In a report shared yesterday, BART officials stated that violent crime decreased by 23% in the first quarter of this year compared to last year. This improvement adds to the already impressive 17% decline in overall crime recorded last year.
During a recent visit to Oakland's 19th Street and Fruitvale BART stations, East Bay Congressmember Lateefah Simon, who has played a pivotal role in focusing on BART safety, toured the facilities. A former BART Board President and District 7 Board Member, Simon has been a staunch advocate for enhancing the safety and accessibility of the Bay Area's transit system. She expressed her confidence in BART's trajectory toward becoming the nation's top transit institution in safety, emphasizing the connection between public transportation and social equity. Simon told BART's official news outlet, "There are [transit-dependent] folks like me who don’t have a choice, who aren’t jiggling car keys. They are riding BART because unfortunately, mobility in many parts of the Bay Area is still a privilege. We’ve made it a right here at BART."
The Safe and Clean Plan is central to BART's strategy to improve rider safety, with a broad array of measures, such as increasing patrols, implementing Next Generation Fare Gates to reduce fare evasion, optimizing train sizes for safety, and improving station lighting. According to a recent survey mentioned by BART, incidents of fare evasion have significantly dropped since the start of installing these new gates, and the number of riders who have reported seeing fare evasion on BART has gone down by almost one-third.
BART Police Chief Kevin Franklin acknowledged the contributions of numerous staff members in the fight against violence on the transit system. "This steep decline in our violent crime rate would not be possible without the hard work of the people of the BART Police Department," Franklin said, as per BART.
