NC: New, key things to know about crime risks on CATS transit in Charlotte

The Federal Transit Administration has asserted that assault rates against public transit passengers and workers in Charlotte exceed the national average.

Shortly after Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on a light rail train last summer, the agency announced that the rate of CATS worker assaults had jumped to five times the national average in 2025, after being lower the prior two years.

It also announced that the crime rate against passengers on the Charlotte Area Transit System is three times the national average, something that it reiterated this month when releasing an audit of the system’s security measures.

The statements aren’t wrong. But they omit some important things, including raw numbers. Increases in small numbers can sound huge when specifics aren’t shared.

And they lack some important context: CATS properties are statistically, significantly safer than what surrounds them, a Charlotte Observer analysis of police incident data has found.

That said, two Observer analyses of federal data confirm that assaults on public transit property happen here at an unusually high rate.

But by how much depends on how you slice and dice the data.

What’s the source of the claims?

CATS is among the public transit systems that must report injuries or fatalities that occur on vehicles or their facilities, excluding those caused by illness, drug overdoses or natural causes.

Verbal attacks or assaults against passengers that don’t result in injury do not have to be reported. But those that result in injuries, death or hospitalization do.

Agencies are obliged to report assaults against transit workers too.

The transit administration publishes this information in several databases, including one that provides written narratives about each incident, which is what its analysts used to determine that Charlotte is above the national average.

How many assaults happen here?

CATS submitted 42 of these must-report crimes to the federal government from 2023 through October of 2025. Most were assaults, five were homicides and two were robberies. Most happened during or a few hours after work hours.

The administration has said assaults on transit workers here have “jumped,” which is true. But the number of incidents, it’s important to note, are small: CATS reported two worker assaults in 2023 and six in 2025.

But crime on CATS transit property is rare in Charlotte when compared to what occurs nearby. Less than 1% of violent crimes occurring within a half mile of any light rail, bus route, stop or terminal actually involved public transit since 2023, the Observer’s analysis found.

Despite that, people perceive public transit to be more dangerous than it is, said Matthew Palm with UNC Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning.

That’s true, even though the odds of getting hurt during travel are generally higher when driving.

“With public transportation, you feel more exposed. Because the reality is, anybody can get on board, right?” he said. “Whereas, when you’re in your car, you know you can lock the door and feel safe and psychologically, you feel less exposed.”

But Charlotte’s public transit perception problem seems to come mostly from people who don’t use the system. CATS surveys have found that most riders feel the system is safe but most non-riders surveyed don’t, said Brent Cagle, CATS’ interim chief executive director.

But, Cagle stressed, any violent incident on transit is too many.

“There are ways to evaluate this from a purely risk-management standpoint. The risk managers will say anything you do has risk and the goal here is to manage risk down to acceptable levels,” Cagle said. “That’s a tough place to be when you’re talking about people.”

How do the feds calculate crime rates?

For their crime-rate analyses, federal transit analysts divide the number of crimes by a measure called “vehicle revenue miles.” That’s the total miles all transit vehicles travel while in service.

So when federal officials report that Charlotte’s transit system has a higher assault rate than the national average, they mean that the number of assaults here is higher per mile than the average.

Using that measure, the Observer found Charlotte’s passenger crime rate to be about eight per 10 million miles and the worker assault rate to be about six per 10 million miles.

The national average is less than three passenger crimes and less than two transit workers per 10 million miles.

The Observer’s analysis includes only systems that follow the same federal reporting requirements as CATS, and assault data from January through October 2025.

What’s meant by ‘national average’?

Federal analysts averaged data from hundreds of different transit agencies around the country using a variety of modes, including on-demand ride services, van pools, monorails, heavy rail and funicular rail cars that climb steep slopes. They exclude ferries and the Alaskan rail.

They also combine data from transit systems small and large, some with different requirements about what they must report to the federal government.

Some of the smallest systems included in the comparison included the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority, a non-profit that operates a single trolley line in Dallas and University of Montana, both with about 60,000 miles.

New York City’s transit agency topped the distance list with more than 468 million service miles in 2024.

CATS logged about 13 million miles.

Where does Charlotte rank?

A second Observer analysis found only five other transit systems clocking at least 10 million passenger trips in 2025 that reported higher passenger crime rates than CATS, according to the Observer’s analysis.

The top three are in Dallas, Minneapolis and San Jose, California.

When it comes to attacks on workers, CATS topped the list, with about four assaults per 10 million passenger trips.

That’s if you aggregate data from all modes, including buses and rail, and include only systems that have the same reporting requirements as CATS.

The Observer used passenger trips instead of revenue miles to calculate crime rates at the advice of several public transit research experts.

Dividing crimes by miles can make transit in compact cities with short trips seem more dangerous than transit in sprawling cities with longer trips, said Todd Litman, with the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, a transportation research organization.

Reality and perception count

CATS has beefed up security in recent months.

“A lot of what we’re doing is aimed at restoring confidence,” said District 7 Councilman Ed Driggs. “We have to find our way back to where everybody perceives riding on the train the same way they used to.”

Perception is vital. Ridership dropped shortly after Iryna Zarutska was killed.

“We cannot take the perception issue lightly, even if we’re convinced that it doesn’t align with the data,” Driggs said. “We need to understand that if people are afraid to go on trains, that’s a bad thing. And somehow we’re going to have to restore confidence.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated after it was published with a comment from Brent Cagle, CATS’ interim chief executive director.

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