For what it’s worth, the 2022 CTA homicides were a huge outlier. The years 2001-2019 had 0-2 homicides each (filtering “CTA” in “Location”), then 4 in 2020 and 4 in 2021. Meanwhile, leading up to the pandemic, the National Transit Database says Passenger Miles Traveled was approaching 2 billion (https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/transit-agency-profiles/chicago-transit-authority), was down to 800 million for 2020 and 2021, and presumably came back up a lot in 2022 (no profile available yet).
I agree it’s not infinitely safe, but I do suspect transit comes out safer by most analyses.
Looks like some of 2022 homicides being high is something we should expect to continue (higher rates over several years) and some is it being unusual?
For the denominator in my division I compared 2022 trips (which did come back up a bunch and is final) with the 2019 numbers for average trip length (2.5mi). Looking at the data you found for 2021 (which I didn’t find; thanks for digging it up!) average trip length is 4mi (798,583,310 /195,980,563). I’d expect 2022 average trip length to be somewhere in between?
Actually, the problem is I misread the 2019 report. The number I pulled out was only for buses, which is not surprisingly lower than overall. Instead of 2.5mi (613M passenger miles divided by 249M trips) it should have been 4.1mi (613M + 1359M passenger miles divided by 249M + 230M trips). I’ll update the post.
Yeah, we’ll see [how transient the higher rates are]. It looks like NYC also saw a spike 2020-2022 (though I think rates per passenger mile are several times smaller) and this year isn’t looking much better (going by https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/transit-bus.page and the NTD pages for the MTA).
For what it’s worth, the 2022 CTA homicides were a huge outlier. The years 2001-2019 had 0-2 homicides each (filtering “CTA” in “Location”), then 4 in 2020 and 4 in 2021. Meanwhile, leading up to the pandemic, the National Transit Database says Passenger Miles Traveled was approaching 2 billion (https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/transit-agency-profiles/chicago-transit-authority), was down to 800 million for 2020 and 2021, and presumably came back up a lot in 2022 (no profile available yet).
I agree it’s not infinitely safe, but I do suspect transit comes out safer by most analyses.
Good point! I see:
Looks like some of 2022 homicides being high is something we should expect to continue (higher rates over several years) and some is it being unusual?
For the denominator in my division I compared 2022 trips (which did come back up a bunch and is final) with the 2019 numbers for average trip length (2.5mi). Looking at the data you found for 2021 (which I didn’t find; thanks for digging it up!) average trip length is 4mi (798,583,310 /195,980,563). I’d expect 2022 average trip length to be somewhere in between?
Actually, the problem is I misread the 2019 report. The number I pulled out was only for buses, which is not surprisingly lower than overall. Instead of 2.5mi (613M passenger miles divided by 249M trips) it should have been 4.1mi (613M + 1359M passenger miles divided by 249M + 230M trips). I’ll update the post.
Think you need to update this line too?
Fixed, thanks!
Yeah, we’ll see [how transient the higher rates are]. It looks like NYC also saw a spike 2020-2022 (though I think rates per passenger mile are several times smaller) and this year isn’t looking much better (going by https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/transit-bus.page and the NTD pages for the MTA).