Report of the Hundred and Twenty Third Round Table on Transport Economics held in Paris on 11th - 12th April 2002 on the following topic: vandalism, terrorism and security in urban public transport

Beyond the immediate effect of reducing passengers' insecurity, safer public transport also means higher patronage during off-peak hours, less money spent on repairing damage, lower staff absenteeism and less disruption to services. Governments therefore cannot afford to disregard the problem of vandalism in public transport. This publication includes the recommendations which the Round Table made on ways to combat vandalism, namely: the creation of local partnerships between all actors involved in crime prevention, policing and law enforcement; exchanges of experience; the issuing of guidelines on crime prevention and infrastructure design; and publication of case studies of successes and failures. Classifying individual measures is therefore one of the tasks that national and international authorities faced with this growing problem urgently need to address. Terrorism, because of its distinctive nature and change in nature since the attacks of 11 September 2001, needs to be tackled on a much larger scale and therefore requires a different type of approach.