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LRT Safety

Yeah I gotta disagree with the fact that young people are voting more conservative based on transit safety/drug use. I can definitely see housing costs as an issue, especially in Canada contributing to that, but this sort of ideological shift isn't entirely because of material conditions. Sure a significant chunk of is anti-incumbency, the one country where this pattern is broken is the UK, where the Tories have been practically in charge for the last 10-15 years. Frankly the GDP per capita conversation only got into mainstream conversation last year and I'm an economist lol. But a massive amount of this has to do with social media and online use patterns.

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Young men have moved significantly much more conservative, than women and their counterparts. It's also to the fact that a lot of "young male spaces" online have become dominated by right wing influencers and a perceived backlash against gender equality. Anecdotally, all I have to do is go through my reels and TikTok where I want some meme or gym content and suddenly I'm bombarded by low-info quality content leading to an extremely right wing rabbit hole. It's insanely insidious and I don't think people realize how easy it is to fall down this rabbit hole fast.

The data below is from a political science researcher from Norway (https://osf.io/preprints/osf/7z2va_v1), where transit safety and housing costs aren't as dire as we have here in Canada, and the movement is still the same. It's a larger ideological gender gap, more than anything else at this point. I was surprised it wasn't immigration driving changes due to the effects of the migrant crisis there.
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constance_chlore said:
When you say "young people are now voting conservative," do you mean that young people are especially turning more conservative? Or that young people are now planning to vote somewhat more conservative than in 2021 or 2019, just as every age group is?

From 2022 on, it's been a brutal time to be an incumbent worldwide, and I don't know that any Canada-specific phenomena are required to explain the anti-Trudeau backlash. I'm sure the implementation of immigration policy hasn't helped, but in my mind the great failures of Canada in the last 20 years have all been housing-related, and nobody at the federal level has shown any real leadership in fixing it. I certainly don't think Poilievre has. I don't think the issues related to disorder and immigration would be nearly so bad if housing costs were more reasonable.
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I feel 2023 in particular was a bad year with rising rents, rising interest rates and a lot of immigration to put pressure on housing costs.

Now these problems are not yet solved, but in the more unaffordable places in Canada rents are going down now, interest rates have gone down significantly and immigration is also being slowed.

So, I feel the upcoming election may not be as focused on what certainly were the pressing problems of a couple of years ago. As for LRT safety, I feel it has improved some since then too, but the problem is also not yet solved.
 
Greenspace said:
Love taking the LRT, feels so 'big city'. I don't get to take it as often as I like. No issues on Capital line today other than some garbage, maybe cause of the warmer weather.
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Transferring from the Valley Line to the Capital Line and using the Churchill Connector when it's the morning/afternoon rush hour is the best "big city" feel Edmonton has imo.
 
David A said:
I feel 2023 in particular was a bad year with rising rents, rising interest rates and a lot of immigration to put pressure on housing costs.

Now these problems are not yet solved, but in the more unaffordable places in Canada rents are going down now, interest rates have gone down significantly and immigration is also being slowed.

So, I feel the upcoming election may not be as focused on what certainly were the pressing problems of a couple of years ago. As for LRT safety, I feel it has improved some since then too, but the problem is also not yet solved.
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2023 was also pretty bad for crime, especially in Edmonton. The amount of shootings that year was insane.
 
constance_chlore said:
When you say "young people are now voting conservative," do you mean that young people are especially turning more conservative? Or that young people are now planning to vote somewhat more conservative than in 2021 or 2019, just as every age group is?

From 2022 on, it's been a brutal time to be an incumbent worldwide, and I don't know that any Canada-specific phenomena are required to explain the anti-Trudeau backlash. I'm sure the implementation of immigration policy hasn't helped, but in my mind the great failures of Canada in the last 20 years have all been housing-related, and nobody at the federal level has shown any real leadership in fixing it. I certainly don't think Poilievre has. I don't think the issues related to disorder and immigration would be nearly so bad if housing costs were more reasonable.
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I think it’s a mix of both from what I’ve been reading. Some of it is incumbent backlash for sure. Some of it is shifting priorities/values.

For example, young people care less about the environment than older people now. That’s a shift and they care a lot more about poverty and crime. Arguably Trudeau got a lot of votes from young people because of environmental stances
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^ In the second graph both of those for the U.S. and for Canada are rapidly changing direction (falling fast) with the latest data. Week over week, Trump's approval rating is taking one of the fastest tumbles ever recorded for the U.S. (somewhat akin to the UK graph). Sadly the general pop., armed with a meagre amount of knowledge (especially of the historic-data kind), looks to radical change for a solution when typically all that does is exacerbate the problems that they want fixed. A good TV series that kind of deals with this directly is "Zero Day" which my dear wife and I binge-watched last night -- on Netflix (I highly recommend it -- entertained while gaining a better outlook).
 
archited said:
^ In the second graph both of those for the U.S. and for Canada are rapidly changing direction (falling fast) with the latest data. Week over week, Trump's approval rating is taking one of the fastest tumbles ever recorded for the U.S. (somewhat akin to the UK graph). Sadly the general pop., armed with a meagre amount of knowledge (especially of the historic-data kind), looks to radical change for a solution when typically all that does is exacerbate the problems that they want fixed. A good TV series that kind of deals with this directly is "Zero Day" which my dear wife and I binge-watched last night -- on Netflix (I highly recommend it -- entertained while gaining a better outlook).
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It was the anti incumbent sentiment driving things, most noticeably in the UK and Canada. Although interestingly it went in different directions as in the UK the Conservatives were incumbents, in Canada the Liberals.

In the US, Trump made promises about bring down inflation that don't seem to be happening so far and it may be going the other way. I suspect cost of living pressures are a bigger issue for young people than ideological ones.
 

It seems like Montreal Metro's incidents is on the rise significantly. I'm curious how our LRT compares. It seems like we've plateaued a bit in terms, but I'm not sure if it's because we got hit harder and earlier by the opioid crisis on transit than other cities.
 
I remember a time there were turnstiles at every downtown KRT station. Then somebody thought, hmmm we should get rid of those, why? They restricted who could enter the stations? They weren't inclusive?
Oh yeah and we talk about how effective our arc card system is, and how many fares are potentially lost or avoided? All in our little, yet growing city of 1.sometime million population.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in my hotel in Manila, Philippines pondering now my experiences with the LRT-1 here in Manila with their fare gated stations that feel very safe, funny nobody loitering about except for maybe me taking some LRT video clip for my vlog page, There may be some beggars leading up to a station or two but once in no worries about any of that and no substance abuse issues that I've seen so far. All in a city of around 14 million. Or also my recent experiences from just these past few days riding the trains around Tokyo, through their very clean and safe feeling fare gated stations where for now I'd consider gold standard what a train system should be, in again another city of 14 plus million population.

One thought comes to mind, both of these cities prioritize cleanliness and safety for their passengers, why has Edmonton forgotten that. Why are we making things harder on ourselves? What lessons can we learn from these massive train systems to implement at home? What would they say about our issues in Edmonton?
 
Edmcowboy11 said:
I remember a time there were turnstiles at every downtown KRT station. Then somebody thought, hmmm we should get rid of those, why? They restricted who could enter the stations? They weren't inclusive?
Oh yeah and we talk about how effective our arc card system is, and how many fares are potentially lost or avoided? All in our little, yet growing city of 1.sometime million population.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in my hotel in Manila, Philippines pondering now my experiences with the LRT-1 here in Manila with their fare gated stations that feel very safe, funny nobody loitering about except for maybe me taking some LRT video clip for my vlog page, There may be some beggars leading up to a station or two but once in no worries about any of that and no substance abuse issues that I've seen so far. All in a city of around 14 million. Or also my recent experiences from just these past few days riding the trains around Tokyo, through their very clean and safe feeling fare gated stations where for now I'd consider gold standard what a train system should be, in again another city of 14 plus million population.

One thought comes to mind, both of these cities prioritize cleanliness and safety for their passengers, why has Edmonton forgotten that. Why are we making things harder on ourselves? What lessons can we learn from these massive train systems to implement at home? What would they say about our issues in Edmonton?
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They have better federal-level policies against drugs and crime. The Philippines is (was?) run by Duterte, who has one of the most aggressive and notorious anti-drug policies in the world. As for Japan, they’ll eagerly lock up criminals. That all trickles down to safer transit.
 
^^ Yes when Duarte was in power drug dealers were shot and killed in the streets -- it was a BIG deterrent to selling drugs and I suspect that sensibility has carried over to today's Philippines with Marcos Jr. (the shoe lady's son) currently in power. The penalties in the Philippines and Japan for serious drug offenses include Life Imprisonment (with the Death Penalty still in effect in the Philippines). And with a more homogenous society in both of those countries I can imagine that the street scene is perceptibly safer (no comment on outcomes here -- just the reality).
 
degrandprix said:
I've also found the majority of the loitering/drug issues are occurring in the common areas ahead of the fare payment zone anyway. So unless we extend the zone to the exterior doors, adding fare gates won't really change anything.
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Oh contraire. I got on the LRT at Corona last Wednesday when two individuals exited the train in a hurry only to be detained by two police officers. Then one officer went to the back of the car and hauled someone else off With fare gates they probably wouldn’t have been on there.
 
thommyjo said:
I think it’s a mix of both from what I’ve been reading. Some of it is incumbent backlash for sure. Some of it is shifting priorities/values.

For example, young people care less about the environment than older people now. That’s a shift and they care a lot more about poverty and crime. Arguably Trudeau got a lot of votes from young people because of environmental stances View attachment 632181View attachment 632182
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The UK has traditionally been more conservative then Canada but most people in the UK got tired of the Cons reneging on their election promise to reform immigration policy and last election most conservatives didn't vote. This will change once the Cons - Reform hash out their differences. Starmer and Labour has been a disaster for the UK, a once proud country being turned into a Orwellian thought state with huge income gaps between metro London and the rest of the UK, massive immigration and crime issues, loss of productivity, falling GDP etc etc. The UK is what Canada will become if Liberals win next election.
 
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