[Richard White]

The TTC does not need Transit Police, nor will they get them as the Toronto Police will not abide the jurisdictional overlap. What should happen is that the Transit Constables should be replaced one for one with regular Toronto police, with 50% of that budget going into the police budget, and 50% flowing through the TTC to the police in exchange for a set minimum quote of officer deployment.

Fare Enforcement, which is negligible should be see its budget cut by 1/2 to fund social worker and mental health worker teams to do outreach, both on their own and in support of police action to see that people are getting the help they need.

Does anyone here remember when the Guardian Angels tried to patrol the TTC. I believe it was just after the Jane Creba incident.

Edit: It was 1982.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2006/07/13/the-guardian-angels-history-in-toronto/

 

[Admiral Beez]

The TTC needs transit police with authority to arrest..Not mall cops.

​

'Outrageous': Riders call for action on TTC safety​

'Outrageous': Riders call for action on TTC safety

Some riders took to social media to express growing apprehension with using the TTC because of safety concerns.

toronto.citynews.ca

It's one of the first things my teenage daughter said when she saw the new Bombardier streetcars some years ago, that the TTC knows the riders are dangerous so they've physically separated the driver from the passengers, but there's now no staff onboard to protect the passengers from each other. Back in 1970s London my Grandfather was a London bus driver, and every bus had two employees, one to drive, another to collect fares and act as eyes and ears. IMO, every subway should have a TTC special constable aboard or some employee who is not protected from the rest of us by sitting behind glass.

Police identify woman killed in random double stabbing on Toronto subway train

Toronto police have identified a woman who died after Thursday's double stabbing on a subway train. A Toronto man is now facing two charges in connection with the attack, according to police. Toronto ...

ca.yahoo.com

This poor woman was likely just minding her own business when some nutcase stabs her. This could have been any of us. Most frustratingly is this guy will be NCR'd and back on the street in short order.

 

[Northern Light]

It's one of the first things my teenage daughter said when she saw the new Bombardier cars some years ago, that the TTC knows the riders are dangerous so they've physically separated the driver from the passengers, but there's now no staff onboard to protect the passengers from each other. Back in 1970s London my Grandfather was a London bus driver, and every bus had two employees, one to drive, another to collect fares and act as eyes and ears. IMO, every subway should have a TTC special constable aboard or some employee who is not protected from the rest of us by sitting behind glass.

The drivers always had cabs with a closable, and usually closed door around them going back to the 1950s, that did not change with latest iteration of trains.

The only change was extending the cab the full width of the car.

****

The proposal above would employ ~250 special constables today, but more once full service has returned, perhaps as many as 350; if we costed them like police, you'd be looking at ~50M+ per year;

That's a seriously expensive move.

I've advocated for improving policing and social service/mental health intervention on the TTC, which might well cost something close to that; but I would hate to see all the money go to enforcement and 'feel good'ism' (when you're going to have unstaffed and zero security stations and surface vehicles as well.)

Then the call goes out to extend this safety provision and we could easily get into a 100M + boost to police/enforcement and probably achieve nothing better than driving the ill/homeless into the parks.

We need, I would argue, to invest more thoughtfully than that. It has to include some 'enforcement' option; but that should be part of the solution, nowhere near the whole one.

 

[T3G]

I assume the reference was to the fully enclosed cabs on the Flexity cars rather than the TRs.

I do find the concern to be fairly overstated however. The driver is still there if intervention is required, now they just have the privacy to focus on their jobs and not have to worry about listening to snarky comments from passengers or performa other "customer service" jobs (which should never have been part of a driver's job to begin with, how are you supposed to focus on the road if the public has access to you).

 

[nfitz]

The driver is still there if intervention is required, now they just have the privacy to focus on their jobs and not have to worry about listening to snarky comments from passengers or performa other "customer service" jobs (which should never have been part of a driver's job to begin with, how are you supposed to focus on the road if the public has access to you).

Or the other harmless or mentally-disturbed individual who are talking their ear off, or trying to get directions (surrounded by people who actually know the area better, but they want the driver who doesn't live in the area to tell them).

Heck, I've seen other TTC staff yapping to the operator, leading them to make mistakes ...

There's still buttons to speak to the operator, and the operator has cameras. Might have a better view now than the back of an packed ALRV.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Or the other harmless or mentally-disturbed individual who are talking their ear off, or trying to get directions (surrounded by people who actually know the area better, but they want the driver who doesn't live in the area to tell them).

Heck, I've seen other TTC staff yapping to the operator, leading them to make mistakes ...

There's still buttons to speak to the operator, and the operator has cameras. Might have a better view now than the back of an packed ALRV.

How many people actually know that they can press a button to speak to the operator in an emergency?

Most would try to call 9-1-1 on their smartphones. The web currently doesn't work in the subway, or require to spend a few minutes going through an acceptance protocol to use the web. We can make Wi-Fi calls using the web instead of cellular, if you have it turned on.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Or the other harmless or mentally-disturbed individual who are talking their ear off, or trying to get directions (surrounded by people who actually know the area better, but they want the driver who doesn't live in the area to tell them).

Heck, I've seen other TTC staff yapping to the operator, leading them to make mistakes ...

There's still buttons to speak to the operator, and the operator has cameras. Might have a better view now than the back of an packed ALRV.

The reason the operators on streetcars and increasingly buses are getting shields is not to prevent the passengers from talking to them and causing distraction. No, it’s because the TTC and the operator’s union both understand that the passengers can be violent and dangerous. That’s why IMO every streetcar and every subway should have a second employee who’s as unshielded as the rest of us, tasked with security, information and fare enforcement. If the TTC is perceived as safer the number of users may increase, helping to cover the added personnel cost.

Here’s our man, Neng Jia Jin, requiring a translator at court. How does someone get into Canada not knowing our official language? As an immigrant myself, regardless of my mental state, if I stab anyone to death, lock me away and then deport my ass.

 

[T3G]

increasingly buses

Increasingly?

Buses have been equipped with shields since 2009! Hardly a new phenomenon. The argument behind the equipping of buses with shields was indeed one of safety - however, I'm not at all convinced it was even remotely effective, considering the substantial gap left by the shield when it's closed. The fact that the union was mollified by this non solution is baffling to me, but hey, that's none of my business.

New TTC Bus Driver Shields

Coming to a TTC bus near you...

urbantoronto.ca

Streetcars don't have shields since the retirement of the legacy cars in 2019, and wouldn't, because fully enclosed cabs are the global standard, and bus-style streetcars with corner cab arrangements are effectively extinct as a design. And it's not just a question of safety, though this no doubt helps protect against the TTC's charming clientele from assaulting the driver over a fare dispute: you see this design all over other global cities, including those with much lower crime rates than Toronto.

In response to the rest of your post, I refer again to my comments about how the fixation on TTC security measures misses the forest for the trees. Make the city a safe place where people don't have to fear for their lives, and watch the same result reflected in the transit system. This was largely achieved, to great success, in most parts of New York - having avoided key neighbourhoods like Hunt's Point, Brownsville, or East New York in my multiple visits there, I was able to wander around waving a camera at the subways and didn't have the least bit of difficulty doing so, which I wouldn't be able to do in the 70s and 80s. Having another employee on a streetcar or bus, for no discernable reason that I can see other than you wish to see them put in harm's way the way the rest of the passengers are purported to be, would be a populist PR gesture and money sink that would achieve nothing of value. How would you even go about hiring someone for this job? "Human targets needed on TTC" - I can already see the resumes flowing in.

 

[Jonny5]

-Here’s our man, Neng Jia Jin, requiring a translator at court. How does someone get into Canada not knowing our official language? As an immigrant myself, regardless of my mental state, if I stab anyone to death, lock me away and then deport my ass.

You can understand English but still not a large swath of technical and legal jargon which is not a part of most people's daily lives, both in Law and many other areas. That is often the reason for the translation in these situations, and it works both ways, with the prosecution being able to request it to prove there's no misunderstanding simply because the judge used jargon or Latin terminology, which is actually still common, to explain something because the expert translator knows how to speak that out in your language. For example, how would you explain "mens rea" in Vietnamese? The translator knows, and I bet that will come up in this case.

 

[DSCToronto]

An interesting article on free transit in US, currently not behind the pay wall. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/10/fare-free-bus-service-transit/

 

[Jonny5]

Increasingly?

Buses have been equipped with shields since 2009! Hardly a new phenomenon. The argument behind the equipping of buses with shields was indeed one of safety - however, I'm not at all convinced it was even remotely effective, considering the substantial gap left by the shield when it's closed. The fact that the union was mollified by this non solution is baffling to me, but hey, that's none of my business.

New TTC Bus Driver Shields

Coming to a TTC bus near you...

urbantoronto.ca

My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't there a brief period of a dramatic increase in people spitting at drivers, which happened right before they installed the new shields? I seem to recall that was a part of the justification, and it was particularly around buses running late evening/Blue Night which the David Miller administration had significantly increased the amount of service (more than doubled) in the years prior to that, which in-turn brought a large increase in passengers to the more frequent and reliable service, especially in the two hours before and after the subway closed (IIRC, before 2008 there were a lot of routes that had their last run out from a subway station as early as 11:00 p.m., or even 10:00 p.m. on weekends, which was long a thorn in the side of late night subway riders, and Miller extended all routes to at least midnight, seven days a week.)

So there were suddenly far more operators working at those hours than in the past, but they were generally young, junior operators (they get the crappy shifts) and they were quitting over the more casual abuse and threats they got on the job, which led to a developing problem for the TTC that they couldn't keep operators after all the time and expense of training them. The shields weren't perfect, but they prevented a lot and also prevented escalation to some extent.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Increasingly?

That’s your takeaway?

The employees are protected from the passengers. Clearly there’s a perceived danger. But who‘s protecting the passengers?

 

[T3G]

That’s your takeaway?

Manifestly not, considering that the quote was followed up with several paragraphs of text.

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

All I have to say is that bringing back mandatory psychiatric treatment for people with severe illness would be a much more worthwhile investment than a few dozen more transit police. However, no politician is willing to open that can of worms in this day and age. We are too afraid of violating individual sovereignty in this country even when said individuals would benefit greatly from prolonged care in a institutional setting, and everyone would be more safe.

This was the way it was in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s but then for some reason budget cuts were made and "community-care" became a favourite word among politicians looking to reduce spending.

 

[APTA-2048]

All I have to say is that bringing back mandatory psychiatric treatment for people with severe illness would be a much more worthwhile investment than a few dozen more transit police. However, no politician is willing to open that can of worms in this day and age. We are too afraid of violating individual sovereignty in this country even when said individuals would benefit greatly from prolonged care in a institutional setting, and everyone would be more safe.

This was the way it was in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s but then for some reason budget cuts were made and "community-care" became a favourite word among politicians looking to reduce spending.

I maintain that the humanity narrative was convenient cover by everyone to feel better about giving up and abandoning some of the most vulnerable. COVID has shown us this is largely still the case. People who are unable to take care of themselves, whether elderly or mentally incapacitated deserve proper and dignified care. It takes significant investment that no one cares enough about to pursue. The fact that we have people suffering on the street as a danger to themselves and others really is a reflection society’s priorities.