On a weekday afternoon, the LYNX Blue Line is packed snugly with people making their commute back home.

And while people are pressed close together, the mood of the train is largely congenial. A first time rider could witness friends making jokes to pass the time, another passenger reading a book or others enjoying the scenery as the train zips by.

It’s the kind of everyday experience that isn’t often reflected in headlines and conversations of safety, according to riders.

How best to address security is a question that has been at the forefront of the city since the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on the light rail last year. Saturday marks one year since that tragedy rocked the city, forever left a family without their loved one and grabbed national attention. Zarutska’s family has since filed a wrongful death lawsuit blaming the city and its contracted light rail security company.

The national attention that followed her death has clouded perceptions of public transit and the safety on Charlotte’s Blue Line. Since that moment, local officials have adopted a number of changes including a new fare enforcement program to improve security and a new fare policy to streamline the ticketing process.

While riding the light rail with Observer reporters, David Longo rattled off a list of improvements that’s been made or is in the works.

Longo, who is vice chair of the Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority’s safety committee, said over the next six months officials will look at using new technology as a “force multiplier” to bolster security.

“Like anything there’s no silver bullet,” Longo said. “We want to have the safest system in the country, the most secure.”

He said it’s important to continue to improve safety on the Charlotte Area Transit System, but it also needs to be more accessible to change the perceptions from people who aren’t frequent riders.

The state auditor’s recently released report on Charlotte’s public transit placed the question of best ways to address security back into the spotlight. The special report says, “above all, CATS should install gates or turnstiles to deter non-ticketed passengers, especially at light rail stations.”

DeCarlos Brown Jr., who was charged in Zarutska’s case and later found “incapable to proceed” in the trial due to mental illness, did not have a ticket on the night of the incident.

Longo said after the stabbing he shared the same thought as many others about implementing gates and becoming a closed system.

But it would be difficult to implement. Longo said at the very least it would likely require running fencing all around the line and installing a gate system that impacts trains.

“The big question that I have is, are we creating more of a hazard for people than we’re protecting?” he said.

Light rail passengers say they feel safe

The Observer interviewed two dozen passengers over the course of three days: during weekend events, an afternoon commute and after 8 p.m. Riders were nearly unanimous in how they felt about the light rail.

It’s always clean, they said. It’s convenient for those who live near it, and less so for those who don’t.

And although they often think about the tragic event last year, safety is not a primary concern.

“I’m more so the person, like, don’t let things like that control your life. I’m not going to stop taking the light rail because of one thing that happened, and it was a terrible thing,” said Madison Pitchford, who takes the light rail to work every day and to go out with friends on the weekends. “I think people want to be more safe, so they don’t take it as much, and I think that’s not fair to the public transport because it’s here to make it easier.”

Benjamin Dudley is a Charlotte native who has moved to other cities and back several times as an international teacher. He remembers hearing about Zarutska’s death from China.

“I think it’s gotten a lot of negative press because of the story,” Dudley said of the light rail. “Everybody remembers that. And it’s not unsafe, but it feels that way because that story sticks with you, and it’s in everybody’s minds.”

Dudley rides the light rail a few times a year to avoid uptown parking for events, he said. What’s kept him reassured is data that show violent crime on trains is low. CATS data submitted to the federal government reported less than four assaults per every 10 million passenger trips on the light rail from 2020 to October 2025, the Observer previously reported.

And while crime on public transit is rare in general, a February Charlotte Observer investigation found violent incidents were more likely to occur on buses rather than light rails, and that bus drivers were especially vulnerable.

Unlike their daytime counterparts, nighttime passengers emphasized the importance of staying alert even if they don’t necessarily feel unsafe.

“Have our heads on a swivel, keep caution of what’s going on in our surroundings,” said Anthony Blackwell Jr., a regular. “Protect yourself. Keep your eyes open. Stay sharp.”

Security expanded on the Charlotte light rail

Nearly every passenger who talked to the Observer noted a strong security presence, with longtime riders saying security especially picked up in the last year.

There are two different kinds of officers patrolling the transit system. The city pays private company Professional Security Services for most of the work.

But CATS also started working with off-duty uniformed police officers last year to quickly beef up security presence. Police now supplement PSS with 1,400 patrol hours every week. That partnership is funded through at least next June after the City Council voted to increase CATS’ security budget this year.

The city also expanded the jurisdiction of PSS officers in September to include the entire rail trail and transit-adjacent property, and it equipped security officers with utility terrain vehicles and patrol bikes to help them move across the system more easily.

“I feel safe now that they have upped security. I love it. I have no issues with it,” said Angela Washington, a northern transplant who enjoys riding the light rail for work and occasional leisure. “If I can get used to the subways in New York, this is nothing.”

Officers aren’t stationed on every train, though. CATS Interim CEO Brent Cagle previously ruled out that possibility, calling it unfeasible because it would require more than 250 workers daily. No other major transit system operates that way, Cagle said.

Security can be hit or miss as a result.

Reporters encountered zero officers during a two-and-a-half hour ride through uptown and South End last Saturday. The train was busy with passengers headed to two big events: a Charlotte FC soccer match and the Charlotte Pride Festival.

But during the afternoon rush hour commute on Tuesday, and again late Thursday evening, security officers maintained a heavy presence as they floated from train to train, station to station. A few were off-duty CMPD officers. Most were PSS security. They moved almost exclusively in pairs or clusters of three rather than spreading out individually and typically rode for a few stops before hopping onto the platform.

Cagle declined to discuss specifics about the deployment strategy. But security will never be confined to a single vehicle all day, he said.

“You may see five or six of them as they’re moving through. You may see one depending on time of day and all those things, but they’re always out there,” Cagle said. “They’re always mobile in the system on the platforms, on the trains, and that’s the goal of it: is to keep them mobile, to keep them visible, but also to allow them to be able to respond where needed quickly.”

What’s next?

Cagle said Zarutska’s death was a tragedy that shook the entire community.

“We think about it, and it really underscores something that we already believed: that security, safety of the passengers, of the operators, of folks who are in transit is a top priority,” he said.

CATS is making large and small changes to address that priority. Some, residents may have not noticed. Others are still being rolled out.

Fare enforcement in particular can appear random. Some riders said they have never been checked, while others said they have been more recently. In the first two days Observer reporters rode the Blue Line, they did not have their fares checked. But during a trip late at night their fares were checked twice, and one passenger who didn’t have a ticket was removed from the train.

Cagle said riders will not see their tickets checked every single time.

“But you should expect to be checked more often than not,” he said.

To increase enforcement, the city approved a new three-year fare inspector ambassador program earlier this year that will see 60 personnel hired for dedicated fare enforcement. It’s expected to cost Charlotte $5 million a year through a contract with Kentucky-based vendor Block by Block. The initiative will roll out in October, according to Cagle.

CATS’ 4,500 cameras now feed into CMPD’s Real Time Crime Center, the 24-hour intelligence hub located at police headquarters. Officials are also in the early stages of determining how artificial intelligence could be integrated into CATS’ camera system to improve security.

But Cagle said the question of adding turnstiles to the system is impractical and doesn’t address the root concern of many residents: security.

“Some folks keep talking about turnstiles as if they were security measures, and quite frankly, they’re not,” he said. “It’s a revenue measure.”

CATS officials have pointed to at least one place that is attempting to move from an open system to a closed system – St. Louis. The MetroLink is the regional light rail system for that city. And in the last few years, it’s launched a multi-million dollar security overhaul to enclose all of its stations.

The addition of the gates remains a contested issue for longtime riders, who described them as more of a nuisance than anything, according to reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Officials have defended them as a necessity.

Cagle said he will be interested to see how it plays out. But his focus remains on addressing security in an open system, rather than attempting to close it.

Despite the spotlight it’s placed on Charlotte’s public transit, Cagle said he values the partnerships the city has with the state and federal regulators.

“Everybody’s working to make transit better,” he said. “We appreciate that because that’s our goal too.”

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