In today’s fast-moving world, public transportation is an essential part of our daily lives. In 2019 alone, people across the United States took nearly 10 billion trips on public transportation according to the American Public Transportation Association. Public transit is also a common method child traffickers use to move their victims. Knowing this, we must be aware of how this access can be exploited by putting our most vulnerable population at risk: our children.

According to the Polaris Project–detailed in their report "A Roadmap for Systems andIndustries to Prevent and Disrupt Human Trafficking,”1 in 3 human trafficking survivors report utilizing public buses, and 1 in 5 used subways or metros while being trafficked.

Our newly launched campaign, Together Against Child Trafficking (TACT) is dedicated to spreading awareness and sharing resources on child trafficking prevention at the intersection of public transit.

The campaign aims at disrupting child sex trafficking by educating public transportation riders and transit employees on how to identify the signs of trafficking and how to safely report.

The campaign is initially launching with two transit partners: Capital District Transportation Authority in the Albany region of New York, and Rio Metro Regional Transit District in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe region of New Mexico.

The campaign will be rolled out in other regions of the country later in 2024.

The public awareness campaign is part of a federally-funded project, led in partnership with a team of researchers, which will produce one of the only national reports about child sex trafficking at the intersection of public transportation to paint a more accurate picture of the landscape.

TACT leverages decades of expertise from some of the nation’s leading experts on mass transit and data analytics. The pilot campaign is designed in collaboration with survivors of child sex trafficking through the PACT Survivors' Council.