Toronto struggles with wave of public transport violence | Hacker News Reader

Toronto struggles with wave of public transport violence

bbc.com

31 pointsamichail17 comments

I grew up in Toronto, took the TTC (transit) all the time. Heck I would sleep on it for extended periods of time.

Then I moved to a smaller city for college. After almost a decade away I moved back to Toronto in 2022 and I was really disturbed by the level of violence, mental health disorders and drug use I witnessed every day.

I couldn't even take 1 year of it, broke my lease and moved the hell away. Something has gone very wrote with Toronto and it is a very uncomfortable place to live.

I felt the same way about Portland - I lived there 2016-2018, moved back for 6mo in 2021 to reconnect with friends and possibly settle down

World of difference in what I saw.

When it comes to mental health and homelessness crisis, I’ve always wondered if this is why the issue is becoming so exacerbated:

(US data, sorry)

The median baby boomer retirement is what, 200k-300k [1] total? So half have even less?

What are they gonna do when they’re 65 and aged out of their line of work and have no money to live on? If I were in that situation I’d wander into any city that would have me as well.

Take the low savings with the possibility that people who deal with the trauma of being poor are also more likely to abuse drugs [2] and you have a recipe for a mental health homelessness crisis in major cities.

The truly worrying thing for me is that in the past we could afford to care for people such as this. With changing demographics I’m just not sure we can support them like we used to.

I’m on my phone so I can’t do this, but I’d love to see data on homeless populations and their growth, I hypothesize that it’s growing in tandem with aging baby boomers.

Edit:

Looks like it’s well within historical numbers but ticking up, with a rather large increase in unsheltered:

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-retirement-savings-ba...

[2] https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/low-income-america...

As someone who has lived here for a few decades, this is really shocking. We've always had some violence here and there, but it seems to have escalated to the point where now we read the news to see if there wasn't some sort of new attack.

It's not just on the TTC (transit) but it does seem to be a focal point. An example not mentioned in the article: just as recently a guy got off a streetcar, charged at an elderly woman on the sidewalk and shoved her to the ground so hard it killed her. They didn't even know each other. It was just another "random event."

When "Toronto the Good" looks like this, it's time to take a temperature reading and act accordingly. The premiere has been far from helpful.

It's not just Toronto.

Economically, politically, and socially, Canada as a whole has been quite ill for some time now.

The disastrous and tyrannical "public health" policies of the federal, provincial, and most municipal governments over the last three years have made the situation dramatically worse.

Canada has only been coasting on past successes, and that momentum is certainly dissipating.

what disastrous / tyrannical health policies are those?

Pretty much all of them.

It varied somewhat by region, but in Canada these policies typically included lengthy forced business shutdowns, severe education disruptions, delaying/cancelling medical procedures, curfews, forced masking, coerced and forced injections of unwanted substances, fearmongering by politicians and bureaucrats, violently suppressing peaceful protests, and so on.

These policies resulted in major economic harm (business closures, job losses, supply chain disruption, significant inflation, etc.), as well as widespread social harm in many different ways.

When the police can't do their job criminals and mentally ill people run rampant. This is a growing systemic problem facing not only Toronto but Chicago, Boston etc.

Issues with mentally ill people sound like problems with other services, police is the end of the line.

Seattle, SF, Vancouver, LA…

I think a big contributor is the population boom of toronto. Canada has a high immigration rate and a lot of people seem to gravitate to toronto. The social services can’t stabilize or support the population.

The modern city is built to service the needs of the rich and/or powerful. It is run on the backs of people who are not that different from slaves. Many people are hand to mouth, but wait! They can choose where to live and which flavor of slavery they prefer.

Humanity never escaped slavery, we just call it something else now. My preferred definition is "hard work and subjection".

So, when you are working hard to survive as a subject of the powerful, and you constantly see those who appear to be "free" in the media you consume, it starts to mess with your mind.

I think that's the ultimate cause of all of this. People who take public transport, in general, are going to fall under this definition of slavery.

I’m far more inclined to believe the Chicago official’s hypothesis that the reduced number of riders partially emboldens some individuals to engage in criminal acts, than your claim that riding the bus is slavery.

I'm talking root cause, you are talking symptom. Different levels.

The article describes a recent increased frequency of violent events. Were you suggesting that using public transportation was previously less of an indentured servitude?

You are still missing the point.

But that's OK.

We've always had greedy and powerful rich people around. These conditions are new. Complex systems fail in strange ways so there are almost certainly both multiple contributing factors and multiple ways to improve the situation.

The difference is that today's slaves have freedom shoved in their face.

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