AZ: Safety concerns stay high among Tucson bus riders

Tucson mother Carolanne Segar is sitting on the bus, eyes fixed on her phone's screen as she texts back and forth with this reporter.

She’s on her way home and says all she can smell is the instantly identifiable scent of fentanyl wafting her way.

Passengers are nodding out in plastic seats beside her.

Nothing about this is new, she writes in a recent interview using text messages.

Segar takes the bus every day. She uses the city's bus system to get to doctor’s appointments or to pick up food, sometimes requiring two to three different transfers depending on where she’s headed.

By now, she’s used to the “usual” bus antics, but “it can get scary,” she writes. She’s been followed off the bus, harassed, and had to take alternative routes to avoid particular hot spots. There are certain buses she won’t step foot on and certain stops she keeps a 20-foot distance from.

Let’s just say, things could be better, she writes.

On her SunTran wish list? Increased security and lighting — which the city addressed in its upcoming transit action plan — but she also wants to feel safe enough to take her three young children out and about again.

“I don’t dare ever take my kids on the bus at all,” she types, trying to keep her conversation private. When her oldest son was young, safety wasn’t a public transit issue. Today, she says, he walks more than a mile to school to avoid the ride.

“I don’t want to risk second hand smoke in my children’s system.”

Segar says that during her travels, she’s had drugs blown directly in her face. Her cousin administered her Narcan to prevent her from a possible overdose. Just the other day, someone got on her bus proclaiming he was the “Hatchet Man”. She had to Google what a hatchet was.

As recently as New Year's Eve, a man was stabbed 12 times in the neck and shoulder by a stranger with a pocket knife during an unprovoked attack on a bus.

Attacks like this have not been isolated, police reports show.

Severity of violence questioned

Tucson’s top council members say there's a “perception” that the city’s transit system is unsafe.

Mayor Regina Romero and Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz highlighted that sentiment during a Dec. 16 council meeting while commenting on a multi-tiered action plan to address public transit safety.

“There’s a lot of perceptions in terms of the amount of crime that is happening but still, even if those perceptions — and I don’t want to minimize the issues that have happened in our transit centers and within our system — but it’s important that we’re having this conversation and that we have a plan to move forward ... and that we continue to get better and better.

Vice Mayor Santa Cruz spoke of having a similar perception of transit safety as the mayor.

“I want to address this perception that you know that our transit system is unsafe," she said during the meeting. "We know through this investigation we have challenges at specific routes and stops.”

The action plan, a “living document” that features the wants and needs of the transit system’s future, focuses on adding extra security, off-duty officer deployment, driver safety, creating a rider suspension policy, extra lighting, and increased technology to the buses.

Some riders say it hasn’t happened soon enough and that Romero and Santa Cruz’ perceptions of safety are off.

Councilman Paul Cunningham said he, too, was confused by the mayor’s words.

“I understand the platitudes that the bus is so safe, but if it's so safe, why are we having this conversation?” Cunningham asked, directing his question to the mayor. “So, I think there’s a big perception that it isn’t safe, and that’s kind of why we’re having this conversation.”

The Plan

The city plans to spend a one-time allocation of $500,000 to hire three part-time officers who will be dedicated solely to the transit system. Another $150,000 will go toward improving visibility at bus stops and shelters, focusing on “hot spots”.

Romero said that the conversations the city has been having with stakeholders, since Aug. 2025, is “teaching us that the systems that we had before were not working.”

In the future, should they receive an anticipated $2 million RTA Next allocation in March, the action plan calls for expanded special deployment of off-duty officers, additional contract security with increased authority, and expanded technology that will allow Tucson Police to tap in to live cameras on certain busses as away to combat crime in real-time.

The action plan was created by talking to drivers, Teamsters, local police, and additional stakeholders. Their plan to launch a new SunTran app has already gone live.

Pushing out parents

For mother Jenn Sylvester, who has no vehicle and rides the bus with her daughter, free fares have been great and money-saving. That said, there’s a downside to their outings.

“The drug use at the bus stops is insane. I’m a recovering addict myself so it’s very triggering and it also (angers) me because of my daughter. Kids don’t need to see or smell that. No one does.”

Others lament about having to explain to their children the actions of those around them.

“Telling my kids not to look at people and mind their own business is sad,” said Tucson mother Cassandra Bock. “Answering questions they shouldn’t even have to ask is disturbing. I think it’s one thing to teach them compassion for a person who is living a houseless life . . . it’s another to try to explain using substances, self harm and under the influence behavior. Catering to adults who are using is not compassion for our children.”

Councilwoman Miranda Schubert said her constituents tell of a much different experience.

“Parents send their kids to school (on the bus) and don’t think twice,” she said, addressing the action plan. “We need to right-size this discussion in the bigger picture of what it means to keep the community safe.”

While not all bus routes see as much crime as others, 2025 did see several violent and fatal incidents occur at bus stops, on buses and at stations.

Perception vs. reality

While different people had different perceptions of the safety on the transit system, news of violent incidents weren’t hard to miss. Unprovoked attacks, assaults and even fatalities were splashed across news headlines, as recently as a few weeks ago.

In the Christmas Eve attack, Jeffrey Ashworth was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault.

Other notable incidents include the killing of Jacob Couch at a streetcar stop downtown. He was attacked by a man wielding a hatchet on April 5 and died 12 days later. But there have been other recent cases:

• On March 31, a woman reported being raped by a man she met when he was drinking with a group of people at a bus stop at Kolb and Speedway.

• On April 28, a 13-year-old girl was attacked at a bus stop near her school, near East Broadway and Harrison Road, when she was attacked by a man who had been talking to himself at the stop.

• On May 12, a woman was exiting a bus, looking at her phone, when a man at the stop accused her of taking his photo and grabbed at the phone. Two other people there intervened, a hatchet fell out of the waistband of one of them, and the original attacker grabbed it and attacked two bystanders with it, resulting in minor injuries.

• On Nov. 30, a man was hospitalized after being struck in the head with a metal angle iron as he attempted to use the bathroom at the Laos Transit Center. A second rider was threatened with a knife by the same attacker.

Transit not the issue

In spite of the crime, some people just enjoy taking the bus.

Jaime Vinal will admit there are a couple of “really gross” stops on major streets, but she feels safe taking transit from one side of town to the other. As far as she can tell, the issues that keep happening involve conflict between two people, and that can happen anywhere, she said.

“Random acts of violence could happen outside a bar,” she said. “It could happen on the street corner, and it does.”

It will be nice to have better lighting and get some of the rougher spots better looked after and cleaned, but as far as safety goes, Vinal said your odds are the same on public transit as anywhere else.

She points to this being a societal problem and believes fares should remain free.

“The solution isn’t making it harder for this population to access services.”

Romero said she hopes the transit system Ambassador Program, which brings service providers to bus stops and aboard street cars and busses, will fill a gap between the unhoused and the services they can take advantage of.

As for certain routes, “They never should have gotten this bad,” Vice Mayor Santa Cruz lamented, but that’s to be expected.

“The transit system is going to mirror societal challenges we’re having in parks, libraries, sidewalks and our allies and washes,” Santa Cruz said.

Vinal said she tends to agree.

“The issue isn't lack of safety on the buses, it's a lack of adequate housing, localized points of services, and the forced concentration of people with mental health needs,” she said. “That's the real story. I feel safe on the bus. I don't feel safe crossing streets on foot.

"Why do we give more attention to public transit incidents than the endless daily pedestrian incidents?”

The action plan will also address easier ways for passengers to air grievances, which riders like Segar are eager to do. Her complaints, she writes, have always gone unheard.

“I always fill out the questionnaire, but I feel like my voice is never enough.”

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