In the morning of Monday, March 2, an Edmonton transit rider was assaulted while travelling through Churchill Station to take the Valley Line LRT.
“They punched me in the face,” the rider reported in a text sent later that day to Transit Watch, Edmonton Transit Services’ safety reporting line.
“I didn’t report it sooner because I just wanted to get out of there and get home,” the rider said in the message.
That same day, Transit Watch received rider reports about harassment, open drug use, drug dealing, a fire being lit at a bus stop and someone waving around a flame lighter inside a transit centre.
The City of Edmonton has been trying to improve safety on public transit for years, hiring more peace and police officers, expanding outreach teams and spending more on cleaning and security upgrades.
However, text messages sent to the line over the course of one month earlier this year suggest many riders are still concerned about safety on the system.
CBC News obtained text messages sent to the line between mid-February and mid-March through an Access to Information Act request. The documents, which spanned more than 200 pages and show incoming reports and control centre staff’s responses, reveal reports arriving daily from across the city.
Many of the reports note concerns about drug use and smoking in LRT stations, bus stops and pedways.
“Sure would be great to make my commute without being exposed to illegal drugs and dangerously unstable addicts EVERY day,” one rider texted in February after reporting drug use in an LRT shelter at the Kingsway/Royal Alex LRT station.
Texters reported seeing people using meth, crack and fentanyl on transit property. One person reported being harassed and sworn at on a bus for 10 minutes by someone on drugs. Another said a female passenger high on drugs directed antisemitic insults and hateful comments toward them for several minutes without provocation.
“I would really like to go in and get warm at Kingsway Station but there are people smoking lots of pipes in there and I don’t feel comfortable breathing that in,” one rider wrote on Feb. 21.
Transit users also brought up witnessing drug deals, finding drug paraphernalia and seeing people urinating, screaming and blocking paths.
One texter recalled reaching into a ticket machine at Davies Transit Centre and finding a used condom.
“I wanted to report this because it seems like a safety concern if someone might reach their hand in there without looking,” the person wrote.
Other texts mentioned a pool of blood inside the Belvedere Transit Station, fires lit in transit areas, shattered glass, someone being shoved on an LRT train and stabbing threats at MacEwan LRT station.
