Personal Safety and Transit: Paths, Environments, Stops, and Stations

As the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area looks to improve transit choices and seeks to improve existing transit service, the safety of transit users needs to be an issue that is considered carefully as each new service is added, old services changed, and new stops are added. This report is intended to be a resource for informing transit decisions in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area and in Greater Minnesota. It does not address the safety of the transit vehicle itself; many studies have done that. It focuses on the design of transit environments as they impact the personal safety of transit users. The report looks at site specific physical design issues, that is, transit stop or station design. But it also goes beyond to address the nature of the larger environment in which the transit stop or station is located. Issues of access are also addressed because the character of the pathways leading to and from transit stops are integral parts of the transit environment .