NC: After Charlotte train stabbing, former leaders reflect on light rail design choice

When the Charlotte Blue Line opened in 2007, then-Mayor Pat McCrory didn’t know if anybody would ride.

South Boulevard was a “tough” part of town, he said, a far cry from its personality today. People weren’t sure it was suited for light rail. Now, there are multi-story apartment buildings on nearly every block, trendy businesses and a wealth of young professional residents.

McCrory, city leaders and transit officials worked together to craft a brand that was clean, efficient, reliable and, above all else, safe. In time, transit became the “jewel of Charlotte’s success,” he said.

“It takes years to get it working, but it doesn’t take long to lose the confidence,” said McCrory, who left the mayor’s office in 2009 and later became North Carolina governor.

Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was fatally stabbed last month on the light rail in South End. The Charlotte Area Transit Authority does not believe the suspect purchased a ticket, raising questions about the light rail’s open fare system in which passengers board without first getting their tickets checked.

The Federal Transit Administration launched an investigation into CATS on Wednesday amid concerns over passenger safety. And Charlotte officials have made a series of pledges related to passenger safety and new security measures.

Experts and former officials who helped launch the light rail are weighing in on how the light rail’s design impacts safety.

Why Charlotte’s light rail does not use gates

Charlotte uses an open proof of payment fare system for the light rail. The rail does not use gates or turnstiles to control traffic onto the boarding platform.

The city followed the design standard for stations across the country in the early 2000s, said Ron Tober, the first CEO of CATS who served from 1999 until shortly after the light rail opened. Rail systems with higher passenger traffic typically use controlled access platforms. That includes cities such as New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

An open design was appropriate given Charlotte’s projected passenger volume and would reduce construction and operation costs, Tober said.

One choice designers face for rail systems: whether to build them at street level or not, said Bill Lindeke, an urban geographer specializing in non-motorized transportation. Turnstiles are easy to install if there are stairs or escalators to a subway, for example. But “at surface level transit, it’s really hard to do that, almost impossible,” Lindeke said.

Most of Charlotte’s stations are at street level.

“Providing an enclosed platform environment means putting up a lot of barriers and walls and, in some cases, grade separations to control getting into the station,” Tober said. “There’s a lot of tradeoffs that are embedded in this kind of analysis and decisionmaking.”

Simply put, the city didn’t have room for gates, McCrory said.

“We retrofitted the light rail line into this South Boulevard corridor. We didn’t own land all around it,” McCrory said. “And it wasn’t like a subway where you couldn’t walk around it. We didn’t want barbed wire fence everywhere. People could’ve just walked up the tracks anyway, then jumped in.”

Light rail fare was ‘never supposed to be an honor system’

In the light rail’s early days, CATS attendants checked tickets frequently enough that people assumed the risk of getting slapped with a fare evasion fee was too high, McCrory said. The transit system imposed “strong” penalty fees on riders who didn’t pay.

McCrory says fare enforcement efforts have since waned. People ride for free because the fear of being checked no longer exists, he said.

“It was never supposed to be an honor system,” McCrory said. “If you offer something for free, it loses its value. And when it loses its value, people abuse it.”

Fare evasion could result in a $50 citation and a Class 3 misdemeanor charge, according to CATS spokesperson Brett Baldeck. CATS claims it has already begun ramping up its fare enforcement efforts and plans to increase fare inspection personnel in the long term. Baldeck said CATS is pulling numbers now to see how much they have collected in penalty fees.

Reporters for The New York Post countered claims of increased security on Tuesday, when they reportedly rode more than a dozen stops along the same line where Zarutska was murdered. They saw no security presence on board the trains, The Post reported, and saw a handful of guards on the platform at a couple of stops.

During a presentation to Charlotte City Council late last month, Interim CATS CEO Brent Cagle said it would be “impossible” to check every passenger ticket on every vehicle.

Security is not stationed on every vehicle at all hours of the day. The goal isn’t 100% ticket validation, but to check “much more often” so passengers evade fees less often, Cagle said.

McCrory and Tober agreed it is not feasible to check every ticket.

But Tober says Zarutska’s death is less the fault of CATS fare enforcement than of the courts that let the suspect walk free despite an extensive record of mental health challenges and criminal charges, including charges for robbery with a dangerous weapon and communicating threats.

“I don’t know that CATS having a police officer or some kind of security person on that train would have stopped him, and he could’ve done it even if he had bought a ticket,” Tober said. “It’s awful, but there’s a societal issue that overrides this.”

How other cities are addressing transit safety

The U.S. Department of Transportation reported the rate of crimes against Charlotte transit riders was three times the national average, and the rate of assault on CATS transit workers jumped to five times the national average this year.

A CATS official said employees are looking at those numbers now but could not immediately verify their accuracy.

The American Public Transportation Association, a nonprofit international organization with 1,600 members, said CATS’ security practices are consistent with transit systems of comparable size.

More people experiencing homelessness began using public transit across the nation during the pandemic, according to the association. Many had mental health or substance abuse issues.

“Notwithstanding these challenges, overall crime levels on the system remain low, and the recent incident appears to represent the first homicide on the CATS light rail network,” the transportation association said in a statement. “Nevertheless, it is recognized that isolated acts of violence, however uncommon, can heighten perceptions of vulnerability among transit passengers.”

Other U.S. cities have been addressing rising crime and other issues on public transit affecting perceived safety.

“After COVID, transit agencies stopped checking fares for years, and it really disrupted the habits of people and sense of security,” said Lindeke, a lecturer in urban studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society.

Minnesota included the Transit Rider Investment Program in the state’s 2023 transportation bill as part of a $72 billion budget deal. The funding allows the city transit to hire TRIP agents, rather than police, to check fares and enforce codes of conduct. They also help connect people experiencing homelessness and addiction with social services agencies.

“That’s been making slow progress at decreasing the amount of public safety problems and quality of life concerns here on the system,” Lindeke said. “The fare checking structure is something you see around the world.”

Another issue transit agencies are facing is labor shortages.

“So even if you had the money to pay for extra security, it’s hard to (hire staff),” Lindeke said.

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