PHILADELPHIA — Robberies and aggravated assaults jumped more than 80% on the Philadelphia region’s public transit system from 2019 to 2021 even as it was at times carrying fewer than half the number of passengers who rode buses, trains, and trolleys in the last pre-COVID year.
And for so many months that it has become a background chorus of life in the city, riders of SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line have complained on social media of rampant disorder: smoking, open use of IV drugs, and human waste and garbage in stations and on trains.
Those are in many ways two separate problems, but they both feed a perception that transit is unsafe, which likely is complicating SEPTA’s efforts to recover from the pandemic. Average ridership is now at 53% of pre-COVID levels — or about 520,000 people on a typical weekday.
