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Downtown Crime

CaptainBL said:
I wonder, does Scamerjeet Sohi take transit to work? Does he have to take the LRT at 9pm?

Its always fun and easy to say "every week, 1.5 million trips are taken on transit and the vast majority are safe" until you become the statistic that's stabbed. This isnt a situation where "vast majority" is good enough. People are actually dying taking transit, that is not ok. Last week's murder is one too many, and we have had way too many safety incidents like that.
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I agree. I sometimes wonder if any of these advocates have traveled to large cities in Asia or Europe where it is common for people of all ages, to be out walking, taking transit in urban areas. It's not normal for streets to be hostile. Your grandmother or child should be able to walk places on their own and feel completely safe. No people yelling, tripping out, approaching or intimidating you. Until we reach that basic milestone, we've failed to build a safe city.
 
CaptainBL said:
I wonder, does Scamerjeet Sohi take transit to work? Does he have to take the LRT at 9pm?
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He says he uses transit regularly, but he's also a former bus driver so aside from probably seeing a lot during his career as one, I can gaurantee you he's very attentive to what the union and ETS operators are saying.
 
occidentalcapital said:
I agree. I sometimes wonder if any of these advocates have traveled to large cities in Asia or Europe where it is common for people of all ages, to be out walking, taking transit in urban areas. It's not normal for streets to be hostile. Your grandmother or child should be able to walk places on their own and feel completely safe. No people yelling, tripping out, approaching or intimidating you. Until we reach that basic milestone, we've failed to build a safe city.
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THIS!

It's insane how bad our urban experiences are right now in a few major Canadian cities due to crime, random attacks, addictions related issues, mental health and lack of respect for private and public spaces.

This spring I was in Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin and all were quite civilized and felt very safe.

Even on my visit to Portland in June with its serious challenges felt far safer... and that's saying a lot.
 
The only one I know takes transit regularly is our City Manager Andre Corbold. We have several councillors that ride their bike to city hall daily and why we got $100m for bike lanes. Imagine we had 2 or 3 taking transit what kind of advocates we’d get out of that.
 
MacLac said:
Equal amount of crap happening in all cities worldwide…..including Canada and even YYC. Maybe YYC media downplays it a lot more? I watch Global YVR when I’m at work every day…..10X more crap happening there then in YEG…..just saying
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To your point, our estimated homeless population is around 2800. Toronto's is estimated at 10,000 and GTA is technically 4x larger than us. I'm not sure what Vancouver's is.
 
Greenspace said:
To your point, our estimated homeless population is around 2800. Toronto's is estimated at 10,000 and GTA is technically 4x larger than us. I'm not sure what Vancouver's is.
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I read somewhere (trying here to find the article) that Vancouver's homeless population was similar to the GTA's. They do have a serious problem with this there, but it's less visible than here for a few reasons... Living between here and there did give me anecdotal evidence that this is true.
 
Sure, but when you have thousands and tens of thousands of people walking around, shopping, eating, drinking, exploring, living.... you feel safe, you don't notice other things as much.
 
IanO said:
Sure, but when you have thousands and tens of thousands of people walking around, shopping, eating, drinking, exploring, living.... you feel safe, you don't notice other things as much.
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These are some of the reasons why you don't notice as much. But it doesn't mean it's not as bad as ours (or even worse, number-wise. If you consider that Vancouver Metro is about 2.2x larger than Edmonton's, if their numbers are about the same as the GTA, meaning that they have around 3.5x more homeless than we do, they have a bigger problem, and that it is just well masked.
 
ChazYEG said:
These are some of the reasons why you don't notice as much. But it doesn't mean it's not as bad as ours (or even worse, number-wise. If you consider that Vancouver Metro is about 2.2x larger than Edmonton's, if their numbers are about the same as the GTA, meaning that they have around 3.5x more homeless than we do, they have a bigger problem, and that it is just well masked.
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Vancouver is not masked - its highly visible with several areas for the city hosting the homeless, drug pushers, addicts and thugs looking for trouble,
 
IanO said:
Having been to both in the last 12 months, Edmonton is on another level.
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You did miss the part where I live between the two cities, right (and funny enough, I stay downtown on both cities...)? I'm in Vancouver every other week, and no, Edmonton is not worse than Vancouver, it's just not hidden by what you have just mentioned a couple of postes earlier,. Pointing out that the problem there is just as bad, is not saying that things are not bad here (although, mind you, personally will never be able to see Edmonton as this dangerous crime-ridden place everyone talks about, but personal experiences give us different perspectives, don't they?).
 
ChazYEG said:
You did miss the part where I live between the two cities, right (and funny enough, I stay downtown on both cities...)? I'm in Vancouver every other week, and no, Edmonton is not worse than Vancouver, it's just not hidden by what you have just mentioned a couple of postes earlier,. Pointing out that the problem there is just as bad, is not saying that things are not bad here (although, mind you, personally will never be able to see Edmonton as this dangerous crime-ridden place everyone talks about, but personal experiences give us different perspectives, don't they?).
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A really interesting side note (that I can relate with you with not being able to see Edmonton as a crime ridden place), is that I overheard some conversations from someone with a delegation from South Africa who mentioned that the streets of downtown Edmonton were so safe and that there were barely any beggars/homeless people around. They did notice them, but they actually felt safe in our core. They also apparently did (from what I was told) explored a large chunk of downtown as well during their stay, so it's not a case of an isolated spruced up area.

Granted, South Africa has extreme crime and public safety issues, but to hear people say they actually liked our downtown and found it decently safe, inviting and really nice to walk around was a fresh boost of positive external perspective.
 
Greenspace said:
The only one I know takes transit regularly is our City Manager Andre Corbold. We have several councillors that ride their bike to city hall daily and why we got $100m for bike lanes. Imagine we had 2 or 3 taking transit what kind of advocates we’d get out of that.
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I don't have an issue with them using bike lanes, but it might do a world of good if those councillors actually took transit more often.

So I challenge every councillor (and the mayor too) to actually regularly use transit, particularly in the evening or weekends.

Because I feel at this point they are still not realizing or missing the extent of a number of problems.

However, I agree crime problems sometimes are sensationalized. We can not control where murder happens. If it is in front of some small suburban strip mall, it is quickly forgotten about, if it is in or near transit it is talked about a lot.

But if transit was or felt safer, I also feel that sensationalizing would be less likely to happen. The greatest danger is all this enforces existing perceptions and makes people lose confidence in or less likely to use transit.
 
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