of the Richmond RCMP (2011).

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Gallison, J. The line of crime: Dismantling fears and concerns of crime along Vancouver SkyTrain’s Canada Line. Secur J 29, 485–500 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2013.42

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