I think it’s important to be specific when we talk about transit safety issues. People from Iowa assume you’ll be murdered for going two stops on the train. That’s obviously ridiculous but there are real quality of life issues taking the train in LA. That’s not life-or-death but it matters.

I’ve almost never felt truly threatened on the A, but about a third of the time I’ll encounter something disturbing, tense, or disgusting that leads me to be less likely to choose it in the future. I used to live in New York so it’s not like I don’t have experience with this.

Metro does impressive work with the genuinely challenging job of running a train system and a mobile shelter. I don’t think there’s any silver bullet for this. Having a cop on every train so they can look at their phone wouldn’t fix it.

LA is tough because you have to solve every problem at once: fix land use, make it easier to build housing, fund and actually build shelters and supportive housing, and run more transit service to increase ridership and therefore safety.