Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Light rail crime

CBS reports from Minneapolis

1 comment:

Al M said...


Oh, that can't possibly be so, because light rail is shiny and spiffy and expensive and all that. It's the wave of the future! The wave happens to be blood-red, but hey. You've got to break a few skulls if you want to be a world model. Portlanders noticed that after they voted to build the first light rail line in the area, and so they rejected plans for the next two lines.

The politicians and developers built them anyway, and decided that since they knew voters would decline, they stopped putting new lines up for a vote. They just started trying to ram them through. Disgraced former Portland mayor Sam and disgraced former Oregon governor Retread insisted that any new bridge over the Columbia River would have to include light rail, even though residents of Clark County, Washington, opposed it. Both stated bluntly: "No light rail, no bridge. No joke."

Well, darned if that didn't come true; they got their wish: no bridge. After spending over $200 million on "planning" and never turning one shovel of dirt. Local statistics have clearly demonstrated a significant rise in crime along light rail routes within three blocks of platforms. Part of this is likely due to the insistence that light rail riders should pay on the honor system - apparently in willful ignorance of the fact that criminals have no honor, and don't respect those who do.

So it happens that a 73 year-old man gets clubbed in the head with a baseball bat after exiting a train at a Rockwood station, and so it happens that crime increased by 37% in the Clackamas area as soon as the new "Green line" opened, according to Clackamas County figures. But Portland's a "model for the nation, and the world", so it's all good.

But as has long been the case in Portland, the happy dances of politicians notwithstanding, cities that have been putting in light rail because Portland are finding that - dang, crime's going up. But at least it's Green&Sustainable crime.