Members on a city committee voted to send transit safety survey results back to City of Calgary admin because they didn’t feel the cover report accurately reflected the data.

Nine councillors voted unanimously on Nov. 2 to have administration revise the highlights to be more accurate, include results from racialized individuals, provide a full financial accounting, and recommend how city council should prioritize transit safety and security spending.

The survey was done as Calgary Transit undertook a visible public safety transit pilot project, adding dozens of new peace officers and security personnel to the transit system in order to help boost both actual safety and perceptions of safety.

It was a telephone survey of 501 Calgarians that included frequent, occasional, rare, and non-transit users to gauge their perceptions of safety on transit. The survey measured transit use, perceived change in safety over the past year, awareness of the Transit Safety Pilot, likelihood of using transit, support for continued investment and priorities for future deployment.

While the overall survey results showed that 55 per cent feel safe using Calgary Transit, the results were weaker among women, with 43 per cent feeling safe, compared to 67 per cent of men.

Further, 45 per cent said their perception is that transit safety has stayed the same, with one in five saying that it’s improved. One in four said that it had worsened.

Ninety per cent said that they support continued investment in transit safety and security.

“One of the clearest findings from the pilot is that visible security presence matters. The pilot changed what riders see when they use the transit system, and both riders and Calgarians consistently reported feeling more secure when they saw uniformed personnel at stations,” said Adis Samardzic with the City of Calgary.  

“While visibility alone does not address every safety concern, it plays an important role in creating reassurance and improving perceptions of safety.”

Summary doesn’t reflect true data: Atkinson

Ward 6 Coun. John Pantazopoulos, who put forward the amendment to add $9 million for the transit additions into the last budget, said that the pilot clearly changed what riders see.

“Part of a pilot is the learning. We learned something and we’re executing, and there was a few things in the report I sensed we learned something, but we’re going back to the way it was,” he said.

 “The bottom line sums it up perfectly — the pilot has clearly changed what riders see. Visible personnel make riders feel more secure.”

Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson questioned how the report was presented, saying that it didn’t really capture the data accurately. While overall the report showed people feel safe, it largely showed that older men felt safest, and that prime transit users – youth, women and minorities – weren’t highlighted or reflected clearly in the results.

He said the data presented a juxtaposition where it showed overall positive results, but not in the outcomes for these groups.

“We’re just seeing people who already feel safe, probably largely older men, moving to feeling safer because of the visible presence,” he said, noting that it wasn’t converting people who felt unsafe to feeling safe.

“I get that like people want to feel more safe, but ultimately, we have limited resources to deal with safety and security. We’re coming into a budget. Allocation of those resources into the right buckets to get the right outcomes is exactly what we need to be doing. And yet, the recommendation from administration is keep doing this pilot that ultimately is not actually changing the overall visibility, safety, security for Calgarians.”

The recommendation wasn’t necessarily to continue with the pilot, according to city admin, however, it was to continue to fund the peace officers.

Alex Williams with the advocacy group Calgary Transit Riders said this pilot project emphasized visibility.

“If City Council wants to really improve transit safety, they need to be considering the root causes of disorder and discomfort on transit. Moving people from one space to another doesn’t do much to help transit riders longer than in the moment and it certainly doesn’t do much to help the individuals being moved. Quality transit safety policies need to be paired with real efforts on housing affordability,” he said.  

“More than uniformed officers on transit, what I think would get more people willing to take transit is greater reliability, better communication, and higher frequencies.”

The report’s recommended referral will come to an upcoming full meeting of Calgary city council.