Most nights of the week, and even late at night, you'll find it hard to get a seat on the New York subway. The bottom line is that the more people around you in a city like New York, whether you're walking through the streets, waiting, riding or getting off a train, the less likely you are to be a victim. The subway is generally very safe. After midnight there are fewer people traveling and fewer trains running, but mostly they are people who are moving after long days of work, who go home from bars or homeless people who sleep.
Stay alert, but the chances of something unpleasant happening are very low. Over the next three years, the MTA also plans to add security cameras to all subway cars to help passengers feel safe and solve crimes. For a long time after the pandemic, the subway was closed to passengers after midnight, so this wasn't even a discussion. I'm going to visit New York for a few days and I was talking to a local about the subway system and they told me that it can become dangerous after midnight on the subway.
The retired chief of the New York Police, Joe Fox, served nearly four decades patrolling New York City, including seven years as director of the Office of Traffic. The dramatic increase in crime on the New York City subway keeps passengers on the edge of their seats, and crime increased by 70% compared to this time last year. And in October, a Citi Field worker was randomly stabbed at a Bronx subway station and a 15-year-old boy was shot dead on an A-train in Rockaway. Security is not limited to physical attacks, agreed Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, based in Los Angeles.
When asked about their strategy to help the homeless on the subway, New York City's social and homeless services officials said the agency had stepped up its efforts at subway stations at the end of the line and with heavy traffic. They said that municipal outreach staff had tripled in recent years to 600; Hochul recently announced that the state would send behavioral health specialists to help on the subway, who will help connect homeless people to social services and shelter. Subway employees are also concerned about the number of people with mental health problems whose problems they are not responsible for addressing. Gothamist is a website about New York City news, art, events and food, presented by New York Public Radio.
Beanca Beleno, who takes the subway home after her work in the kitchen late at night, said she now sees a lot of erratic people on the train. Around 9:30 in the morning on January 15 of this year, Michelle Go was waiting for a train at the Times Square subway station. Reportedly, he had a history of serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, and had cycled between hospitals and prisons over the years; the New York Times reported that he was homeless.
