How does light rail impact neighborhood crime?
We all know the feeling of standing in the driveway, watching a new family move into the neighborhood. How will the new folks fit into your groups? Many people wonder how light rail will fit into their neighborhoods, concerned that rail might bring vandals, vagrants, or other unwanted problems.
We looked for academic studies of this issue, and found one that looks at the Green Line of the Los Angeles light rail network. Specifically, it examined crime along the route for five years leading up to and five years after the light rail line’s opening.
You can read the entire study here. Below are a few points we gathered that may help ease your mind and lend some perspective to the picture rail could take in your neighborhood:
- The study establishes that the transit line has not had significant impacts on crime trends or crime dislocation in the station neighborhoods, and has not transported crime from the inner city to the suburbs.
- Less serious crime (e.g. vandalism) was higher in stations located in dense neighborhoods with higher proportions of youth.
- Certain land uses in the transit neighborhood (most notably the presence of liquor stores) showed a strong correlation with station crime.
The intent here is not to oversimplify the issue or downplay concerns about crime by singling out just three of the many observations the researchers have made. We encourage you to read the study and draw your own conclusions.