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LRT Safety

Agreed. That's why money for transit shouldn't be used to install fare gates to keep homeless people out of stations. It should be used to improve service and reliability.

Social disorder is the responsibility of the province and the City should continue to ask them to step up.
Couple of things:

1. The City already gives out free monthly passes under the PATH program for homeless individuals, so fare gates shouldn't prevent most folks legitimately in need from using LRT
2. Fare gates do create a "safe space" or "zone" and will keep out those who are there just to hang out/use drugs or prey on others, including preying on the less fortunate, by demarcating/controlling a fare-paid space - it does make a difference. I think there are lots of homeless people who aren't randomly aggressive, violent, using drugs, and/or in gangs. Some people are just down on their luck. We really need protect those people too, and fare gates would benefit them too.
 
Transit funding absolutely should be used to install fare gates. It's 2022, and the fact we still have a honour system in a city of close to a million is a joke (probably over a million now).

Our LRT system should'nt be a homeless shelter, and we need to stop this nonsense that it's cruel or inhumane to keep non-payers from using and ABUSING the system in place

We have programs in place to help those who need cheaper passes and tickets to use the system.
Since the transit system crosses municipal borders (e.g St Albert transit running into Edmonton) I think it's fair to use the metro population of 1.5 mil - wonder how many other cities of one and a half million maintain an honour system for transit?
 
Since the transit system crosses municipal borders (e.g St Albert transit running into Edmonton) I think it's fair to use the metro population of 1.5 mil - wonder how many other cities of one and a half million maintain an honour system for transit?
Lots.
Portland Metro is 2.5 million
Denver Metro is 3.5 million
Salt Lake Metro 2.5 million
Sand Diego 1.4 million, metro 2+ million
Sacramento Metro 2.3 million
Minneapolis Metro 3.6 million

As far as I know all of the above use POP. POP has basically been the standard since Calgary and Sand Diego rolled it out, and Edmonton followed.
 
I think everyone agrees that we want a safe and efficient transit system that people feel safe to use, but the question is how do we get there?

For me, fare gates are a waste of money that don't actually fix the problem. I was in the pedway near connecting Government Centre and Grandin there was blood splattered everywhere on the walls. I don't know what happened, but fare gates wouldn't have done anything because it was outside the station itself. If people are afraid to leave the LRT station then fare gates really haven't solved anything.

Homelessness and social disorder need to be tackled head on, not with bandaid solutions involving overworked police and the justice system. People need to have somewhere to go!
 
Appreciate the info! Hmm, wasn't Edmonton's system running before Calgary's?
Edmonton's LRT was running before Calgary, but Calgary opened with POP. Edmonton switched to POP around 1983/84 I believe. Initially even under POP, Edmonton had turnstiles. It wasn't until the Ticfac machines did Edmonton move to barrier free POP and I believe that was with the Bay/ Corona extension.
 
Agreed. That's why money for transit shouldn't be used to install fare gates to keep homeless people out of stations. It should be used to improve service and reliability.

Social disorder is the responsibility of the province and the City should continue to ask them to step up.
Putting up fare gates improve safety in the platforms and trains, reduce the area which the Transit Peace Officers have to patrol regularly and creates, at least some safe zones within the system.

You'll no longer have people using drugs inside the trains, which is a plus in itself, and really hard to enforce without fare gates. Because of how platforms are, especially the underground ones, they're not the safest place to be, if there's a chance of someone hiding in a corner, behind columns, staircases, etc., while the outside access areas are generally more open and easier to survey as you walk in... The advantages are several.

Also, imagine that you're a rider, get to the station and you see people outside of the paid zone that makes you weary, you ca stay inside while you call the police/security/peace officers, turn back a move one station, etc., all while safe inside the paid fare zone.

As for your concern regarding houseless people, those suffering from mental illness and addictions, and social disorder in general, I don't disagree that putting up fare gates and increased policing don't treat the real underlying issue, but they do treat the symptoms and make transit, and the city in general, safer for the vast majority of the population.

It is just like treating a cancer, if you like analogies: you undergo surgery and chemotherapy to get rid of the tumor, but those take much more effort and time to be effective in resolving the symptoms for good. In the meantime, you don't leave the patient suffering from the symptoms, and do everything in your power to keep him comfortable, until the disease is cured/controlled and he no longer needs to treat the symptoms superficially.
 
There was an interesting article in the Atlantic a few weeks ago about the problems New York is having on the subway (or at least the perception of problems). I was struck how similar their issues are to Edmonton's, despite having a system that is much, much larger (and, incidentally, one that uses fare gates).

It may feel like our issues are unique or that Edmonton is somehow special, but these types of problems are not uncommon and the same old solutions have been tried before. Flooding the system with police and installing fare gates might look like the city is doing something, but it doesn't really deal with the underlying problem and wastes huge amounts of tax dollars. People need to feel safe, but spending millions on a solution that won't actually fix the problem seems unwise.
 

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