University-provided transit and crime in an urban neighborhood

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This paper uniquely examines the influence of a new university bus service on urban crime. It concentrates on the interaction between the new bus service and a long-standing safe ride program. The new bus service is associated with a decline in safe rides, and such substitution raises the well-known concern that a fixed transit route may concentrate victims and criminals increasing crime along the new bus routes. Despite this concern, a series of difference-in-difference estimates demonstrate that the bus service reduces crime in the entire university neighborhood and that this reduction is actually largest along the new bus routes.