Controller links subway safety and student TranPasses
In light of a study by his office on how to enhance subway safety, City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday called for the elimination of the student TransPass and the return of paper transfers and tokens.
In light of a study by his office on how to enhance subway safety, City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday called for the elimination of the student TransPass and the return of paper transfers and tokens.
But SEPTA and Philadelphia School District officials said that the study was baseless, with no hard evidence to support its claims or recommendations.
Youth are responsible for half the violent crime on the city's subways, according to the study, and Butkovitz said that the TransPass contributes to the problem. The pass allows students to ride SEPTA an unlimited number of times weekdays between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., creating more opportunity for violence, especially by the 15,000 students reported truant every day, Butkovitz said.
Until the TransPass and, thus, the students can be tracked, a return to tokens and paper transfers would limit the number of rides per day and reduce juvenile subway crime, he said.
"There's a major problem with not managing student violence in the schools, and what has happened here is that it has spilled out into the public," he said. "And school district and SEPTA management are not exercising strategic thinking in trying to manage that problem.
"They just kind of throw their hands up and say, 'Oh, well, that's a fact of life.' "
The catalyst for the study was the fatal beating of Sean Conroy on a Center City subway concourse in March, Butkovitz said. Five truant students have been charged in Conroy's death, which occurred when he had a fatal asthma attack triggered by the beating.
The subway-safety study reported that youth crime and homelessness were the two biggest threats to ridership safety.
The study found that police spend an "inordinate" amount of time removing the homeless from SEPTA structures - an average of 157 removals a day. That's time that could be better used fighting crime, Butkovitz said.
Hiring "non-sworn" personnel, like guards, to clear the homeless would free up police officers to fight crime, according to the study. Placing homeless people in a shelter as opposed to taking them right back out on the street could also reduce the recidivism, Butkovitz said.
Other recommendations of the study include:
* Installing security kiosks in the Market and Broad street concourses;
* Updating, tamper-proofing and conspicuously marking the city's emergency phones;
* Implementing a SEPTA crime-mapping system;
* Installing city surveillance cameras in the subway concourses and adjacent tunnels.
SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney referred all requests for comment to a prepared statement by SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey, in which Casey said that detailing non-sworn officers instead of "highly trained" SEPTA police to remove homeless people could pose "more risk than benefit."
Casey also said that the report cites only "anecdotal commentary" on the misuse of the TransPass.
Fernando Gallard, school district spokesman, agreed.
"We are still trying to find the hard evidence that would back up the allegations to the conclusions reported," Gallard said.
"We have to agree with SEPTA that there's no correlation with the use of the passes and youth crime. There's not a single piece of evidence in this report.
"To condemn an entire free transportation program for children based on no evidence and just on anecdotal evidence - it's just insufficient."
Everett Gillison, the city's deputy mayor of public safety, agreed in a prepared response with several of the report's recommendations, including repairs to emergency phones, but said that "current fiscal constraints" would prohibit some improvements, such as safety kiosks.
Still, Butkovitz said that he didn't expect any agencies to heed the study's advice until another subway attack illustrates the problem again. *
