[APTA-2048]

TTC is an insane asylum on wheels, it doesn't take much for the some nut case to crack. The other week i saw a guy kicked this foreigners shopping bag all over the bus, because she was talking too loud on her speaker phone. Her stuff went everywhere! Milk leaked everywhere , fruit and veggies went rolling all over the bus. lol Just another insane day on the TTC. No wonder people drive.

Insane asylum on wheels? That’s a bit much. I get the perception, but people really seem to lose perspective.

And “foreigner”? Jesus Christ, dude.

 

[T3G]

We cannot enshrine public transit as a ‘moral’ and ‘progressive’ transit mode and then allow the lowest denominator to run roughshod and dictate people’s experiences on it.

Those that can (voluntary riders) will simply choose vehicular transit instead as it allows them to escape these sorts of social dysfunction even at a cost.

Why do you (amongst others) keep framing the TTC in this discussion as though it exists in a separate dimension?

The transit system is a direct reflection of the city through which it runs. If you have a city full of people at the lowest points of life, you will have a transit system full of people at the lowest points of life. If action is taken to improve the situation of those people, you will see the same result reflected in the transit system. That's all there is to it. To suggest that this problem can be done away with with increased enforcement of some silly bylaws is nothing more than a fantasy, both from a logistical and financial standpoint.

N. B. the moral panic about homeless people on the TTC is getting ridiculous on this forum. From the way people write on here, you'd think every time you step onto the TTC you have to fight for your life. Can we dial it back a bit? Christ.

 

[81-717]

TTC is an insane asylum on wheels, it doesn't take much for the some nut case to crack. The other week i saw a guy kicked this foreigners shopping bag all over the bus, because she was talking too loud on her speaker phone. Her stuff went everywhere! Milk leaked everywhere , fruit and veggies went rolling all over the bus. lol Just another insane day on the TTC. No wonder people drive.

I'm not saying I expect other people on the bus to dish out some justice (like throwing him off the bus, and perhaps knocking a bit of sense into him), as that requires one to be built like a mountain and have a certain mental fortitude, but I'd feel quite satisfied if that's what happened. Did anyone react at all?

 

[jje1000]

Why do you (amongst others) keep framing the TTC in this discussion as though it exists in a separate dimension?

The transit system is a direct reflection of the city through which it runs. If you have a city full of people at the lowest points of life, you will have a transit system full of people at the lowest points of life. If action is taken to improve the situation of those people, you will see the same result reflected in the transit system. That's all there is to it. To suggest that this problem can be done away with with increased enforcement of some silly bylaws is nothing more than a fantasy, both from a logistical and financial standpoint.

N. B. the moral panic about homeless people on the TTC is getting ridiculous on this forum. From the way people write on here, you'd think every time you step onto the TTC you have to fight for your life. Can we dial it back a bit? Christ.

Framing it solely as a mirror of the city overprioritizes the TTC's role as urban space while ignoring its responsibility as a public service. While the TTC exists as part of the city, it is not a passive reflection and still has the authority and ability to enforce safety and.provide a quality of service and safety that people should expect from a publicly-funded service.

The moral panic is about safety on the TTC, not about the homeless- to dismiss it offhand silences real lived experiences. We should expect zero stabbings, dangerous anti-social behaviour, and violent outbursts on it, as both a confined space that people (especially the differently-abled) are unable to flee from, and as a public service that people have entrusted to carry them safely to their destinations. To do otherwise is to betray that implicit civic trust.

 

[T3G]

Framing it solely as a mirror of the city overprioritizes the TTC's role as urban space while ignoring its responsibility as a public service. While the TTC exists as part of the city, it is not a passive reflection and still has the authority and ability to enforce safety and.provide a quality of service and safety that people should expect from a publicly-funded service.

Please explain, at length, how you envision this taking place. I want to see this explained from both an organizational, and from a financial standpoint.

In order for there to be zero anti-social behaviours on transit, you would need to station a guard at every single entrance, public and private, onto TTC property. This means a guard on board every single vehicle at all times, at every possible entry point to stations, and at every possible entry point to a yard. To do anything less than that creates leaks through which people who are at the lowest points of life can enter. Note that this might or might not be someone dangerous, and being housed does not preclude someone from being dangerous.

As I said in a previous post, in order for such a person to be kicked out of the system, they first have to have engaged in some type of bylaw violation. That in itself is not a sure thing.

Now let's assume someone has violated a bylaw. You can have roaming checks of POOs wherever you like, but once they kick someone out of a subway station, there is nothing to stop that person from, say, walking down the street to the next subway station and causing trouble there. Also, since POOs have zero authority over people once they are out of the system, there is nothing to stop such people from waiting for the next surface vehicle, either. They have nowhere to go and all the time in the world - the math is on their side. Unless you are suggesting that POOs should start following people around public property to make sure they don't even think about entering the TTC from another point, which I doubt very much passes any kind of constitutional smell test.

Involving the police, of course, is a non starter, because most homeless people on the system haven't committed any crime, and those that do can only be caught after the fact - you can't arrest people for a crime they have not yet committed. At most, you might preemptively get a handful of them on minor misdemeanours like public intoxication or nuisances - not like those charges would remove them from society for good, however, unless they did something much more serious (again, not a sure thing). And there is the considerable financial aspect - how do you expect the TTC to pay for this much extra personnel? Do you understand just how many people would be required to fulfill this fantasy? And remember that the TTC can barely pay to operate its own transit service, never mind auxiliary activities such as playing judge, jury, and executioner.

So, you'll excuse me, I'm sure, if I roll my eyes at the ridiculous notion that all the answers to our troubles lie in bylaw enforcement.

The moral panic is about safety on the TTC, not about the homeless- to dismiss it offhand silences real lived experiences. We should expect zero stabbings, dangerous anti-social behaviour, and violent outbursts on it, as both a confined space that people (especially the differently-abled) are unable to flee from, and as a public service that people have entrusted to carry them safely to their destinations. To do otherwise is to betray that implicit civic trust.

First of all, if you actually read through this discussion, you will see lots of people conflating "homeless" with "dangerous". Second of all, I never said sketchy behaviour on the TTC doesn't occur. I said it's being blown out of proportion - and it absolutely is. Lots of people on here panic at the mere sight of a homeless person, however harmless, and are behaving as though we were in the end times, when the reality is anything but. I've encountered some sketchy folk on my travels, but also had a lot of extremely uneventful trips. So if you're going to use emotionally charged language like "silences real lived experiences", I can accuse of you of the same.

When discussing a problem, a lot more people will take you seriously if you don't overexaggerate and make it seem worse than it is.

And call me crazy, but nothing about the TTC strikes me as being special, that it deserves to be more safe than elsewhere. I don't want to be put in danger from dangerous people anywhere, and if the TTC started kicking genuine sketchy folk off en masse, they'd still be roaming around on the streets and putting you and me in danger. Would it be better if you were chased down by a crackhead in a park instead of a subway car? You want solutions, they need to be applied from the top down. Any suggestion to the contrary is not a real solution.

 

[gabe]

I'm not saying I expect other people on the bus to dish out some justice (like throwing him off the bus, and perhaps knocking a bit of sense into him), as that requires one to be built like a mountain and have a certain mental fortitude, but I'd feel quite satisfied if that's what happened. Did anyone react at all?

No one reacted. People like me who take transit everyday, just ignored it. I'm not stopping an unhinged man on god knows what drugs, he could have a weapon, it's not worth getting involved.

 

[81-717]

No one reacted. People like me who take transit everyday, just ignored it. I'm not stopping an unhinged man on god knows what drugs, he could have a weapon, it's not worth getting involved.

*sigh* if only his victim in that situation had a weapon she could've defended herself with...

stories like this are ragebait/TW for me not only because of the random unprovoked violence, but also because they never have any satisfactory ending to them.

 

[jje1000]

[...]

I mean you are engaging in an act of reductionism that enforcement = only literal armed guards at every entrance- sounds like a moral panic from you instead that keeping public transport safe requires police everywhere.

On the contrary, many transit systems utilize a tiered security approach with visible staff presence, patrols with a corrective approach, hotspot mapping in specific areas with recurring safety concerns, embedding social services that provide outreach, and clearly and consistently enforcing strategic behavioral standards. We can take a look at Montreal, which has expanded EMMIS social intervention squads in the Metro along with clear policy changes and increases in security staffing (and they do address that riders feeling safe is a priority):

The city says EMMIS is necessary as it's made up of front-line social workers who provide immediate responses to non-urgent issues related to the sharing of public space and "allows police to concentrate on criminal and urgent situations."

EMMIS mainly works with social organizations by offering referrals and car escorts to shelters or other resources.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/emmis-squad-expands-1.7293358

The Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) is deploying special constables and other safety employees in teams of four to monitor the 10 stations where riders have most reported feeling unsafe.

The stations that will see increased security are: Bonaventure, Lionel-Groulx, Atwater, Joliette, Frontenac, Papineau, Beaudry, Jarry, Jean-Talon and Mont Royal.

“The main goal is to improve the level of the feeling of security, and that there will be a quick response in case of an incident,” said STM security director Jocelyn Latulippe.

New security plan for Montreal metro - CityNews Montreal

Montreal’s transit corporation is vowing to strengthen security at certain metro stations by increasing the number of special constables on patrol. The Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) is deploying special constables and other safety employees in teams of four to monitor the 10 stations...

montreal.citynews.ca

And we can read on how the MTA of the past effectively made their system safe to use again in the 90s- as you stated, a constant passive police presence in the 60s was expensive, but what worked in the 90s was an approach that saw increased deployment to problem areas, involvement of shelters, and specifically targeted certain behaviours.

The key to effective crime prevention is to effectively delink society’s problems from criminal activity. Focus not on so-called “root causes” but on proximate causes. We can’t wait to fix society’s intractable problems, given our seeming inability to accomplish that.

Murders on the subway remain rare — 10 in 2024 — but if you ride the subway and think things used to be safer, you are correct. There were zero subway murders in 2017, and two or fewer every year from 2008 to 2018. Then police in the subway stopped enforcing many of the rules. In the name of social and racial justice, New York City, in essence, gave up its commitment to public safety.

[...]

Before this turn away from policing, rule violators were warned, cited, arrested or simply (and legally) “ejected” from the system. Ejection was a simple but useful punishment of sorts. The drunk and disorderly had to take their party elsewhere (or perhaps pay for a cab home). These once averaged thousands per month but have become far less common.

Unlike the 1960s, today the public safety problem is perceived not as gangs of robbing youths, but people with obvious mental illness or high on drugs acting in a way potentially harmful to others and not at all helping themselves.

How have the good people of New York City convinced themselves that people clearly out of their mind are best left to be so long as they restrain from assaulting fellow passengers? There is no endgame to living in the subway other than exit or death. This is important not just for them, but for riders who shouldn’t have to navigate prostrate bodies during their commute.

In 1989, when violence in New York City was far worse, the subway system faced problems similar to today in terms of crime, disorder and homelessness. Up to 12 people a month, 200 in three years, were dying in the subway from hypothermia, overdose, electrocution, fire, murder or being crushed by a train.

The Transit Authority responded: “The ultimate goal is to do what we said we were going to do, which is restore a safe, civil environment.” Rules of conduct and behavior were posted, 1.5 million pamphlets were distributed, and the homeless residents, many of whom had been deinstitutionalized in the previous two decades, were to be pushed to social services and shelters, or at least out of stations, trains and tunnels.

This initial attempt to move people to shelters was countered by demonstrators urging people out of vans and back into the subway. Homeless advocates filed a lawsuit, Young v. New York City Transit Authority. In January 1990, a lower court sided in favor of the plaintiffs, and the Transit Authority took down its posted rules of conduct. But four months later, just one month after Bill Bratton became Transit Police chief, the federal appeals court in Manhattan reversed the lower court’s decision, and the MTA was able to legally (and morally) remove vagrants, housed and unhoused, from the subway.

Public fear is driven not just by major crimes but by erratic, disorderly behavior, particularly when targeted at strangers. Determining whether a miscreant in mental distress is nodding out and harmless to others, or tweaking out with a history of violence, is something neither subway riders (nor workers) should be asked to diagnose.

In the winter of 1990-1991, the Transit Authority began operating six buses to take people to City shelters and transported 1,253 people. In the last five months of 1990, one in six people stopped for fare evasion was wanted on an active warrant, and about one in 80 carried an illegal weapon. Subway crime in every category declined. It wasn’t that most homeless people were active violent criminals, but rather a system without rules created an environment that allowed predatory criminals to run amok.

In 1991, misdemeanor arrests on the subway doubled to 2,000 a month (felony arrests remained relatively constant); summonses increased 35%, to 25,000; and ejections — simply kicking rule violators out of the subway system — skyrocketed, from roughly 1,500 to 8,500 a month. The result? Robberies plummeted. Pickpocketing and chain snatching decreased 23%. Transit murders dropped from 26 in 1990 to 20 in 1991. By year’s end, subway crime dropped 15%, compared to 4.4% in the city overall.

This was the beginning of New York City’s great 1990s crime decline. Murders would continue to drop, to four in 1997. As the system became safer, subway ridership began a decades-long rise. Yet it was hardly obvious that New York City had turned a corner. The New York Times quoted a rider in 1992: “Let’s be realistic here. Who feels safe in New York City?”

But a corner had been turned. Between 1993 and 1998 (even as Mayor Giuliani slashed social spending), murders in the city declined 67%, and the number of people detained in jails decreased. (A long-term decline in the city’s jail population began in 1996 and in the New York prison population in 1998.)

In 1994, when Bill Bratton became police commissioner, he declared the mission of the NYPD to be to fight crime, fear of crime and disorder. That may seem rather unremarkable as a police department’s mission statement, but looking back 31 years, it is both remarkable in the way it refocused the NYPD and provides guidance for subway safety today.

The key to effective policing on the subway is not police and much policing. In other words, the number of police matters less than what those police do. Subway rules already define unacceptable behavior. The bulk of riders simply want to ride without incident. What has been lacking is the political will to enforce rules which may reveal racial disparities in offending and also may put police officers in situations that involve use of force. More police on the subway can prevent crime and disorder, but only with clear leadership and an understanding of what can and should be legally policed.

One hears too often that “we can’t police our way out of this problem.” And indeed, police cannot cure mental illness or provide stable housing or health care. But if we define the problem more narrowly, as maintaining order on the subway, we can police it very well. The well-being of the city at large depends on it.

Vital City | Fix the Subway, Not Society

Lessons from the past on how we do — and don’t — enforce laws underground.

www.vitalcitynyc.org

Just because the city has shortcomings in terms of housing, addiction, and mental health doesn't mean that antisocial effects should be allowed to spill onto the TTC and persist indefinitely, nor does it mean that we are forced to pick between social programs and transit safety- we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

 

[SubHuman]

Interesting, and a good model for Toronto...

[sarcasm]
But, are we really sure that would be an improvement, for the rest of us and the severely mentally ill? They might end up in actual psychiatric institutions, with real qualified doctors, nurses, attendants, security staff, etc.
Is there something inadequate about our present arrangement of the libraries and subway system being de facto psychiatric institutions, without the qualified staff, and the added feature of the subway tracks to endanger themselves, maybe getting run over by trains 13 times before anyone notices?

... I would refer you to scroll through the TCC Service Alerts posts ... is bogged down by a small minority of people.

People complaining, and wanting to use the subways to get where they're going with fewer of the continual delays? Well, that's kind of a narrow and selfish concern of theirs.
[/sarcasm]

 

[Admiral Beez]

The other week i saw a guy kicked this foreigners shopping bag all over the bus, because she was talking too loud on her speaker phone.

Then call me crazy, since I'd be cheering on our guy vs. speaker phone user. I hate those bloody people who use speaker phones in enclosed public spaces. Why can't people hold their phones to their ear like we have for the last hundred and fifty years? I was at my doctor's office last month and the nurse, bless her actually asked one of these idiots to leave when he would not stop his Facetime speaker call. This is the downside of wifi on the subway, since they'll now be no escape from speaker phone users, unless our crazy guy steps up for us all.

 

[Parkdalian]

As someone who lived in Parkdale for a long time, I have endured a lot of anti-social behaviour on the Queen Streetcar. There's plenty of times I've adopted a 1,000 yard stare to avoid a conflict with someone itching for a fight. I also don't think it's great to have people use drugs on the TTC, be intoxicated or become belligerent. Heck, I'm not a huge fan of people eating smelly food, listening to their phones or clipping their nails. Being around people who don't follow social norms is tiring and upsetting.

But I don't know if there's any solution that will magically or quickly fix the problem without a severe curtailment of freedom. Also, I think everyone, whether they realize it or not, is basically advocating for some alternate housing for these people:

• More shelter spaces
• Subsidized housing
• Psychiatric confinement (involuntary, expensive housing)
• Jail (involuntary, somewhat cheaper housing than psychiatric confinement)
• Not riding the TTC (ie they should be forced to sleep/live rough somewhere less safe and less climate-controlled)

We could have sufficient housing for everyone, but our society is based upon the idea that not being able to access housing is a result of moral failure. People talk about fear of safety, but I think they are really talking about disgust. Consider how much of a struggle it is to build shelters anywhere in the city outside of downtown. Or how Ontario Works is basically impossible to live on in Toronto, but there is no pressure to increase the rates: https://www.toronto.ca/community-pe...eekers-in-financial-need/ontario-works-rates/

We are an individualistic society, and if you find yourself outside of a stabilizing web of family and friends - perhaps because of violence and abuse - you will be met with disgust everywhere you go in the city. No wonder many of these people feel angry at everyone they see who treats them like human garbage, as something to be hidden away and never acknowledged or cared for.

 

[T3G]

I mean you are engaging in an act of reductionism that enforcement = only literal armed guards at every entrance- sounds like a moral panic from you instead that keeping public transport safe requires police everywhere.

On the contrary, many transit systems utilize a tiered security approach with visible staff presence, patrols with a corrective approach, hotspot mapping in specific areas with recurring safety concerns, embedding social services that provide outreach, and clearly and consistently enforcing strategic behavioral standards. We can take a look at Montreal, which has expanded EMMIS social intervention squads in the Metro along with clear policy changes and increases in security staffing (and they do address that riders feeling safe is a priority):

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/emmis-squad-expands-1.7293358

New security plan for Montreal metro - CityNews Montreal

Montreal’s transit corporation is vowing to strengthen security at certain metro stations by increasing the number of special constables on patrol. The Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) is deploying special constables and other safety employees in teams of four to monitor the 10 stations...

montreal.citynews.ca

And we can read on how the MTA of the past effectively made their system safe to use again in the 90s- as you stated, a constant passive police presence in the 60s was expensive, but what worked in the 90s was an approach that saw increased deployment to problem areas, involvement of shelters, and specifically targeted certain behaviours.

Vital City | Fix the Subway, Not Society

Lessons from the past on how we do — and don’t — enforce laws underground.

www.vitalcitynyc.org

Just because the city has shortcomings in terms of housing, addiction, and mental health doesn't mean that antisocial effects should be allowed to spill onto the TTC and persist indefinitely, nor does it mean that we are forced to pick between social programs and transit safety- we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

A lot of what you just mentioned involves exactly the type of top-down solutions I was advocating for in the first place. Involving shelters and outreach services in targeting the transient population specifically on the transit system is something that the TTC can't do of their own accord, there has to be money for that. We keep hearing about how there aren't enough beds in the shelter system - and also about how many homeless people choose not to use shelters due to safety concerns. If the shelters are not viable for these reasons, then no amount of security presence is going to achieve anything, because you can't compel someone to go to a shelter that might be overcrowded, dirty, or otherwise unsafe, and, as I said in my previous posts, kicking someone out of one TTC property a) can't be done unless they've actually violated a bylaw, and b) doesn't safeguard against them going to a second TTC property, instead (unless you have the guards at every possible entrance to the TTC that I mentioned above). The fact is, the TTC's ability to do much of anything about the problem is highly limited.

Then call me crazy, since I'd be cheering on our guy vs. speaker phone user. I hate those bloody people who use speaker phones in enclosed public spaces. Why can't people hold their phones to their ear like we have for the last hundred and fifty years? I was at my doctor's office last month and the nurse, bless her actually asked one of these idiots to leave when he would not stop his Facetime speaker call. This is the downside of wifi on the subway, since they'll now be no escape from speaker phone users, unless our crazy guy steps up for us all.

These two things are not mutually exclusive. The speaker phone user is inconsiderate, but if we let every fool with a grudge engage in vigilante justice against them, we will move closer towards, not away from, New York City in the 70s and 80s. Vigilante justice doesn't work (hell, official justice often barely works - can you say police brutality?) because most people are essentially stupid and shortsighted, lack all sense of proportionality (upsetting someone's groceries because they're being annoying? Really?), and routinely take it too far, while often targeting innocent people in the process. History abounds with examples.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The speaker phone user is inconsiderate, but if we let every fool with a grudge engage in vigilante justice against them

Very well said. The spread between wish and act needs to be maintained. But if you're sitting next to me on the bus and roaring a Facetime call don't be surprised if I'm wishing for a Final Destination moment.

 

[nfitz]

Then call me crazy

I got in trouble the last time I did that.

I hate those bloody people who use speaker phones in enclosed public spaces.

If people would just lean a bit closer, and join in the conversation, then people would stop doing it.

 

[turbanplanner]

I got in trouble the last time I did that.

If people would just lean a bit closer, and join in the conversation, then people would stop doing it.

I did this one and just got threatened by the guy, this was on a packed go train after a jays game last year as well!