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Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

This is a perennial favorite of transportation NIMBYs.

Where I live extending the light rail the last little bit over the river to Washington state is a no brainer, but it's been paralyzed by decades of opposition from suburbanites in Vancouver Wa. My friend's dad is/was one of the key activists. He'd stand in planning meetings and no joke scream about how "criminals" were gonna ride the train up, break into someone's house, steal their tv, then ride the train back. Lots of saying "crime train" over and over again.

We have solid data that building transit lines actually decreases crime. This man is a credentialed civil engineer. He rejected that evidence without consideration every time we put it in front of him.

I have zero respect for these people. If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

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In my city you can definitely tell a difference in the demographics that frequent places that have train access vs those without. The malls for example:

Malls with train access tend to bring a lot of kids strutting around flexing (as kids are expected to do). This has side effects of petty larceny and shootings. All of the mall shootings are groups of these kids that have beef with each other. It's mostly harmless to shoppers but there's always a chance you could get caught in crossfire or become the target of a malicious youth prank.

It's just your typical youth angst but you can avoid it simply by going to a mall without train access.

The question comes down to whether train access brings more benefits than drawbacks. When talking to anti-trainers you have to address this issue. You can't just hand wave it away as they're perfectly fine with the car status quo.

However, I'm sure most people will ignore everything in this comment and just shout "gun control".

> This has side effects of petty larceny and shootings. All of the mall shootings are groups of these kids that have beef with each other. It's mostly harmless to shoppers but there's always a chance you could get caught in crossfire or become the target of a malicious youth prank.

As an outsider (from an European country): I don't think train access is the cause here :O

It's like saying "We should seed rain clouds because nice sunny weather correlates with mall shootings as nobody wants to go out in a storm". I mean, yes, the facts check out (sunny weather = more shootings than during a storm. I guess?) but the "solution" (don't provide public transportation / seed rain clouds) is.. ugh..

There's a bridge in stockholm that isn't getting opened because people in the rich neighboorhood on one side don't want people from the poor neighboorhood on the other side to come there.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/26/stockholm-bridge-row-exp...

They don't want the poor people to come over, or are they merely against "criminality and delinquency" coming over? Surely it's possible to to separate the people and the behavior (of the few, mind you).

I agree that correlation is not causation but it's tough to ignore when you see the packs of kids walking to/from the train

You are not wrong and we are in agreement! :)

Trains bring more "these kinds of kids" to the mall vs private cars.

Nice weather brings more "these kinds of kids" to the mall as well (compared to stormy weather).

Now, where we do seem to disagree is the question of where the actual problem is. In my opinion, the problem is _not_ that kids are at the mall. The problem is that, apparently, these kids start to shoot each other while they're at the mall (!?! what the fuck)

Looking at _all_ the other countries that have nicer weather and / or better public transportation, we don't see kids shooting each other at malls. So I'd say that's a good indicator that the _actual problem_ can't be solved by restricting public transportation (or sunshine) but there has to be a different issue that needs to be tackled here..

Not building something because it will allow poorer people to move around our cities more easily is just wrong no matter what the consequences. There are also criminals and kids who strut around and flex from rough areas of town that have cars. Should we get rid of roads that connect those neighborhoods to the rest of the city?

These issues just reveal deep problems we have as a society and the solution we have had so far of trying to avoid it at all costs only making it worse.

It's interesting to me that you've figured out that people bring up gun control whenever you talk about this, but you haven't made the next logical leap.

Which is to say, there may be a _reason_ people bring up gun control. As you say "You can't just hand wave it away".

I just think that practically speaking, a community will probably be able to decide on a train project before the nation decides on gun control.

> We have solid data that building transit lines actually decreases crime.

Do we? A cursory Google search revealed a couple of papers, one of which showed a slight increase in crime after the addition of a bus line[0] in Cleveland, and another which showed a decrease in homicides but an increase in property crime[1] in São Paolo. I'm not cherry-picking; these were the first two PDFs in the search results. I would love to see the evidence that you presented to your friend's dad.

> If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

This may very well be the case as you exhort downthread, but I just want to point out that besides the obvious (that we are all internet randos who don't know your friend's dad), racism means different things to different people. I know people who think that if a white author writes nonwhite characters, it's racism. I also know people who were disowned for marrying "outside the race". My personal definition of racism is a lot closer to the latter.

Sometimes a concern for crime is just that; other times it can be a code for a race-related pretext. Here's a thought: if you're concerned about female genital mutilation, which is virtually only practiced in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the Muslim countries of South Asia, are you concerned about the women being mutilated, or are you just a racist?

[0]: https://collected.jcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&c...

[1]: https://sistemas.colmex.mx/Reportes/LACEALAMES/LACEA-LAMES20...

I don’t completely follow, this is people living in a Portland suburb lobbying against getting a public transport connection? How is less infrastructure better?

This isn’t uncommon in suburbs. Some people care more about preventing easy access to their community than they do about having easy access to other communities.

Every time when I think I kinda sorta figured out American culture, I read a comment like this. To me this is batshit insane. I’m so happy my suburb has regular bus and train service!

So it would make their community more accessible to everyone, including criminals?

In Chicago there are neighborhoods that actively blocked subway access so they could be car suburbs and not get the change that comes with mass transit access. Same for the famous Robert Moses parkways on Long Island.

There is some validity to the idea that preventing mass transit insulates a community from a certain type of change but it comes with major costs.

In Dublin, there was some lobbying at the time against building a light rail line (the green Luas line) through some affluent areas on the basis that it would somehow reduce property values (a perennial Irish obsession). In fact, in practice, it increased property values (as you'd expect, really; the already existing heavy rail rapid transport had done the same), and 20 years later the same residents' groups and so on had a fit at the idea that service might be temporarily curtailed as part on an expansion plan...

(However, everything old is new again; there's widespread annoyance at plans to make the bus system actually work properly now...)

People are weird about this stuff.

A lot of the time it's a race issue. I live near Atlanta, where white suburbanites have spent 40 years voting to cripple public transportation, because they're afraid black people will use it to come to their neighborhood.

That is not an exaggeration. One of my coworkers did a historical study and read town hall transcripts from the last couple decades. People were extremely clear why they were voting down mass transit.

The racist joke I was told as a kid was that MARTA stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." I was so young and naive, I said, "Really? Why would they name it that?" Ugh. The racism of anti-transit people is really inescapable.

Because the people who live there all have cars, so they don't see any positives only the (false) negatives.

Yeah, there was an article in Baltimore about stupid people worrying about crime on the light rail in the suburbs. Racism rots the brain. Just put a cop at the train station if you're worried. A better solution to crime would be to ban cars, which any competent criminal is going to use to haul off their goods.

> I have zero respect for these people. If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

It also becomes readily apparent that they also want to be patted on the back and told that they're good and noble people for "protecting the community" from the scourge of undesirables potentially riding public transit near them.

this is so blatantly wrong that i loose every respect for these people. It really makes me angry. It's just so selfish. I really don't understand how you can make things worse for everyone, just because you don't want things to change, "city-people" invade you precious suburb or something. In the end gas-guzzling cars pester the environment and use up the precious few emissions we have left in order not to get wrecked by climate change.

If he can show any occurrence of that ever happening, then you come off as dishonest and disinterested in the needs of the community. Is it really so difficult to cater to his needs as well? There’s surely a better compromise than “Everyone who disagrees with me is a racist”.

> Is it really so difficult to cater to his needs as well?

The man wants no transit because "crime train" while the region needs transit. What middle ground do you propose?

Not every criticism and loud individual is worth listening to.

This man is factually a racist. I am not simply labeling him that because we disagree as you insinuate, having no actual information on the situation.

And no, I see zero reason to tolerate what is clearly bad faith behavior.

In the text you shared, you imply that other readers should come to the conclusion that he's a racist because he's against public transit due to fear of crime being imported. But you made no connections as to how his claims of crime import were related to a race component. So it's understandable that readers might not find your "racist" labeling justified based on the facts that you shared.

He might be a racist but based on what you said, it's not clear what may make him so.

No, that is explicitly not what I said. I said if you talk to this person even briefly, you will quickly realize the actual basis of his objection is racism. It is not subtle.

What is your expectation of me here, to pull out some sort of video proof to convince you, the skeptical hnews reader?

Sometimes this place is extremely tiresome.

Just go do some googling and you'll realize how common this sentiment is. And it's nothing new. Read about Robert Moses and why he made bridges too low for buses.

> Read about Robert Moses and why he made bridges too low for buses.

On that suggestion, I just went and read the wikipedia article on Robert Moses. It mentions that buses and commercial vehicles do in fact go under those bridges today, and that the accusations of racism are disputed.

"I only learned about this today and just read a wiki article and that convinces me you're lying" is pretty much the problem with this place in one shot.

You complain this place is tiresome, and then invite us to go read about Robert Moses and his racist bridge policy. So we go read a bit about it, and note that a somewhat more authoritative source than rando-on-HN suggests that the accusations are in dispute and lack good supporting evidence. And now -this- is in fact the problem with HN?

Look in the mirror, dude.

Seriously? Has the bar changed from "Google it" to "Read through several research papers and books" for someone to comment on how true something is generally accepted to be? And you're saying that the person who looked something up on Wikipedia is the problem?

What did he say that convinced you he’s racist?

> you imply that other readers should come to the conclusion that he's a racist

I see no such implication.

This comment and your other one above don't really add anything to the discussion here. They comprise an attack on an individual and, as you say, we can't have an informed opinion because we don't know the individual. So it just boils down to you calling someone you know a racist based on a one-sided anecdote.

That about sums it up. Doesnt seem like a particularly balanced source either

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