Ain’t no panic like a moral panic: The Calgary Herald, LRT crime, and how to misrepresent crime stats

When I moved to Calgary in the summer of 2000, I remember anticipating what I freak I would be for having to rely on public transit, Calgary being, I was lead to believe, a city that was so car-centred that I’d be like the old housecleaners who were the only people consigned to take what passed for “transit” in Mobile, Alabama, where I lived from ‘95 to ‘97. That entailed a 90 minute service for buses, only until 6pm, and only on weekdays. But I lived downtown, didn’t have my car (which was with Brian until he followed me a few months later), and it seemed that I had a convenient commute on the C-Train, so why not try car-free for a while?

And it wasn’t bad. Off-peak service, which was when usually rode because my schedule permitted me not to have to ride during rush hours, was an unbearable 15 minutes back then (it’s 10 now, even on weekends) versus the 5 or fewer during peak. I also learned that it was not only the poor or whatever other American stereotype exemplifies transit users on that train. Everybody uses transit, at least some of the time, here. According to a report by StatCan that will be released on April 2 (I saw the data tables even though the report itself has been delayed), 16% of all Calgary work commutes are with public transit. This is very healthy- well above the national average of 11% and behind only Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver (just barely); ahead of Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec City. But the real jewel in the crown of Calgary’s transit system is the success of its light rail (LRT), the aforementioned C-Train. With 270,000 riders per weekday, it’s the most successful LRT in North America, with more than twice the ridership of the oft-lauded MAX system in Portland, a city that’s more than double the size of Calgary, metro-wise. So being a transit user doesn’t make me deviant here, and I’m proud (and relieved) to say that.

In the midst of justified complaints about overcrowding on the LRT (and some buses too- I won’t even bother with the #2), there has also been a lot of hand-wringing lately about crime, especially since the horrific murder of a woman, a hard-working Filipina mother of five, near the Franklin station on the Northeast line a few weeks ago. Yes, this event was sickening and a despicable, unforgivable crime, committed (probably) by a subhuman dirtbag who has (probably) also raped several women in the Beltline. But is the system unsafe? One murder, with its hapless victim, shocking and disturbing though it is, doesn’t necessarily mark a community as “dangerous.” What about the transit system and its “community”?

Enter the Calgary Herald and its hard-hitting expose on crime on Calgary Transit.

When I spotted yesterday’s headline (”Crime Up at LRT Stations,” or something like that), I hoped this wasn’t just overstating, misrepresentation, or just plain innumeracy that would naturally contribute to the public’s sense of siege about LRT crime. Check out this map:

lrtmap.pdf

The report is crap. Yes, “crime” is “up,” but only if they consider a comparison between 2000 (why?) and 2007 (why?). It’s only “up” if they assume that ridership has remained static over that period (which it hasn’t even remotely done). It’s only “up” if you ignore the fact that it went DOWN between 2003 and 2007. And the stats only make sense of they’re STANDARDIZED, taking into account huge (20% in seven years) increases in transit usage during the studied period and the different numbers of riders at different stations. This report did none of that. It reported raw numbers, which is a terrible way to relate crime info- it’s like those idiots who say, for example, that New York City has the “most murder” of any US city but fail to take into account the fact that NYC has more than 8 million inhabitants. Finally, as you can see in the PDF above, the Herald decided to report its numbers in unreadable bar graphs that only clearly report the total numbers of “crimes.” The specific crime categories cannot be read- what does a “big” versus a “small” swath of red mean? Ten crimes against persons versus two, or a hundred versus ten? It’s impossible to tell; there’s no specificity or clarity to it at all. And the bottom line: There was, over the seven years studied, a 23% increase in crime and a 20% increase in ridership. The headline should be, “Crime on LRT Not Increasing,” but if it don’t bleed, it don’t lead, right, Herald?

(Incidentally, LRT crime went down a lot in 2001 because that was the year of the strike- and the decrease in crime coincided perfectly with a reduction in ridership that year.)