Personal safety on public transport: research frontiers and new tools for an old problem

This chapter presents new tools to address crime and perceptions of crime on public transport. It is the first research to quantify factors affecting perceptions of safety (POS) at stations and influences of station design quality, anti-social behaviour (ASB), crime rates and experience of crime at stations and within the wider community and individual psychological and social-demographic factors. It presents a new tool to measure station design quality using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) concepts. Results show that POS at stations is most closely linked to feelings of safety in the local neighbourhood. The design of CPTED features is less important than their visibility to passengers since its their satisfaction with these designs that influences POS. These features and ASB were also found to be more influential than actual personal experience of crime. Policy and research implications are discussed.