Crime rates on U.S. public transport increase: media

NEW YORK, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Crime rates on trains and buses have been jumping in some U.S. big cities, causing an obstacle for the business hubs to return to "prepandemic life," The New York Times has reported.

"Just as a number of major cities are trying to lure people back to formerly bustling downtowns, leaders are confronting transit crime rates that have risen over prepandemic levels in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia and Los Angeles," the report said earlier this week.

The problems of "violent assaults, muggings and stabbings" on public transport have grabbed the headlines of several U.S. news outlets, the report added.

Jamie Gauthier, a city council member in Philadelphia, was quoted by the media as saying that the growing transit crime rate is part of a broader trend of soaring crime and violence across the city.

"We have an opioid epidemic, and we have a housing crisis," Gauthier said. "So the things that we've been seeing in the city, writ large, have also migrated into our public transit system."