CORY'S RANT： Wishful progressive thinking is putting citizens at risk
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
197.82156
Summary
In Alberta, light rail transit or LRT stations and trains in Edmonton and Calgary have been overrun with addicts to the point where hardly a day goes by without reading about another violent incident in the transit system. Drug use is open and rampant, while stabbings and random assaults on the system are actually becoming commonplace. We ve got multi-billion dollar transit systems becoming unusable by the general public, and city officials are afraid to do anything about it.
Transcript
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This is an issue that's affecting cities across North America, but particularly in
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Edmonton and Calgary. We're reaching a state of this peak Pollyanna-style denial among the woke
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when it's actually considered controversial to ask people to pay for products and services.
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Now, the opioid crisis has been sweeping across North America for years. Addictions are skyrocketing,
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overdoses are killing thousands, and homelessness and crime is spiking in every major city.
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There's no straightforward solutions to this problem. There's no magic bullet. It's going
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to take a combination of addictions treatment, mental health supports, housing initiatives,
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and law enforcement to get this crisis under control. Most of all, though, we need a solid
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dose of reality, and many municipal politicians refuse to apply that to this issue. So let's
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get to the history of what I'm going on about. In Alberta, light rail transit or LRT stations and
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trains in Edmonton and Calgary have been overrun with addicts to the point where hardly a day can
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go by without reading about another violent incident in the transit system. Drug use is
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open and rampant, while stabbings and random assaults on the system are actually kind of
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becoming commonplace. Heated transit stations and bus shelters have become de facto homeless shelters,
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while trains themselves have become pipelines for crime into suburban neighborhoods. We've got
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multi-billion dollar transit systems becoming unusable by the general public, and city officials
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are afraid to do anything about it. Traffic going into city sensors has been rising for months
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as we recover from the pandemic, and people are returning to work. Arcades that languished empty
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a year ago are filling up again. Streets are bustling with commuters during rush hour.
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Not so with city transit, however. Transit passenger levels in Calgary remain at 54% of what they had two
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years ago prior to the pandemic. Edmonton is better at 70%, but there's still a 30% drop in ridership.
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People are returning to work, but they're choosing not to use city transit. And can you blame them?
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To ride a train, one has to start the cycle of it. You know, you have to entrust your vehicle to a suburban
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parking lot at a station where there's clusters of addicts hanging around every corner. Vehicle break-ins are a
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constant problem. If you're one of the stations that still has indoor space, and I'll explain in a moment where that's
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going, you have to navigate around and over addicts camped out in various states of inebriation while being
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aggressively panhandled. Discarded syringes are often seen amidst the piles of garbage strewn about as
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addicts tear through bags harvested from alleys in hopes of finding empty bottles to return.
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Now, when you get on the train during the ride, open consumption of meth and other substances is
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often seen, while the ills of secondhand smoke are documented and smokers are chased from all public
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places. Protecting transit riders from crack and meth smoke apparently is not a high priority.
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Now, once you get downtown, you'll exit into a dystopian scene as wasted addicts shuffle and wander
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around if they aren't unconscious or even worse, wired and aggressive. It's typical to see first
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responders trying to revive overdoses throughout the stations and parks downtown as well. This is how bad
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it's getting. A lot of people aren't going into downtown these days. A lot of people aren't using
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city transit, and that's why I got to keep laying this out. You're not seeing it, but this is how it's
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happening. The only thing that's surprising is 54% of riders actually returned. These, I assume,
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are people who don't have vehicles or other means to get to work. Anybody who can find a way to avoid
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these hell rides on public transit is chosen to. So how is City Hall responding to this problem in
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Calgary? Well, first, they closed four LRT stations in South Calgary altogether. Rather than try to clean
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out the stations and make them safe, they just shut them down. Transit users have to shiver on an exposed
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platform while looking at a heated, shuttered, multi-million dollar station right next to them.
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And they're working hard as well to sugarcoat and change the language used to address the
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situation. No longer does any city official refer to crime or addicts. They refer to social disorder
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and vulnerable people. Now, this head-in-the-stand approach serves nobody. Call it what it is.
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The next area of denial and refusal is to reconsider the honor system for transit fare collection.
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While every major transit system in North America has some form of turnstile or fare collection for
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riders and their trains, Alberta's kind of unique in that we allow for an honor system. People buy
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tickets and board trains with no supervision. Occasionally, transit officers board the trains
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to check for tickets, but it's rare. I rode for months for a while and I never got checked once.
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While many people are law-abiding citizens who will pay their fare on their own, let's quit pretending
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that everybody will, particularly the addicts. The troublesome people riding the trains are spending
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every time they can get to buy drugs. None of them will spend that money to buy a train ticket.
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Enforcing fare collection on LRT systems will have an immediate benefit in removing the vast
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majority of the troublesome and dangerous riders. Whether this is done through turnstiles, as most
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cities do, or with a larger presence of enforcement on the ground, it has to be done. In Calgary,
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City Councilor Dan McLean, he did a ride-along with city transit officers and posted pictures of it.
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And he's proposed a turnstile payment on trades. Well, what's happened? He's been pilloried by many
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of his current council counterparts, along with other pundits. He's being accused of being
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insensitive and shaming the vulnerable. The Walker going wild and flooding social media with claims
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that McLean is attacking the homelessness. All McLean is asking for people to do is pay their
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fares. This shouldn't be controversial. Now, will fare enforcement solve the addiction, crime,
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and homelessness crisis? Of course not. It will, though, at least take much of that crisis
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off of public transit so commuters can safely return to using it. If the mess on the LRT stations
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continues to be ignored, ridership's going to continue to plummet. I mean, shall City Hall just
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keep their heads buried in the sand on this, close even more stations while the currently closed ones
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remain closed permanently? The addictions crisis is real, and it's growing. It won't be solved quickly
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or easily. Now, until public officials are starting, you know, are willing to face reality with some of
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the simplest common sense approaches to at least mitigate some of the harms from the crisis,
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though. It's not going to be getting better anytime soon. We're in a world of denial.
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It's causing real damage, and we've got to stand up and clean these things out. They're building
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a green line in Calgary. They're going to spend billions of dollars more to extend a train line
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where we can't even get 50% of people, more than 50% of people, to come back and ride on the old
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ones. It's ridiculous. And anybody who questions it is shouted down as they're trying with Dan