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Commuters using public transit in New York City: Using area-level data to identify neighbourhoods with vulnerable riders

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Abstract

This study uses routine activity theory and research on victimization and fear of crime to contextualize the importance of examining characteristics related to crime-target vulnerability among public transit commuters. A principal component analysis was conducted using 5-year data from the American Community Survey 2010. New York City (NYC) Police Department Compstat data for 2010 were used to provide a backcloth for understanding the types of crime problems vulnerable transit commuters may confront in their local areas. Findings show that a majority (55.3 per cent ) of the NYC commuters used public transit to travel to work, with more females, youths, ethnic minorities and non-naturalized immigrants commuting by public transit. Two distinct types of transit commuters were found to cluster in different parts of NYC, where the types of local-area crime problems also differed. These findings can help transit operators and policymakers build guardianship and assist place management in areas where potentially vulnerable commuters live.

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Notes

  1. ‘Transit dependent’ also describes this group (Levine and Wachs, 1986b) although ‘captivity’ may, in fact, connote the feelings these travellers sometimes experience.

  2. Although commuters do not represent all transit users in NYC, they are an important group to study because of their relatively stable patterns of public transit use.

  3. An often-used method – areal weighting – is particularly unsuitable for the current study given the size of police precincts and rapidly changing neighbourhood characteristics of NYC. In addition, the sizes of census tracts are not uniform, and a small census tract does not mean that less crime has occurred. Some census tracts with non-residential areas may be larger in size (for example, a census tract with a park in it) yet have fewer residents. Another alternative for analysing information at both the census-tract and police-precinct levels would be to use a family of multi-level modelling methods, for example, using police precinct as Level 2 and census tract as Level 1 in a hierarchical linear model. This requires that there be a theoretical reason for seeing police precinct as an important grouping factor for census tracts in relation to transit commuters. We found no such theoretical support for this method.

  4. Factor analysis was conducted using the extraction method of PCA with rotation of Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization in SPSS 20.

  5. The ACS data provide a population estimate so no statistical analyses of differences are needed. Nevertheless, upon request, we conducted ANOVA tests that showed statistically significant differences by census tract groups on time left for work and occupation (with findings from these analyses available upon request from the authors).

  6. We also looked at the spatial distribution patterns of robbery, felony assault and grand larceny in relation to VTCs. We found few differences in the areas overlapping with the FBPH and OWNV areas when compared with the overall high index crime patterns. Maps of overall NYC crime patterns by crime type are available in Castelvecchi (2011).

  7. We are grateful to Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris for suggesting this potential use of the ACS.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Vania Ceccato, Paul Ekblom, Nancy LaVigne, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Andrew Newton, Chris Sedelmaier, Jana Sochor and the other participants in the ‘Safety in Transit Environments’ seminar, Hailee LaBeth, and the three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and advice. This research was supported in part by PSC CUNY Grant Category A, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th Street, Room 2121N, New York, 10019, NY, USA

    Sung-suk Violet Yu

  2. School of Community Affairs, Wichita State University, 1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita, 67260-0135, KS, USA

    Martha J Smith

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  1. Sung-suk Violet Yu
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  2. Martha J Smith
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Correspondence to Sung-suk Violet Yu.

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This research was supported in part by PSC CUNY Grant Category A, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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Yu, Ss., Smith, M. Commuters using public transit in New York City: Using area-level data to identify neighbourhoods with vulnerable riders. Secur J 27, 194–209 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2014.6

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