Safety And Security In Transit Environments

Safety and Security in Transit Environments presents interdisciplinary studies from leading international authors. This important volume identifies key challenges and complexities in addressing security and safety concerns in transit settings, policy recommendations for prevention, and new frontiers for research at transit settings. Chapter 9 of this book is open access under a CC BY license via link.springer.com.

This is a chapter from Safety and Security in Transit Environments: An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Vania Ceccato and Andrew Newton. This chapter is available open access under a CC BY license. As other chapters in Safety and Security in Transit Environments assert, crimes such as pickpocketing can concentrate near bus stops, and crowding and congestion is a factor that heightens this risk. But to target interventions effectively, it is useful to determine what local-level interactions characterise this crowding behaviour. This paper aims to provide a first step to using data collected from laboratory experiments to address questions from crime and transport research. The experiment considered differences in interpersonal distances to further analyse crowding behaviour to attain further insight that could narrow the focus of possible interventions. Audio warnings are examined as a possible solution, and findings show that crowding peaks when passengers board the bus, and audio messages may be one approach for addressing this. To conclude, implications of identifying boarding as a problem area, and the effectiveness of warning messages as a situational crime prevention tool are discussed. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This is a chapter from Safety and Security in Transit Environments: An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Vania Ceccato and Andrew Newton. This chapter is available open access under a CC BY license. As other chapters Safety and Security in Transit Environments assert, crimes such as pickpocketing can concentrate near bus stops, and crowding and congestion is a factor that heightens this risk. But to target interventions effectively, it is useful to determine what local-level interactions characterise this crowding behaviour. This paper aims to provide a first step to using data collected from laboratory experiments to address questions from crime and transport research. The experiment considered differences in interpersonal distances to further analyse crowding behaviour to attain further insight that could narrow the focus of possible interventions. Audio warnings are examined as a possible solution, and findings show that crowding peaks when passengers board the bus, and audio messages may be one approach for addressing this. To conclude, implications of identifying boarding as a problem area, and the effectiveness of warning messages as a situational crime prevention tool are discussed.

Examines the nature and extent of transit crime, effective strategies to combat problem situations, and case studies of specific control practices deemed successful by transit agency professionals (with no distinctions drawn between bus and rail modes) are discussed.

How cities are planned and designed has a major impact on individuals’ mobility and safety. If individuals feel unsafe in public transportation or on the way to it, they may avoid certain routes or particular times of the day. This is problematic, since research has also found that, in some cities, especially those in the Global South, a large percentage of women are "transit captives". Namely, they have relatively less access to non-public forms of transportation and are, therefore, especially reliant on public transport. This issue is important not only because it affects people’s safety but also because it influences the long-term sustainability of a city. In a sustainable city, safety guarantees the ability to move freely for everyone and provides a wider sense of place attachment. Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities examines the evidence of victimization in transit environments in countries around the world, exploring individuals’ feelings of perceived safety or lack thereof and the necessary improvements that can make transit safer and, hence, cities more sustainable. The book’s contributions are grounded in theories at the crossroads of several disciplines such as environmental criminology, architecture and design, urban planning, geography, psychology, gender and LGBTQI studies, transportation, and law enforcement. International case studies include Los Angeles, Vancouver, Stockholm, London, Paris, São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogotá, Tokyo, Guangzho, Melbourne, and Lagos, among others.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429352775 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. No city environment reflects the meaning of urban life better than a public place. A public place, whatever its nature—a park, a mall, a train platform or a street corner—is where people pass by, meet each other and at times become a victim of crime. With this book, we submit that crime and safety in public places are not issues that can be easily dealt with within the boundaries of a single discipline. The book aims to illustrate the complexity of patterns of crime and fear in public places with examples of studies on these topics contextualized in different cities and countries around the world. This is achieved by tackling five cross-cutting themes: the nature of the city’s environment as a backdrop for crime and fear; the dynamics of individuals’ daily routines and their transit safety; the safety perceptions experienced by those who are most in fear in public places; the metrics of crime and fear; and, finally, examples of current practices in promoting safety. All these original chapters contribute to our quest for safer, more inclusive, resilient, equitable and sustainable cities and human settlements aligned to the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The study of how the environment, local geography, and physical locations influence crime has a long history that stretches across a number of research traditions. These include the neighborhood-effects approach developed by the Chicago school of sociology in the 1920s; modern environmental criminology that explains the geographic distribution of crime; the criminology of place, which focuses on crime rates at specific places over time; and a newer approach that attends to the perception of crime and disorder in communities. Aided by new mobile and digital technologies as well as improved data reporting in recent decades, research in environmental criminology has developed at a rapid pace within each of these approaches. Despite these advances, research in the subfield of environmental criminology remains fragmented, and competing theories are often kept apart. This book takes a different approach and integrates the subfield as a whole. It covers the core theoretical and empirical issues of how and why the environment influences the emergence of crime and how crime can affect the environment. The chapters reflect the diversity in research and theory from all over the Western world. In addition to covering traditional criminological research, the book probes how well current theories of environmental criminology contribute to our understanding of new problems and how well theories travel to other areas, such as West Africa, in which cultural differences might lead to different patterns in offending.

Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, or supplying energy. Each movement has an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, a destination, and a nature which is linked with geographical attributes. Transport systems composed of infrastructures, modes and terminals are so embedded in the socio-economic life of individuals, institutions and corporations that they are often invisible to the consumer. This is paradoxical as the perceived invisibility of transportation is derived from its efficiency. Understanding how mobility is linked with geography is main the purpose of this book. The third edition of The Geography of Transport Systems has been revised and updated to provide an overview of the spatial aspects of transportation. This text provides greater discussion of security, energy, green logistics, as well as new and updated case studies, a revised content structure, and new figures. Each chapter covers a specific conceptual dimension including networks, modes, terminals, freight transportation, urban transportation and environmental impacts. A final chapter contains core methodologies linked with transport geography such as accessibility, spatial interactions, graph theory and Geographic Information Systems for transportation (GIS-T). This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with a broad overview of its concepts, methods, and areas of application. The accompanying website for this text contains a useful additional material, including digital maps, PowerPoint slides, databases, and links to further reading and websites. The website can be accessed at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans This text is an essential resource for undergraduates studying transport geography, as well as those interest in economic and urban geography, transport planning and engineering.