Western Standard - Western Standard special on the state of Calgary's LRT system

00:00:01.000 Welcome to a Western Standard special on the state of Calgary's city transit system.

00:00:07.220 My name is Corey Morgan. I'm a columnist with The Standard.

00:00:10.260 We have a special story that started out.

00:00:13.260 Every week I ride down to the Western Standard offices downtown on the LRT,

00:00:18.540 and I've been observing it just getting worse and worse with the amount of addicts and disorder and aggressive people, garbage, you name it.

00:00:26.820 It's all going on in there.

00:00:27.900 And I tweeted about it. I do that.

00:00:31.880 And somebody responded with a video that really helped open people's eyes up.

00:00:36.140 So I'll start it out with this, just to give a bit of the back story on why this has come to a head and just how bad things are gotten,

00:00:43.800 because I don't think a lot of people know what's happening here.

00:00:49.000 So this gentleman is putting together, from what he was saying, I guess the term tech is what he's using,

00:00:54.820 and I guess it's a downtown word used for meth, but yes, he's packing, apparently in my old parents is a pipe full of meth,

00:01:01.800 looking around and openly and brazenly smoking it right on a downtown Calgary LRT.

00:01:08.420 The person tweeting at me after I tweeted about how bad things are getting down there,

00:01:12.380 sent this, and this was sent the day I tweeted.

00:01:15.600 It's not like he had to wait or something, he kept in the bank, you know, waiting for it or something.

00:01:20.360 It was just daylight currents down there.

00:01:24.720 So, smoking away.

00:01:26.480 And you may note the woman who came and sat next to him.

00:01:31.460 So the gentleman who sent me that video had said that he'd asked her afterwards when the other fellow who didn't smoke and the meth left the train,

00:01:37.980 you know, why didn't you get to move?

00:01:39.240 And she said, look, I'm on here every day.

00:01:40.600 If I did that, I'd never stop moving.

00:01:41.840 I'd always have to get up.

00:01:43.880 There is so much in the news right now.

00:01:46.020 This has been such a bizarre, disastrous year that, you know, people just were overwhelmed.

00:01:53.680 And one of the consequences of the lockdowns in CERB and a number of things, though, has led to an addictions epidemic.

00:02:00.140 I mean, we have addicts on the streets like we've never seen, ever.

00:02:04.220 And a lot of people, because they're working from home, because they don't have a need to go downtown,

00:02:08.640 Calgary's downtown is a virtual ghost town for a number of reasons.

00:02:12.240 And those buildings are empty.

00:02:14.200 And the displaced people have taken over. 1.00

00:02:17.060 And they've taken over transit.

00:02:19.000 And it has just become hellish.

00:02:21.660 It's almost dystopian.

00:02:23.080 I know I'm using so many words, but in following up and traveling with it, as I said, as that started coming out on Twitter,

00:02:29.700 other people started sending their images and their comments on what they'd seen.

00:02:32.780 Look at this one.

00:02:34.060 One seated up in the front.

00:02:35.500 One passed right out in the middle of the floor of a train.

00:02:38.600 The gentleman on the right, somebody pointed out I didn't see the first time in the picture that they tweeted at me.

00:02:43.220 But, yes, he's got some sort of pipe in his hand on the left because it's cold out.

00:02:47.740 They're using these trains as traveling drug consumption sites.

00:02:51.720 So, again, it kind of says a little bit something, too, about the efficacy of safe consumption sites.

00:02:57.300 They're great if they're practical and handy to the addict.

00:03:00.120 But they will go elsewhere if it's inconvenient.

00:03:02.740 And right now the train is where it's convenient because it seems to be a free-for-all.

00:03:06.780 There's very little enforcement or anything going on.

00:03:09.020 As tweeted afterwards as well, the paraphernalia and garbage left behind, I guess they use foil when smoking heroin.

00:03:17.640 Some of them smoke, as was tweeted here by Bernard, another fellow.

00:03:23.720 This is apparently heroin.

00:03:25.440 He's smoking it right in the open on the train.

00:03:27.740 I mean, who can ride on this?

00:03:30.800 Who would want to?

00:03:32.340 How can you?

00:03:34.260 And there's a number of factors.

00:03:35.880 Look, I want to find solutions here.

00:03:38.720 I really do.

00:03:39.160 I don't want to shame these people.

00:03:40.700 They're addicts.

00:03:41.260 They're in trouble.

00:03:41.780 They need help.

00:03:43.340 But this is also causing a real problem for non-addicts, for people who are just trying to get to work, for people who want to get to work.

00:03:49.620 Would you ride on those trains with your kids?

00:03:51.980 Anyway, so I did a day trip, though, just to see.

00:03:54.480 You know, from end to end, well, not even end to end.

00:03:56.500 I got on Westbrook, rode the train to Marlboro Station in the northeast, and then switched over and rode a train back.

00:04:03.100 Just on one day, a couple of days ago.

00:04:05.940 So, I mean, it's not like I had to spend a lot of time to find these scenes that I'm going to show you here.

00:04:09.980 I didn't do a heck of a lot of filming and so on because, well, for one, I didn't want to get the tail beat out of me by an angered, troubled person or addict.

00:04:18.100 And I really don't want to shame these people.

00:04:19.940 Well, they've got trouble enough.

00:04:23.000 I just want to demonstrate what's going on.

00:04:25.100 They don't need their faces put up more than necessary.

00:04:27.440 So the first thing to greet me at Westbrook Station, though, and I see this.

00:04:29.700 This is where I get on quite often to go downtown for the standard is the Dope Team van out front.

00:04:35.180 And the Dope Team, it stands for Downtown Outreach Addiction Partnership.

00:04:39.760 They're partnered with Alpha House.

00:04:41.800 So this is, look, a tough, fantastic organization, by the way.

00:04:45.520 I'll start with that.

00:04:46.320 Like these are volunteers and other people who are going into the middle of scenes where people are addicted, where they're overdosing or they're in trouble.

00:04:54.420 They're in distress and they get in and they try to intervene and get them somewhere safe to Alpha House or somewhere for detox.

00:05:01.760 But they may as well have a reserve parking space for that van at the Westbrook LRT Station.

00:05:08.000 And that station, if you haven't been to it, is a large, wide open space.

00:05:13.560 It's heated and warm, which is, of course, this is a lot of why the homeless people in the attics are being drawn to this.

00:05:19.420 Because they're cold.

00:05:20.840 I mean, they're only human.

00:05:21.940 This is a comfortable spot to stay safe and alive while doing, well, unfortunately, very unsafe things.

00:05:28.320 So I get in and here's, you know, a peace officer and a Dope Team volunteer, you know, conversing with a person who was in some pretty rough condition over in one corner of the station.

00:05:39.560 Again, a typical scene.

00:05:41.040 I didn't have to wait around to see this stuff.

00:05:42.800 This is ongoing all the time.

00:05:45.180 This is what the state of the train is like all the time.

00:05:49.420 In the other corner of the station, there's a number of people wandering or passed out or in different states and capacities.

00:05:56.540 Again, it's just an unusual, almost dystopian scene to see in a modern city.

00:06:02.420 And, you know, another concerning thing, of course, is the paraphernalia and garbage laying around.

00:06:07.080 So I took a picture of this garbage.

00:06:08.060 I didn't even spot it until afterwards when I looked at the picture.

00:06:10.340 If you look at the top, kind of in the middle there, yeah, that is a syringe laying there.

00:06:14.680 And so somebody had been shooting up on the floor, left their stuff out.

00:06:18.100 But, again, would you want to bring a child into this station, you know, and turn your back on them for even a quarter second?

00:06:24.080 There are city transit staff trying to keep up with this.

00:06:27.960 They're trying to fix things up, but it's too much.

00:06:30.980 It's overwhelming.

00:06:32.740 So I finally got on the train and, you know, riding along, too.

00:06:35.760 So you can see typical scenes right out the window.

00:06:37.900 Glass has been smashed, you know, at stations all over the place.

00:06:41.800 They don't have enough time and resources to keep up with the vandalism and the graffiti and the garbage and the puke and the piss.

00:06:48.100 Because it is there.

00:06:49.080 It's got it all.

00:06:51.000 They try.

00:06:52.380 But, you know, the symbols of the broken glass, I might as well go into that for a minute.

00:06:57.720 So, yes, I know you economics geeks.

00:07:00.440 There's the broken glass fallacy, which is worth another video, which we'll do another time, especially when countering Keynesian idiots.

00:07:06.640 But for now, there's also a broken glass theory.

00:07:10.340 For those of us old enough, you might remember the reputation of New York back in the 70s and 80s.

00:07:15.340 You know, we used to have those movies, The Gangs of New York.

00:07:17.300 And the subway of New York was notorious for the crime and the open disorder and the graffiti.

00:07:22.980 And they came in with a strategy that was called broken glass.

00:07:26.180 And the way it worked was if you allow some social disorder, it spreads.

00:07:31.400 It gives a sense of lawlessness, a loss of control, and it just becomes impossible to contain.

00:07:40.120 So you clean everything up.

00:07:41.260 As soon as a window is broken, is it not broken glass?

00:07:43.240 Broken windows.

00:07:44.020 Sorry, I should get into it.

00:07:45.340 But as soon as you see a broken window, you fix it.

00:07:47.120 You don't give it a week.

00:07:47.980 You don't put tape in front of it like that.

00:07:49.240 You fix it now.

00:07:50.140 When you see graffiti, you clean it up right now.

00:07:52.100 When you see somebody passed out, you clean it up right now.

00:07:54.740 When you see disorderly people somewhere, you arrest them or get them at least somewhere away from the public right now.

00:08:02.500 And you cure that disorder.

00:08:03.740 You cure that sense of lawlessness and just open, you know, dangerous mentality.

00:08:10.800 And it worked.

00:08:12.020 I mean, New York nowadays, again, it's a large city.

00:08:14.520 It's got its crime-ridden areas.

00:08:15.780 It's got parts you don't want to go to.

00:08:17.000 But it's not nearly what it was in the 70s and 80s.

00:08:19.260 It took a while.

00:08:20.740 But it takes a concerted, ongoing effort.

00:08:23.320 Calgary has gone the complete opposite way.

00:08:27.320 It's let it go.

00:08:29.180 And these trains, as Derek labeled it a little while back, the crack train.

00:08:34.040 Like, they just, there's no enforcement.

00:08:37.080 And it's, you don't want to go on there.

00:08:39.300 So along the ride, this fella here, he's fumbling.

00:08:42.900 He was completely wasting it.

00:08:44.260 He's trying to load a pipe.

00:08:45.500 He's going through some stuff.

00:08:46.540 He's throwing his garbage around.

00:08:48.000 This is just one who happened to sit across from me.

00:08:49.760 And to my left, there were five other pretty rough-looking people.

00:08:53.920 And then to my right, one who's actually kind of a, he appeared to be homeless type, but

00:08:58.240 he's very friendly and such.

00:08:59.620 I mean, they aren't all monsters or anything.

00:09:01.780 These are troubled people.

00:09:02.920 I understand that.

00:09:03.580 They need help.

00:09:04.140 They're cold.

00:09:04.720 They're addicted.

00:09:05.140 And they're just going where they can.

00:09:07.160 But it's causing catastrophic damage to this whole transit system in downtown.

00:09:11.600 The other fella, by the way, as you can see, is completely wasted.

00:09:14.320 Stumbles around.

00:09:15.200 Gets up in frustration.

00:09:16.820 And throws his stuff off.

00:09:19.420 Wanders off.

00:09:21.020 A typical scene on Calgary City Transit today.

00:09:24.480 This fella here.

00:09:26.840 So, as it goes up, he actually was smoking something over by the doors.

00:09:30.200 And he has to light his cuff on fire.

00:09:31.860 It took him a second or two later, as you can see, to realize it.

00:09:35.880 And all of a sudden, whoa, shit, I'm on fire.

00:09:37.840 I later bat that out.

00:09:39.560 And then maybe he's trying to fire.

00:09:42.600 This was one trip, end-to-end, on transit, on a random weekday.

00:09:49.460 This is how bad it's gotten.

00:09:50.760 I'm sure you can see worse and maybe a little better on different train rides back and forth.

00:09:54.680 This has to be addressed.

00:09:57.020 So, you know, when that video of the gentleman smoking method I showed at the start of this went somewhat viral,

00:10:04.900 it was actually on the news or at least radio.

00:10:06.940 And it was discussed at City Hall with the transit manager, Doug Morgan, saying,

00:10:10.060 we've got social disorder that we've got to address.

00:10:11.500 So I thought, when I was doing this ride on the train, I'm going to see a lot of enforcement officers.

00:10:15.820 I'm going to see those trucks.

00:10:17.100 I said nothing.

00:10:18.140 I said nothing.

00:10:18.680 Aside from that little bit in the station with the dope team, nobody.

00:10:22.860 Again, how does somebody feel safe in that environment?

00:10:26.420 You know, Nenshi and the others keep talking.

00:10:27.760 We want people to move downtown.

00:10:29.100 We want families to move downtown.

00:10:30.740 We want people to live downtown.

00:10:32.020 Nobody wants to move downtown to that.

00:10:35.760 Nobody wants to ride to work every day and back with that.

00:10:40.340 I mean, they're also saying, oh, we want to charge more for parking because of the anti-car mentality.

00:10:44.160 We want everybody to ride the train.

00:10:45.740 Are you going to get on that?

00:10:46.920 Really?

00:10:47.200 You know, and while I'm mentioning it, I mean, they're talking about a budget shortfall of $70 million or something crazy like that for transit.

00:10:55.920 In all the time I've been riding back and forth for months and months now to the Western Standard offices, I've never once been checked for a ticket.

00:11:03.260 Never once.

00:11:05.180 Do they even check at all anymore?

00:11:07.560 I mean, tickets only make up half of the cost of transit as it is.

00:11:10.860 It's heavily subsidized already.

00:11:12.100 But it's practically free.

00:11:15.240 I don't know what the fines are for riding without a ticket, but you could get away with it far more times than what you would ever end up with in fines.

00:11:22.840 So, again, getting back to that disorder, it's just these guys, at least you could keep them in the free air area downtown if you were charging them tickets up in the outlying areas.

00:11:32.060 But what is going on?

00:11:34.760 Ask your city officials.

00:11:36.340 Ask the police.

00:11:37.720 I'm not talking.

00:11:38.420 It's a big issue.

00:11:39.780 It really is.

00:11:40.720 These addicts need help.

00:11:42.660 You can't just throw them off the train.

00:11:44.100 They need somewhere to go.

00:11:45.300 So let's talk about where's the shelter space.

00:11:47.140 They're saying there's lots of room.

00:11:48.160 Well, why can't these guys get into it?

00:11:50.200 Why aren't they staying at these safe consumption sites that are so trumpeted and talked about?

00:11:56.020 You know, where's the problem?

00:11:57.240 Because why are they packed on these trains?

00:11:59.740 These very expensive trains.

00:12:01.440 You know, they want to spend $5 billion on a green line to an empty downtown.

00:12:04.560 Really what?

00:12:05.100 So we can expand the crack trains?

00:12:06.640 Clean this crap up before you even think about asking for more money for more trains.

00:12:12.420 This is not reasonable where it's sitting right now.

00:12:15.620 And this is an issue that's just not being reported on enough.

00:12:18.380 The downtown has been taken over.

00:12:19.720 The LRT system has been taken over by swarms of out-of-control addicts.

00:12:25.020 So Nenshi and whoever else addressed this.

00:12:30.900 Get on this.

00:12:32.380 This is screwing with people who are out working.

00:12:35.080 It's screwing with your agenda to try and make some downtown paradise where people live and raise families.

00:12:39.800 Quit putting this off.

00:12:41.320 Quit pretending it's not happening because it is.

00:12:43.680 And something's got to be done about it.

00:12:44.980 You know, it's not going to be done about it.

Western Standard - February 13, 2021

Western Standard special on the state of Calgary's LRT system

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