A shooting on a New York subway train Tuesday morning has FOX 13 News asking how safe public transit is here in Utah.
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Utah Transit Authority spokesman Carl Arky said in his five years with the agency, they've run a pretty safe system.
"Does that mean we don't have incidents? Obviously, we do — we're dealing with the public," he said, "but we've been able to respond to those."
Even after the shooting in Brooklyn, Arky said that doesn't change how UTA goes about business.
"We work with local law enforcement agencies up and down the Wasatch Front to have that kind of cooperation in case something does happen," he said. "We respond very quickly, especially if we're alerted to that, and we can have officers there within minutes."
The agency has a police force of about 100 people. If something does happen, Arky added that they train regularly for things like natural disasters to incidents like what happened in New York.
"We have all sorts of training with our police officers, our first responders, and we do it on a regular basis so that we're up to speed and we're ready for almost any eventuality or anything that could happen," said Arky.
According to UTAs Ridership Portal, close to 103,000 people used the system every day in the month of March. He's hopeful these kinds of precautions they take will continue to keep people safe if something were to happen.
"We would rather err on the side of caution and respond to that and make sure that everything is all right and everybody is safe," said Arky, whose biggest message is for the public to be both vigilant and aware of their surroundings.
Those who see something out of the ordinary on public transportation should call UTA Police Dispatch at 801-287-3937.
