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Montreal transit officials and the city’s new mayor say they are taking steps to address growing concerns about safety in the city’s bus and subway systems following data showing an increase in traffic-related assaults in major Canadian cities.
“There are a lot of problems in terms of how people feel safe in the city. It’s not just one problem,” said Mayor Soraya Martínez Ferrada.
She was responding to a recent CBC News analysis showing that the cumulative number of assaults reported on public transportation in eight of Canada’s 10 largest census metropolitan areas, including Montreal, doubled between 2016 and 2024.
Transportation-related violent crime rates peaked in 2023 in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, but fell slightly in those regions in 2024, according to the analysis. However, these rates are still well above those of a decade ago.
Martínez Ferrada, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said it is not a big increase in numbers, but there is a feeling of insecurity.
He said his administration has committed to increasing the number of agents patrolling the Metro, but that is not the only solution.
“I think we also have to address the homeless crisis and the drug crisis that we have on our streets,” he said.
In a statement, Laurence Houde-Roy, spokesperson for the city council public transportation authority, Montreal Transportation Society (STM), stated that the public transportation network faces, particularly since the pandemic, an increasingly difficult social context, which has caused an increase in cases of alcohol and drug consumption in its facilities, as well as an increase in vagrancy.
“Especially in the last two years, we have observed that this situation increases the number of incidents of misconduct and deliberate vandalism at our facilities, affecting both customers’ sense of security and our operations,” he said.
That prompted the June 18 renewal of the STM’s controversial policy requiring people to keep moving while at stations. This, Houde-Roy explained, is an additional tool for officers to maintain balance at stations and “allows them to more easily intervene with people who have no reason to travel.”
STM is also implementing a number of measures to ensure the sense of security of its employees and customers, including a text messaging service for non-urgent security issues (1-888-786-1119).
The STM has about 180 special agents and about 30 security ambassadors patrolling the network, with increased staff visibility at 13 stations.
There are more than 2,500 cameras in the Metro network, Houde-Roy said, allowing real-time monitoring of critical areas.
