Slowing down: City transit workers take relaxation classes to cope with job stress

In a dimly lit room strung with fairy lights and ivy, transit workers file in and lie on inflated cots. Soothing piano notes play as a teacher rubs their ankles and toes, helping each with heated blankets and eye masks.

"Breathe in," she says. "Think of a balloon, filling up with fresh energy. Your spine dropping into softness."

The teacher, Lalita Dunbar, sprays a mist scented with lavender and lemon as she slips around the room.

"At the sound of the chime," she says, "take a deep breath in."

The relaxation class, held at the Brooklyn headquarters of Transit Workers Union Local 100 for New York City transit employees, has emerged as one of the ways in which transportation workers around the country are trying to manage their fear and anxiety over a rise in violent crime on subways and buses. Concern has grown after a series of especially brutal attacks in recent months against bus drivers, subway operators and station agents.

Reports of crime against transit workers have been rising since the pandemic erupted in 2020, when millions of Americans suddenly avoided subways and buses for fear of contracting Covid. Their exodus left transit workers more isolated and vulnerable to attacks.

Yet even with many travelers having returned to subways and buses, the rate of violent assaults on transit systems has remained elevated. The level of crime is all the more striking because it coincides with a steady decline over the past three years in overall violent crime in the United States.

Nationally, the rate of reported major assaults against transit workers reached a 15-year high in 2023, up 47 percent from 2020, according to an Associated Press analysis of Federal Transit Administration data. And between 2011 and 2023, the rate of assaults more than quadrupled.

By contrast, reports of overall violent crime in the United States have dropped every year since 2020, FBI data shows.

"We're in the line of fire every day," said Blanca Acosta De Avalos, a bus driver in Omaha, Nebraska, who was severely beaten three years ago by a man who had chased some women onto the bus. "We don't have no protection."

Yoga, meditation at Local 100

With transit workers trying to manage their stress over the threat of violence, some unions and transit agencies are seeking ways to both reduce violence and ease anxieties.

In New York, Local 100 this year began offering not only free relaxation sessions but also yoga and meditation classes. The classes were begun after a subway operator who had been looking out the window of a train at a Brooklyn station had his throat slashed in February. The victim was treated at a hospital, where he received 34 stitches and was released.

"Being a bus operator, you're pretty much worried about everything at every moment of every day … so you don't really get a chance to relax," said Grace Walker, a city bus driver. "You're driving a pretty big machine, and you have a lot of customers' lives at risk."

Walker, who attended the relaxation class, said it helped her decompress.

Among others attending the recent relaxation class was Margana Marin, who cleans subway stations. In her job, she frequently wipes up human waste. Sometimes, while emptying trash bins, she has to dodge passengers throwing garbage.

When passengers insult Marin, she takes a deep breath and uses a tactic her mother taught her when she was a child: Count to 10. If that fails, she counts again. Or she removes herself from the situation.

After the relaxation class, Marin said she felt rejuvenated.

Highly stressful vocation

Transit workers and officials largely blame lingering effects of the pandemic for the increased violence. After Covid struck, many transit agencies let riders hop on for free. Some people who were struggling to stay housed rode buses and subways for shelter. More riders overdosed on drugs. People who had previously used mass transit to commute to work stayed home.

Even now, transit ridership nationally is only at 75 percent of pre-Covid levels, according to the American Public Transportation Association. 

Last month, New York City's subway ridership hovered around 70 percent of pre-Covid levels while bus ridership was at about 57 percent. 

An NYPD officer looked down a subway platform at Grand Central Terminal in May 2021. Frank Franklin II/AP Photo

Even in the best of circumstances, transit workers endure disproportionately high levels of anxiety and depression as well as stress-related illnesses, including heart disease and musculoskeletal disorders, according to a review of dozens of studies published in the Journal of Transport & Health. During the pandemic, worries grew about contracting the virus or suffering intimidation or assaults from passengers, according to a report by the International Transport Workers' Federation.

"Sometimes it's not just the severity of the traumatic experience — it's the frequency, said Alexis Merdjanoff, co-investigator in a transit worker study conducted by New York University. "The verbal abuse is much more frequent, and we're noticing that it has a really big impact on anxiety and depression and overall mental wellbeing."

European researchers found that bus drivers, especially urban drivers, face among the highest risks of heart disease or high blood pressure of any occupational group, said Paul Landsbergis, a specialist in occupational health at State University of New York-Downstate.

Improving worker safety

Stockholm, Copenhagen and other European cities have progressed further than American cities, Landsbergis said, in improving conditions for transit workers. Some changes that helped ease stress were increasing staffing and giving workers more flexibility in work hours and vacation scheduling.

This spring, the Federal Transit Administration changed how transit agencies address safety. It imposed stricter requirements on the safety plans that transit agencies must submit to receive federal funding. The agencies must now include an equal number of frontline transit workers and management representatives on the committees that draft safety plans. And they must establish programs to try to reduce assaults by, for example, installing strong bus barriers or posting signs warning of penalties for assault.

"Nobody should have to go to work worrying if they're going to come home at the end of the day," said John Costa, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents about 200,000 transit workers in the U.S. and Canada.

In Europe, some buses include a cockpit that completely encloses the driver. So far, that's uncommon in the U.S.

New York's transit authority is testing barriers that stretch from the floor to the roof of the bus. On subways, it's considering adding cameras inside operator cars.

Governor Kathy Hochul in March deployed 1,000 officers, including state police and National Guard, to help check bags in heavily trafficked parts of the subway. Hochul also said the city would install cameras focused on conductor cabins to help hunt down assailants.

In the meantime, in addition to the relaxation and yoga classes, the New York union offers CPR and "stop the bleed" classes.

"It actually helps the mind relax and go into a sort of Zen where your mind's free of everything," said Local 100’s president, Richard Davis. "It would help you be able to think clearer and give you the objective of how to resolve situations, how to be able to interact with another person."

AP Staffers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Patrick Orsagos in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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