‘I just wanted to get out of there’: Edmonton transit riders report drug use, assaults

In the morning of Monday, March 2, an Edmonton transit rider was assaulted while travelling through Churchill Station to take the Valley Line LRT.

“They punched me in the face,” the rider reported in a text sent later that day to Transit Watch, Edmonton Transit Services’ safety reporting line.

“I didn’t report it sooner because I just wanted to get out of there and get home,” the rider said in the message.

That same day, Transit Watch received rider reports about harassment, open drug use, drug dealing, a fire being lit at a bus stop and someone waving around a flame lighter inside a transit centre.

The City of Edmonton has been trying to improve safety on public transit for years, hiring more peace and police officers, expanding outreach teams and spending more on cleaning and security upgrades.

However, text messages sent to the line over the course of one month earlier this year suggest many riders are still concerned about safety on the system. 

CBC News obtained text messages sent to the line between mid-February and mid-March through an Access to Information Act request. The documents, which spanned more than 200 pages and show incoming reports and control centre staff’s responses, reveal reports arriving daily from across the city.

Many of the reports note concerns about drug use and smoking in LRT stations, bus stops and pedways.

“Sure would be great to make my commute without being exposed to illegal drugs and dangerously unstable addicts EVERY day,” one rider texted in February after reporting drug use in an LRT shelter at the Kingsway/Royal Alex LRT station.

Texters reported seeing people using meth, crack and fentanyl on transit property. One person reported being harassed and sworn at on a bus for 10 minutes by someone on drugs. Another said a female passenger high on drugs directed antisemitic insults and hateful comments toward them for several minutes without provocation.

“I would really like to go in and get warm at Kingsway Station but there are people smoking lots of pipes in there and I don’t feel comfortable breathing that in,” one rider wrote on Feb. 21.

Transit users also brought up witnessing drug deals, finding drug paraphernalia and seeing people urinating, screaming and blocking paths.

One texter recalled reaching into a ticket machine at Davies Transit Centre and finding a used condom.

“I wanted to report this because it seems like a safety concern if someone might reach their hand in there without looking,” the person wrote. 

Other texts mentioned a pool of blood inside the Belvedere Transit Station, fires lit in transit areas, shattered glass, someone being shoved on an LRT train and stabbing threats at MacEwan LRT station.

Frequent transit rider Katarina Hamilton said she texts Transit Watch about once a month and regularly sees people blocking entrances and lighting fires, especially between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.

On one occasion about a year ago, she witnessed a fight at Central Station that involved weapons. 

Worried for her own safety and the children nearby, she texted Transit Watch and then contacted police. 

“That’s just not a great situation to be in,” she said.

Hamilton said having more peace officers working in the system and more security cameras on buses would make her feel safer riding transit.

ETS surveys thousands of riders every year and asks them about safety. In 2025, the percentage of transit riders who indicated they felt safe throughout their last transit trip was 61 per cent — unchanged from the year before. 

In a statement, Carrie Hotton-MacDonald, ETS’s branch manager, said riders’ perceptions of safety are shaped by so many factors that it’s difficult to shift perception over a short period of time. 

She said more people contact Transit Watch during the colder months and that texts to the service have risen year-over-year, along with ridership and promotion about the safety line.

According to data from the Edmonton Police Service, the number of times police were called to respond to violent incidents at LRT and transit centre locations increased from 292 times in 2024 to 307 times in 2025. 

Calls this year so far have been lower than in 2025.

Hotton-MacDonald said ETS is implementing a range of measures to help riders feel more safe on transit, including adding 30 peace officers and an eighth community outreach team.

“Additional measures being implemented this year that may increase perceptions of transit safety include providing cellular connectivity in LRT tunnels, conducting more rider outreach and engagement, providing travel training support to riders, as well as making infrastructure improvements in stations,” she said in the statement.

Ward O’Day-Min Coun. Anne Stevenson said transit safety has been a major focus for city council.

Pop-up events run by the Edmonton Arts Council are helping to make downtown LRT stations more lively, she said, and she said she wants to support other initiatives, like safety attendants.

She said challenges persist because the root causes of social disorder have not been addressed.

“I am encouraged by the announcement that was made by the province recently for an additional $30 million in housing, in drug treatment support,” she said. 

Data shows 90% of trespassing tickets on Edmonton transit go to those with no fixed address

When speaking about overdoses with CBC News last month, Coun. Jon Morgan said he thinks that people without access to housing or addiction treatment choose to use drugs on public transit for their own safety.

“They find themselves in places where they can use, where they will be seen if they are having drug poisonings,” he said.

David Cooper, principal of Leading Mobility Consulting — a transit and transportation planning consulting firm —  said cities across North America are grappling with this issue and how best to solve it.

Cooper co-authored a study on public transit drug use that was published last year and wrote a list of transit safety recommendations for Canadian transit agencies in 2023. 

He said cities like Edmonton have done many of the things he suggested, hiring more enforcement and outreach staff, spending more on cleaning and making design changes to stations to discourage crime.

“Where we’ve been having challenges across the country is how do we get our partners from the province and the federal government to do more on this?” he said in an interview with CBC News. 

He said one-time announcements toward staffing or capital improvements are positive but cities also need sustained support. 

“This is pushing a boulder up a hill right now, and the second we let it go, it’s going to fall back,” he said.