Threatened on MAX
I ended up a post over on a Portlander’s blog discussing a recent situation where the blogger and his wife felt threatened on MAX by, for lack of a better term, young thugs.
Obviously any society will have its segment of the population which won’t exhibit courtesy in public or play nicely by the rules. However, as he notes, an intimidating experience will do nothing to further the name of diversity, and will likely keep some folks from using public transit in the future. Based on my own past experiences, this definitely wasn’t a one-time problem.
What’s the solution? More transit cops? Accepting intimidation as part of using public transit? Raise the MAX fares so that Tri-Met no longer needs public money, and in the same breath making it too expensive for most of the folks who use the system? One of the commenters on the post suggests increasing security and fare enforcement which would likely deter some idiocy… I would tend to agree. With tickets for fare evasion running over $200, I wouldn’t think that a fare inspector would need to find many evaders in order to cover his salary and then some.
Related posts:
on a related note, just yesterday as i was waiting for the MAX, a young girl walked by and was telling some dude about how easy it was to ride the MAX for free because they “never” check for tix. i think i’ve seen inspectors all of three times in the past two years, and only been asked to show a ticket once. there definitely needs to be more of an authoritative presence on the line. though the drivers, i would hope, would have a way of noting and/or notifying officers if help was needed (not that i think just being loud necessitaties police), but from the story over at documented life, there was threatening behavior involved.
I rode the MAX to work for two years, and hated every minute of it. It was always standing room only, and it seemed like every single train had some young thugs keeping up a constant stream of obscenity, street punks who hadn’t bathed in a week (and were proud of it), or abusive drunks.
Add in the teenagers who were competing to see who could shock the commuters with the most explicit sex talk, the panhandlers that waited for the doors to close before going person to person asking for change, the folks who listened to their headphones so loud that I could sing along, and the one-sided cell phone conversations screamed in my ear, and you get an idea why I found a way to budget for parking downtown.
Mass transit is an excellent idea in theory, but the practice can leave a lot to be desired.
Well, I’m relocating to PDX from Atlanta. I have been going out to PDX every other month for about a year now. To tell you the truth, I never realized you had to pay to take the trolley. I new you did for the buses, but not the trolley. It’s not set-up like other cities where you have to go through a terminal and a token gate. Seems to me it was set up wrong to begin with if your supposed to pay for the MAX. I would blame the project designers and the city. That being said, Portlanders have nothing to bitch about. The MAX is way cleaner, safer and has less idiots than NY or Atlanta. People are a little fragile in PDX. They bitch about crime but have never really been in a place where you have to worry when your walking down the street. PDX is Mayberry.
So… because other cities have more crime than Portland, Portlanders shouldn’t want to eliminate the crime that we have?
Vega,
My story of getting threatened on the MAX was just an anecdote. It doesn’t prove anything about Portland in comparison to other places, or about kids or demographics in general.
But, just for the record, I’ll reject the implication that it is fragile to feel threatened by a someone following you and rapping obscenities at you… Nobody should have to experience it or put up with it.
That said, PDX probably is pretty friendly, in relative terms. It’s just that on that evening, and at other times too, particularly on the MAX light rail system, I’ve seen the exceptions to that general rule, and it seemed like a problem worth talking about with other PDXers, particularly when I was still upset about it.
It’s not fragile to be angry about it … it’s honesty with a purpose… to initiate a conversation about the reality of our lives, and perhaps about solutions.