Toronto's transit agency is trying a new way to deal with unwanted behaviour on its system, turning to riders themselves to flag problems. The TTC has released a new safety strategy built around a program it calls the Subway Assistant Management program, or SAM for short. The idea is to give passengers a direct channel to report misconduct, but the plan has already drawn questions about whether it will actually make people feel safer.
At the core of the program is the agency's app. Riders can use the SAFE TTC app to report bad behaviour such as smoking or loitering, and once a report comes in, the person responsible can be publicly called out through the transit system's public address announcements. In a demonstration of how it works, a message from the transit control centre instructed an offender to stop smoking immediately, putting the warning out loud for everyone nearby to hear.
There are limits to where the system will operate at first. The announcements will only play on subway platforms, because of connection issues on the trains themselves that the TTC is hoping to fix. That means the audible call-outs are, for now, confined to stations rather than following an incident into a moving train, leaving a gap the agency still needs to close.
The program also builds in a path to escalation when a warning is not enough. If an incident on a train is serious enough, or if someone on a platform does not stop what they are doing after being warned, enforcement would be called in. Officials say the same approach will apply on buses and streetcars, extending the reporting-and-warning model across different parts of the network.
The rollout comes with a price tag and a model borrowed from elsewhere. Officials say it will cost about a quarter of a million dollars to put the new system in place. They point to the transit system in Sacramento as the inspiration, saying that city saw what they described as huge benefits from the approach, both in customer satisfaction and in an actual reduction in incidents.
Not everyone is convinced that an app and an announcement are the right answer. One transit advocate argued that reports from riders should be secondary, and that the priority ought to be having more visible staff present on the TTC rather than a message playing through a station. That concern was echoed by the experience of a rider who said they had been punched in the head the previous year with no one there to help, questioning whether taking a picture is really enough.
Alongside the reporting program, the TTC has taken other steps aimed at safety and support. The agency said it has added 10 new outreach workers on streetcars and buses, and that it has expanded the Toronto community crisis service into subway stations. Those measures are meant to pair the new reporting tool with a more human presence, even as the debate continues over how best to keep riders safe.