101–110 of 262 posts
I'm sure that some other people have run into this scam on BART but I had it happen a few years ago. Right before the doors close at the SFO BART stop headed to Milbrae, a guy runs on all out of breath yelling and pleading for money to get a ticket for his sick daughter. He's a war vet and needs to get her to the hospital in Travis but they won't let her on the plane for some reason etc...Does this till the Milbrae s…
This is why it's hard to get support for public transit funding. People don't want to take public transit if they will fear for their lives, or be surrounded by drug addicts and mentally disturbed people yelling at and spitting on other passengers. BART trains and stations are like this on a regular basis; Muni has the same problems but not as bad. I've seen this kind of thing happen on Caltrain late at night also, b…
Is this just an American thing? Healthcare funding, or something? I've never been to SF, but I've visited NYC, and the subway there feels like stepping in to a horror movie. During a two week visit I saw people passing out and being ignored (I was the only one attempting to help), individuals swinging around bricks in socks, and various other obvious examples of severely mentally ill individuals. In London I've never…
I suspect that elected officials would feel significant pressure to act if this happened in London on a regular basis.
However, I’m not sure whether it’s actually true that BART is low on funds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know this sounds crazy, but I'd be willing to tolerate a modest number of bystander deaths if it meant a dramatic uptick in the number of criminal deaths. There can't be that many criminals. The steady-state equilibrium might be safer than the current regime, which is that criminals can assault (and kill) with little risk to themselves. Of course I'd like my chance of death-by-bullet to be zero. But for whatever re…
> I know this sounds crazy, but I'd be willing to tolerate a modest number of bystander deaths if it meant a dramatic uptick in the number of criminal deaths. I'm of the opinion that it's better for a criminal to walk free than for an innocent person to be punished or killed for something they have nothing to do with.
In Melbourne, we have a special police force (protective services officers) to patrol train stations at night. The anti-authoritarian in my dislikes them, but by all accounts (especially from my female friends), they're actually great. Their mandate is only to stop violence and disorderly behaviour, and they're actually super chill. Ticket inspection and fare evasion isn't part of their purview, which means they're n…
I don’t like the police any more than you do, but calling police presence in train stations “straight up fascist” cheapens the term. When you call every slightly authoritarian policy “straight up fascist”, nobody will take you seriously when you denounce actually fascist regimes.
I do see the point you're making, but conversely intensely oppressive and authoritarian regimes tend to get that way by degrees. It's hard to say where exactly the threshold of severity is, and by the time everyone agrees on it that usually means it was passed some time ago, and it's now too late to reverse by conventional means.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we should do absolutely anything other than increasing the number of guns in a crowded, enclosed space.
The more likely it is for criminals to be fatally shot by everyone around them if they try to do anything, the less likely they're going to try --- even if they themselves have a gun, they're going to be outnumbered.
This is why it's hard to get support for public transit funding. People don't want to take public transit if they will fear for their lives, or be surrounded by drug addicts and mentally disturbed people yelling at and spitting on other passengers. BART trains and stations are like this on a regular basis; Muni has the same problems but not as bad. I've seen this kind of thing happen on Caltrain late at night also, b…
Is this just an American thing? Healthcare funding, or something? I've never been to SF, but I've visited NYC, and the subway there feels like stepping in to a horror movie. During a two week visit I saw people passing out and being ignored (I was the only one attempting to help), individuals swinging around bricks in socks, and various other obvious examples of severely mentally ill individuals. In London I've never…
Yeah, BART police is a joke. I don’t remember ever seeing a BART police officer riding a train with me. I rarely see them in stations. Getting in and out without paying almost seems easier than paying. SF and Oakland officers never stroll through stations, which is so obviously wrong from a public safety standpoint, yet it seems to be policy. Then again I rarely see SF police officers walking the streets as it is. Ye…
BART is a critical resource in the Bay Area. It has to be safe and reliable to be useful. I feel like we've spent 95% of what is needed, but haven't gone above the 75% yield threshold.