Western Standard - June 21, 2022


CORY'S RANT Calgary’s entire transit system a drug and violence laden dystopian nightmare.

Mentioned
Gondek
EXCLUSIVE： UCP leadership candidate Rebecca Schulz EXCLUSIVE： Free parking for municipal employees & survivors of socialism

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

213.23

Word count

854

Sentence count

58

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Calgary's transit system is devolved into a drug and violence-laden dystopian nightmare, and something has to be done about it. As the addiction epidemic continues to grow across North America, every city is grappling with these issues. I can t find one, though, with the dubious honour of actually having closed down their train stations to the public rather than deal with the issue as Calgary did.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Calgary's entire transit system is devolved into a drug and violence-laden dystopian nightmare.
00:00:06.380 And something has to be done about it.
00:00:08.840 As the addiction epidemic continues to grow across North America, every city is grappling with these issues.
00:00:13.820 I can't find one, though, with the dubious honor of actually having closed down their train stations to the public
00:00:18.880 rather than deal with the issue as Calgary did.
00:00:21.300 They've been closed for months.
00:00:23.100 A picture was shared with me yesterday by a commuter as he passed by the Chinook LRT station in Calgary.
00:00:28.580 The shelter was full of addicts in all states.
00:00:31.080 One was in the midst of counting money from a drug exchange.
00:00:34.280 Another was preparing to consume his newly purchased drugs.
00:00:37.660 And another was, well, I would say hopefully simply unconscious.
00:00:41.320 Overdoses have become a daily occurrence at those stations.
00:00:44.020 I was assured by the commuter that this scene was common and it's often actually worse there.
00:00:48.460 I can believe it.
00:00:49.500 I drive by LRT stations regularly and see the people laid out, along with the ambulances and fire trucks,
00:00:54.440 constantly there, and parked as the overdoses happen and they're called in.
00:00:58.520 It's a typical scene.
00:01:00.020 I used to take the train to our downtown office from the Westbrook station in Calgary.
00:01:04.880 And syringes and aggressive addicts just became too much for me.
00:01:07.940 I didn't want to deal with it.
00:01:09.100 And I accepted paying to park downtown rather than immerse myself daily in a rolling drug consumption center
00:01:14.380 that reeked of piss and felt unsafe. 0.62
00:01:17.100 Ridership on Calgary transits, it's 64% of what it was a couple of years ago.
00:01:20.900 So anybody who can avoid riding those trains right now does.
00:01:24.680 Not everybody has a choice to simply jump in a car like I did, however.
00:01:28.220 Many commuters have no other way to get around rather than use city transit,
00:01:31.340 and they have to endure fearful rides every day just to get to work and back.
00:01:35.560 Multiple random assaults have been happening on train platforms and in transit facilities.
00:01:39.740 The fear of the addicts is not misplaced.
00:01:41.880 They can often be aggressive and dangerous.
00:01:44.460 You know, to one legacy media outlet, to their credit,
00:01:47.120 a CBC reporter went out and took a ride on Calgary's LRT just a couple of weeks ago.
00:01:50.800 She reported what she saw.
00:01:52.320 She witnessed three overdoses and numerous aggressive actions.
00:01:55.880 Reporting on that, by the way, and that was just on one trip.
00:01:58.880 Reporting on it, many on social media, of course, got on her case and accused her of shaming addicts.
00:02:03.680 Look, we can't let addicts continue to take over the transit system
00:02:07.260 for a city of over a million people for fear of shaming them.
00:02:10.480 We can be compassionate while putting our foot down.
00:02:13.140 It doesn't mean we don't care if we take an initiative to remove addicts
00:02:17.180 from city transit facilities and vehicles.
00:02:19.180 It just means that we're accepting that that's not where they belong.
00:02:23.040 The bigger issue of how to deal with addicts once they're removed from transit will remain.
00:02:27.160 We can't refuse, though, to take action on one issue
00:02:29.460 in hopes of avoiding to have to deal with the other issue.
00:02:32.740 Calgary's downtown has nearly a third of its office buildings remaining vacant.
00:02:36.780 Bike lanes have taken out almost all the street parking,
00:02:39.060 while other parking lots charge a fortune.
00:02:41.180 If the city really wants people to come downtown, they need to take transit.
00:02:45.780 And it has to be safe, and it's nowhere close to that right now.
00:02:49.540 The downtown itself, actually, is loaded with addicts, feces, and discarded syringes as well.
00:02:54.720 But I just want to mostly stick to the transit issue for today.
00:02:57.740 The first full Calgary stampede in years is approaching,
00:03:00.920 and Calgary's hospitality sector is desperate to see an influx of tourists.
00:03:04.400 How many people, though, are going to make it their last visit to Calgary
00:03:06.740 after riding on the city's horrific transit system
00:03:08.760 and seeing the urban decay around them?
00:03:11.100 Would you really want to take your kids out into that?
00:03:13.660 Mayor Gondek and many of her city council counterparts
00:03:16.520 are trying to bring in an insane $87 billion climate change plan.
00:03:21.240 One aspect of their nutty plan, though,
00:03:22.720 is to have over 60% of Calgarians using transit to get around.
00:03:27.060 Well, I can tell you right now that sure as hell isn't going to happen
00:03:29.280 as long as transit's unsafe,
00:03:30.740 no matter how much they try to punish automobile owners.
00:03:33.000 They're just going to continue to drive more people out of the city altogether. 0.88
00:03:36.540 The mayor and the council want to pretend that transit is fine.
00:03:40.140 Maybe if they can be convinced that dealing with a problem
00:03:42.720 will help with their fictional climate emergency,
00:03:44.420 we can see some action.
00:03:45.960 I mean, Calgary is in a state of emergency right now.
00:03:48.220 It just isn't climate related. 0.98
00:03:49.960 I bet if they took their elitist asses out for a day 0.86
00:03:52.180 in road city transit as the commoners have to, 0.94
00:03:54.600 we would finally see some action as well.
00:03:56.940 But I won't hold my breath on that.
00:03:58.420 Thank you.
00:03:59.440 Thank you.