A drop in crime points to efforts made to improve safety and security on Charlotte’s light rail, but a new state audit shows the system still has much work to be done.
The Charlotte Area Transit System, notably the light rail, has come under increasing scrutiny following the murder of Iryna Zarutska on the Blue Line last year. The resulting public outcry from her murder spurred city leaders into action, promising changes to ensure the safety of riders.
While the system has made progress — a notable 69% decrease in crime on the Blue Line, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said — a recent state audit highlighted a lack of fare enforcement on the light rail and bus systems and “limited interaction” between CATS and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The audit raised questions about the system’s use of its budgeted funds.
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Those who use the light rail claim they are seeing an increased police presence after Zarutska’s murder, which helps as a deterrent for violent or criminal behavior. But fare enforcement is still severely lacking, which can also play a role in influencing public safety.
Now more than a year since Zarutska’s murder, riders are acknowledging improvements made but also expressing a desire for more to be done when it comes to safety and security.
What CATS has done well
CATS leaders have implemented many changes to the system in the six months following Zarutska’s murder, the audit report said.
CATS has identified higher-risk routes, times and places; conducted reviews of higher-risk stops with help from law enforcement; improved after-action review processes and increased security by bringing in off-duty Charlotte police officers and deputies from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, the report said.
Riders are seeing the fruits of their labor, as they report seeing more police on the light rail now. Another audit released this year, this one from the Federal Transit Administration, noted that it was able to confirm the increased police presence. The FTA also found that a “significant number” of other safety risk mitigations from CATS’ Integrated Security and Public Safety Plan — released in November 2025 in response to Zarutska’s murder — were being implemented.
Roughly 1,000 hours weekly of off-duty officer presence have been added to the Blue Line, with rail operators indicating it’s had a “positive impact” on overall security.
One rider, Naya Clark, told Carolina Public Press that she’ll see officers typically in teams of two or three. A senior at UNC Charlotte, Clark uses the Blue Line to get to class three days out of the week. She’s been riding since before Zarutska was murdered and said things do seem a little different now compared to right after her murder.
“They have been doing a better job at asking people for their tickets, and there have been police on the trains a lot, but there’s periods of where they’re really on it, and then sometimes you don’t see them for weeks,” Clark said.
“But I guess it just has to do with timing, because they can only be in one car at a time.”
The Blue Line has seen a 69% drop in crime compared to this time last year, Charlotte police said in an April Facebook post. In a press release that same month, the department credited “increased staffing, faster response and targeted deployment” for the change.
A few online comments suggested a drop in ridership could be to blame. Data from the American Public Transportation Association does show an overall decrease in ridership on Charlotte’s light rail of 5.14% between the second quarter of 2025 and the same period this year. But Amy Thompson, the association’s director of public affairs, told CPP that this isn’t a significant change and attributed it to “reduced service due to scheduled maintenance.”
The city adopted its 2055 Transit System Plan last May, which aims to improve the transit system by providing a 50% increase in bus service and an additional 43 miles of rail. A tax referendum that passed last November, which raised the local sales tax by 1 cent, will go to help fund these improvements.
Charlotte public transit user Kelly Waters LaFlash told CPP that while the system isn’t perfect — cost and safety being two examples — she generally feels safe while using it, crediting a lifetime of “street smarts.”
“Overall, Charlotte transit does have its faults, but I remember what it was like riding 30, 40+ years ago, and that certainly puts it in perspective,” she said, thinking back to many years of riding the city’s buses. The Blue Line was added to the city’s transit mix in the 2000s.
The recent drop in crime on the transit system mimics a drop in crime citywide, with violent crime down by 32% from 2025, according to statistics from Charlotte police’s mid-year public safety briefing. Overall crime was down 16% in the second quarter this year, though homicides had increased slightly by 3%.
The department credited more proactive policing for the overall change.
“These reductions reflect coordinated, proactive, precision policing and the involvement of the community,” Chief of Police Estella D. Patterson said in a July press release.
“Public safety is a shared responsibility. When residents step forward and law enforcement agencies work together, cases are solved faster, trust grows and our city becomes safer.”
What still needs work
The changes made by CATS weren’t able to prevent a second stabbing that occurred on the light rail roughly two months after Zarutska’s murder, though it was non-fatal, the state report said.
While some observations regarding security were promising, the audit from the FTA still identified 18 areas of noncompliance by CATS. It also found other areas of concern, including how the system evaluates risk and how it monitors or follows through on fixes for the system.
In a press release accompanying the release of its audit, the FTA noted that the rate of crimes against CATS users is three times the national average for 2025.
“FTA is determined to do its part to address the systemic failures within Charlotte’s transit system that led to Iryna Zarutska’s tragic death,” FTA Administrator Marc Molinaro said in the statement.
“We look forward to seeing these 18 points fixed immediately to bolster safety for both transit workers and passengers.”
In a February 2025 letter, The FTA told CATS that it must respond within a month with plans to address each of the noncompliance findings in its review, and that the FTA would meet regularly with CATS officials to monitor their progress until they decide those meetings aren’t needed anymore.
When CPP reached out to the FTA to ask what progress CATS has made so far and what the FTA still wants to see from them, it pointed to the existing audit and related press release from earlier this year.
Fare enforcement is another big issue for the system, even going back to Zarutska’s murder. Her alleged killer reportedly did not buy a ticket before boarding the light rail, and it appears other riders don’t bother buying one either, the state report said.
As of December 2025, total nonpaying ridership among the light rail and bus was around 45%, and those not paying to ride the light rail specifically was around 60%. An estimated $5 million to $6.5 million per year is lost due to fare evasions, the report said.
Light rail user Jeanette Gallagher told CPP that she isn’t surprised about the number of riders who don’t pay.
Gallagher has been using the light rail regularly for about eight or nine years and currently rides it three days out of the week to get to and from work, she said.
“When you see how many people just hop onto that train, and it’s way crowded, I’m like, not all these people bought tickets,” Gallagher said.
“They’re smart and they know: ‘Hey look, maybe I’m homeless and it’s hot and I want an air-conditioned ride. I’ll hop on, and the odds that I’m going to get confronted or kicked off are like one in eight.’ So they’re just going to take the risks, and I’m sure they are losing a ton of money.”
One problem is the lack of physical barriers that could prevent nonpaying riders from boarding. Right now, riders can easily hop on the train, ticketed or not, the report said. The auditor recommended that gates be installed to remedy this, but the way the infrastructure is designed makes it difficult, Clark said.
“It's kind of hard because literally the whole infrastructure of the train is just built so bad,” she said.
“You basically have to start over for that kind of thing because it’s above ground, it’s not like a subway.”
Concerns over fare disputes leading to verbal or physical abuse of bus drivers led CATS to instruct them to stop enforcing fares, resulting in a drop in citations issued for fare evasions by 57% between 2023 and 2025, the report said.
Assaults can occur on operators even aside from fare disputes, as one did involving former CATS bus driver Sheila Andrews. Her nose was broken by two teenagers last year when she told them she couldn’t transport them on her bus, reported by WBTV 3.
She’s not the only one. The rate of assaults on transit workers at CATS jumped to five times the national average in 2025, according to a letter from the FTA in September 2025.
Tickets and fares are still checked, just not as frequently as they should be. Even if it’s discovered that someone hasn’t paid, nothing is really done about it, Clark and Gallagher said.
“You don’t feel like you’re actually going to get in trouble if you don’t have a ticket basically, which is probably not good because people are just going to do whatever they want,” Clark said.
The increase in police presence helps as a deterrent for violent or criminal behavior, but the report indicated there’s still room for improvement with police involvement, one example being the staffing of CATS’ Metro Transit Unit.
Professional Security Services already provides CATS with six armed guards, 26 police officers and one captain. In 2023, a memorandum of understanding between the city and Charlotte police allowed for the creation of a Metro Transit Unit and indicated CATS would determine the level of staffing for it with the cooperation of Charlotte police. The officers assigned to that unit typically help with patrols, investigate CATS-related crimes, respond to active crime scenes and more, the report said.
However, it’s only been staffed with two Charlotte police officers to date.
CPP reached out to CATS to ask why more officers haven’t been added to the unit, but CATS did not respond prior to publication.
Another area of concern was funds allocated for safety and security updates not being completely spent in fiscal year 2025. While CATS set aside more than $2 million for such updates, only a little more than $470,000 was recorded as being spent, the report said.
The funds set aside for updates are part of a Capital Investment Plan the city came up with for safety and security equipment. The plan includes a budget of more than $7.6 million to be spent on improvements over five years, starting in fiscal year 2025. This was supposed to be the largest spending year, but CATS only spent roughly 21% of its budget, the report said.
“Given the total amount of money budgeted for the five-year plan, CATS’s underspending in FY 2025 represents a significant deferral of planned safety and security work into later years, rather than completion as budgeted for FY 2025,” the report said.
CATS responded with multiple explanations for not spending the full amount in fiscal year 2025, citing extended timelines for certain projects, deferred spending due to active but incomplete projects, intentions to capitalize certain items after the end of the fiscal year and more, the report said.
What CATS riders want to see
Both Clark and Gallagher expressed support for installing physical gates or turnstiles at stations to deter people without tickets from getting on. While CATS hasn’t indicated whether it plans to install physical gates, it does plan to install fare validators for buses, streetcars and the light rail platforms by early 2027. This will help support a fare inspection team that CATS plans to deploy to check fares, the report said.
Both riders also supported the idea of a designated police force for CATS, an idea that’s already been on the city’s radar since at least last year.
Depending on the passage of the tax referendum, the city would start by hiring a police chief for the new department and conduct a study to determine the best structure for it. Listed as a “long-term initiative,” the city was planning on establishing this new department within 18-24 months, its public safety plan said.
Since the tax referendum did pass last November, CPP reached out to CATS to ask whether this police force is still in the works, but CATS did not respond prior to publication.
Although the police force could produce positive results, those results may take a while to be seen. While the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police, a police officer advocacy group, is not opposed to a transit police force, they said, the public should realize it would be anything but a “quick fix.”
“The reality is that a Transit Authority Police Department would likely face the same challenges currently affecting other law enforcement agencies in the region — most notably, staffing shortages,” the organization said in a Facebook post last year. “Local departments are already struggling to recruit and retain officers, and CATS’ existing security provider is experiencing similar issues,”
“Although the idea of a dedicated transit police force sounds promising, real improvements will take time. Creating a new department requires infrastructure, training, policy development and operational coordination — none of which happen overnight.”
If the new transit police force were to offer more competitive pay and benefits than other agencies in the area, it could attract more officers that way, but it’s still not a guarantee for success, the organization said.
Gallagher also had questions about how funds were being spent by the city. The City Council approved a $3.4 million deal between CATS and a marketing firm in December 2025 to help fund a campaign that would encourage people to use public transit. Having worked with a marketing firm since 2020, CATS said it was “simply time” for a new contract, the funding for which would come out of the CATS operating budget, reported by WBTV 3.
Gallagher said she’d rather see that money go toward safety measures that would help make the system safe, rather than an ad campaign to convince riders it was safe.
“You could take that $3 million and I don’t know, hire security,” she said.
“Put in some turnstiles at the stops. Maybe post someone at each stop whose job it is to say ‘hey, you got a ticket?”
Former Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles previously addressed the issue, expressing support for the City Council and its decision.
“If they did this and they decided it was the right thing to do, let’s give them grace now, right now say if this was something that was going to make a big difference for us or a difference somehow it was going to help our city be better, we spend money to make our city be better,” Lyles told WBTV 3.
Ultimately, Gallagher said she just wants to see funds be put to good use.
“Putting in a 1% tax, that’s cool,” she said. “Do it. I’ll pay it. But then what about all this other money you’re dicking around with, with stuff that’s not helpful?”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.