Transit violence rising across Canada — in some cities by nearly 300%

This story is a collaboration between CBC News and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF).

The video made the rounds on social media in the summer of 2023. It shows two men fighting inside a Toronto subway car before one of them suddenly starts running away, screaming for help.

An instant later, another passenger yells: “He’s stabbing him up,” and a flood of onlookers flee the violence. As the person recording the scene joins the rush, they point the camera at the floor to capture what looks like a trail of blood.

Derek Dyckhoff was stabbed at least 10 times in the attack.

“I died on the operating table once and I’m pretty sure I was this close to dying on the subway floor,” Dyckhoff told CBC News and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF).

The stabbing was part of a troubling trend affecting several cities across Canada identified in a collaborative investigation between CBC’s visual investigations unit and the IJF.

The last decade has seen a dramatic spike in reports of violent crimes on transit systems in the Toronto area and several other metro regions, out of proportion with overall crime trends, according to exclusive Statistics Canada data.

The cumulative number of assaults reported on transit in eight of Canada’s 10 largest census metropolitan areas — regions that encompass about half the country’s population — doubled between 2016 and 2024.

That’s far out of proportion with the 53 per cent increase in assaults across all types of locations in those regions over the same period.

In the Toronto census metropolitan area, the data on physical assaults are particularly striking. The number of reported assaults on Toronto-area transit leapt by 160 per cent in that period, while reports of all violent crimes on the transit system were up by 127 per cent.

In Winnipeg, the overall violent crime rate on transit has more than tripled during that time — a 281 per cent jump in the number of transit-related violent crimes.

Meanwhile, rates have more than doubled in the Edmonton and Montreal areas, as well as the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge region of Ontario.

Incident report data from a freedom of information request to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) show a similar pattern between 2018 and 2024. 

Crime statistics like this are a major reason why Toronto Coun. Brad Bradford doesn’t feel comfortable taking his two young daughters on public transit.

“It’s the indiscriminate nature,” he said. “It’s the fact that you have nowhere to go.”

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green acknowledged that concerns about safety on transit have increased since the pandemic, but said “by any objective measure, the TTC is safe.” 

“We move millions of trips a day without incident, but we can never and will never take that for granted,” he said in a written statement. “The TTC and most transit agencies in North America are seeing more people with complex challenges seeking shelter on transit, which is why we have increased, enhanced and modified our approach to this issue.”

Signs of a slowdown, but violent crime rates remain high

There are signs the problem is easing in several of the regions covered by the data. 

Transit-related violent crime rates hit a peak in 2023 in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, but fell slightly in those regions in 2024. 

However, these rates still remain well above those from a decade ago.

• This is the first in a series of stories about violence on public transit. Do you have an experience to share? Send an email to [email protected].

There are some exceptions to the trend, as well.

The biggest outlier is Vancouver. The Lower Mainland started the decade with the highest rate of violent crime on transit of any city in the dataset, but that number has yo-yoed up and down since, trending slightly downward. By 2024, the Vancouver region’s transit crime rate was lower than that of both Toronto and Edmonton, and just slightly above Winnipeg.

Murtaza Haider, the executive director of the Cities Institute at the University of Alberta, has studied public transit for decades; his own research also shows a spike in crimes on transit during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, before beginning to fall somewhat.

The CBC and the IJF’s numbers raise new questions about trends he’s observed, he said.

“[Violent crime] hasn’t gone down to pre-pandemic levels in most cases, with the exception of Vancouver. So this tells us that there’s something other than what we know … happening, and there’s a greater need for cities and provinces to co-ordinate on improving safety on transit property and vehicles,” Haider said.

Green, the TTC spokesperson, attributed the continuing high violent crime rates on transit to increased reporting.

“We have actively encouraged people to report more incidents, we have more ways to report incidents and we have more staff to address incidents,” he said. “We can’t conclusively say if there are more actual incidents, but we can say we know about more incidents.”

Repeat offenders, not often homeless

A number of factors could be contributing to violent crime rates both on and off transit systems, said public transportation consultant David Cooper.

“The environmental circumstances that we’ve seen on transit have changed so much since the pandemic. We’ve had this opioid crisis. We have a mental health crisis. We have an affordability crisis. We’ve seen a difference in what’s occurring in our public spaces — and transit is not immune to this,” he said.

Cooper explained that during his ride-alongs with police, he observed much of the violence is committed by a relatively small number of people who have repeated encounters with officers and are often not homeless.

“An individual who is homeless is not committing crime on the transit system,” he said. “Typically a lot of violence that we’re seeing is very much around individuals who prey on vulnerable individuals.”

In 2023, Cooper wrote a series of recommendations for the Canadian Urban Transit Association, designed to address safety concerns. It includes calls for better housing and mental health support, and funding for more security and enforcement positions.

Just this month, the TTC announced a new safety plan that includes hiring additional staff to be present at stations, improved crisis response training and better security monitoring. The TTC is also implementing a crisis worker program for some portions of the subway system.

Winnipeg launched its own plan in September to address violence on transit, increasing police patrols on transit routes and in facilities.

Calgary has invested $15 million annually into its strategy, which includes dozens of new transit peace officers and connections with social services, while Edmonton is expanding its specialized transit safety police teams.

Declining arrest and charge rates

Data obtained through a freedom of information request to the TTC also shows a clear upward trend in the number of assaults on peace officers between 2018 and 2024. A single assault on a peace officer was reported in 2018 and one again in 2019; last year, there were 16 reported.

Five murders were reported on the Toronto transit system in that timeframe.

Buses — which account for nearly half of the TTC’s annual ridership — were the most frequent part of the system where violence of all kinds was reported, making up 30 per cent of reports in the data. About 16 per cent happened on subway cars and 14 per cent on train platforms.

The numbers further suggest that fewer of these incidents are leading to immediate arrests or charges, although the TTC’s data only provides a snapshot of instances where a suspect was arrested at the scene of the offence.

The arrest rate for all violent offences reported fell from 20 per cent to 11 per cent in the same time period, according to the TTC’s numbers. The charge rate dropped from about 19 per cent to 10 per cent. 

For Bradford, those numbers are not reassuring — but they’re also not surprising.

“I think that it would be in keeping with how people feel about the TTC, because we all, as customers, as Torontonians, see that type of anti-social or criminal behaviour on a day-to-day commute,” he said.

In the case of Dyckhoff, he said the attack began when he told the man behind him on the subway to turn down his music.

“He just wasn’t having it, so it escalated,” he said.

The video shows Dyckhoff throwing the first punch; it’s not clear from the footage, but he explained that he’d seen the other passenger reaching into his pocket to pull out a knife.

His alleged attacker fled the scene after the stabbing, but was later arrested and charged with offences including attempted murder and aggravated assault. The case is still before the courts.

Today, Dyckhoff tries to avoid public transit, driving instead. But that isn’t always possible.

“What am I going to do? Not ride it? I’ve got to get places,” he said.