The Washington, D.C., metro area’s beleaguered public transit system (known as WMATA) trumpeted good news this week: “Crime on Metro in 2017 plunged to its lowest level in a more than decade,” stated a press release. “Last year, there were a total of 1,282 Part I crimes on Metro, a 19 percent reduction from 2016 … Declines were reported in every category of crime.”
Unambiguously good news, to be sure: Nobody wants to be a victim of crime. And crimes committed on public transit, an essential public good (and one used disproportionately by people of more limited means), are particularly loathsome.
Yet, squint a little, and the numbers aren’t quite as impressive as they seem.
The big tell is that WMATA released gross numbers of crimes, rather than crime rates. And the reduction in total number of crimes has come during a time of plummeting ridership. Fewer riders, fewer crimes.
Indeed, in 2017, average weekday rail ridership was 612,000—matching numbers last seen in 2001. In 2009, the year of peak ridership, average weekday rail ridership stood at 750,000, and passenger numbers have declined year over year since then.
Bus ridership, meanwhile, in 2017 fell 8 percent over 2016. That came on top of a 6 percent decline the previous year. In total, WMATA ridership is off roughly 20 percent from its peak—even as the region has grown in population.
In other words, the fall in the total number of crimes has coincided with a fall in ridership. (Perhaps criminals themselves have realized how inefficient the system has become, and have opted for other modes of transport and assault.) It’s also worth pointing out that the fall in crime has occurred as WMATA has severely reduced nighttime service—a particularly crime-ridden time of the day.
It does appear that the crime fall has slightly outpaced the ridership fall—a good thing indeed. But in the interest of full disclosure, WMATA should probably report crime rates along with total crime numbers.
