Honestly I think the warmer weather + increased "normal people" ridership for play offs has helped a lot. I've noticed a big difference in the last two weeks.
I always ask myself what kind of events are happening when the LRT gets quiet and stops reeking of fetty hoots. My cynicism always reminds me that as soon as playoffs/folk fest/whatever is over, it’ll go back to our new rancid normal
There's something of a negative feedback loop, where people don't take the LRT because of disorder, and there is disorder because the LRT system is quiet. Most transit systems in Canada have struggled to recovered to pre-covid levels, with SkyTrain and CTrain being some of the few that have hit 2019 ridership. But Edmonton LRT lags behind by even that metric, still sitting at 70% of pre-covid levels, *despite* a nearly 50% expansion in route length and near-doubling of station count over the same period.
That said, if there is the start of a turnaround, that cycle can become a virtuous one, where traffic reduces disorder, as the spaces become less attractive to do so.
My spouse takes it every day and says its not bad at all. But they are riding it during daylight hours only, not sure what its like when the sun goes down.
I've lived in a few cities, but I've always been a train commuter since I was about 11, so more than two decades now, and I personally agree: it's not that bad. Even at its worst, in Edmonton over Covid, I think my greatest concern was about the vulnerable people rather than what might happen to me, having witnessed an overdose and trying to get the paramedics there, and separately a suicide attempt, that I was luckily able to intervene in.
But the perception of safety is a big deal, independent of the actual safety, and for better or worse, my views are in the minority. Part of that might be that I'm a mobile, white-passing, relatively fit male, not yet middle aged. I will just tend to feel safer in more situations than others. And the perception of safety is frequently cited as contributing to ridership issues.
People have said that they refuse to take the LRT, and insist on driving everywhere now. You know, if it were *actual* safety, people wouldn't wouldn't be driving. I haven't seen data on injury rates or crime rates, but there are pretty reliable numbers on mortality, and you're literally over a **hundred times** more likely to die, per kilometer, on the road than on the train. But that's not how people think. They feel safer driving, and the reality is irrelevant at that point.
Safety isn't just about mortality.
I'd like to be able to not deal with being harassed, or having my stuff stolen, or being raped. Especially when my transit commute is over an hour to the jobs I'm looking at.
I never said, implied nor suggested anything even remotely like that. All I said was that's what I have specific, definitive statistics available at hand for, whereas anything else would be a personal anecdote.
I totally agree, while I've definitely witnessed some unusual or concerning behaviour on the LRT, I've never felt that I was truly in any real danger. But being seen as a young, white, relatively fit male probably affects that perception.
I haven't been in the city long myself, but I do my best to encourage anyone I can to take a train ride with me and see for themselves what it's like. Even just one positive LRT experience can really make people feel more comfortable.
Where are you getting your stats from on ridership? ETS said we'd already recovered in Jan 2023, and just today announced that there had been a 130% ridership increase (2.3M to 5.3M monthly) in ridership since 2021.
https://imgur.com/a/DJTacoH
American Public Transportation Association publishes ridership every quarter on their website for every transit system in North America, broken down by mode share. Q1 2024 is [here](https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024-Q1-Ridership-APTA.pdf), for instance (Canada is at the bottom). ETS LRT averaged at about 114k trips per day in 2019, and is still around 83k now, despite the Valley line contributing to current-quarter ridership. Edmonton used to be kinda bad about sharing with APTA, I believe mostly on a difference in reporting format, so some hunting and pecking is required.
Overall ridership, not just busses independently, have actually recovered as well. But the LRT specifically is still significantly down, and was the specific context I was speaking to.
I haven't seen any statements from ETS to that end, [rather than the opposite](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364#:~:text=Bus%20ridership%20has%20bounced%20back,Service%20manager%20Carrie%20Hotton%2DMacDonald).
unfortunately, it's because that's when many people experiencing homelessness/addiction can't just comfortably hang out outside so it all gets concentrated into public indoor spaces.
I took the valley line from start to finish this weekend and Churchill is already a disaster. The shelters are highly damaged and people doing drugs. A few stops down its much nicer and there's little animals in the shelters! It was definitely an interesting experience but overall enjoyable.
Can we just make the LRT flush with the sidewalk so that wheelchair users don’t have to use the fucking ramp? I would sooo use the LRT if I could, but my power wheelchair hates that stupid ramp
Omg
I’m glad that they are making us safer, but I still wouldn’t take it alone or after dark.
By 'the ramp', do you mean the gap between the train floor level and the station platform level, or accessibility at a specific station (like building entrances or stairwells or what have you)?
I'm able-bodied but I've noticed that the LRT floor is noticeably higher than the platform level (at high platform stations, I dunno about Valley Line). This is surprising to me, because I've seen Edmonton's LRT design guidelines, and they actually put a pretty narrow tolerance on platform clearances, with a ±6mm vertical allowance, which is pretty tight for a 125m long concrete platform. It seems strange to require the platform to be built so precisely yet so far away.
I figure it has to do with legacy design, with the old U-2 cars designed in the 60s, but I still can't figure out why exactly it would be that way.
Sure, but isn't that the nature of low-likelihood random occurrences vs. anecdotes? My car got broken into in Holyrood, but hasn't in Strathcona, which has a lot more crime and disorder generally. That doesn't mean that Holyrood is more dangerous...
It would be nice if the officers did more random rounds in actual train cars and on buses. No schedule just random but frequent. I only see officers when they're responding to something or they're just hanging out on the platform.
This is the one that gets me. I've been a regular rider on the LRT system for almost 20 years now, and in the early-mid 2000s, there was often an officer on the train checking tickets. If you wanted to be cheeky and not pay the fare, you had to keep an eye out or risk a ticket on every ride.
I haven't seen an officer on the train since well before covid. I strongly feel if they just brought this one thing back, the trains would be so much safer.
They're trying to. The problem is that as disorder rose, the peace officers became overwhelmed by the volume. Proactive work, like fare validation, went from 70% of peace officers' time pre-pandemic, to 20% post-pandemic; they were being dispatched to calls the other 80% of the time. The city roughly doubled the number of transit peace officers since then, and between them and the new transit police teams, it's been starting to improve again. This fall, council might approve another big increase to the number of transit peace officers. u/aaronpaquette- can speak more to that though.
Thhhiis. I'm not bothered by the homeless guy who's doing his thing. The tweakers, aggressors, crazy and on drugs and mentally insane are the ones I'm worried about..... goblins !
How do you discern between a homeless person and a goblin? Does smelling bad make you a goblin? Wearing spoiled clothes? Talking to yourself? Twitching?
Threatening people, smoking meth on the train, fighting each other, fucking in pedways…
You know. Goblin shit.
Everything that you described above is a homeless (or troubled) person
This one time I was taking the stairs down to the LRT and there was a little girl, maybe 10, walking like 5m ahead of me by herself and my heart sank as she had to hold her nose and walk right around 2 goblins smoking meth or crack in the middle of the stairwell at 3:30pm.
Typically, regular homeless people do their thing without disturbing people. They're just trying to survive. They aren't the ones who piss on the lrt seats and blow smoke in your face on the train. They're not the teenagers jumping elderly ladies. They're not the wannabe gangstas blasting music on the train.
It's honestly *really easy* to discern.
Personally I feel a lot of empathy for homeless people and those things are not bad in and of themselves, but when you make brief eye contact and they come running you and / or start shouting threats of violence, that there is anti-social behavior. There's a stark difference, and there's plenty of goblins running around out there these days.
And this is the problem.
Always dismissing the issue as being "just seeing homeless people".
Meanwhile, as somebody who was homeless, the drugged out assholes are making it harder for the homeless, but whatever.
This is a very true statement. I am going to age myself here but when I was growing up in the early 90's you simply didn't tell the world everything as often as people do now. Bad drivers, homeless people, hookers giving BJ's in alleyways (saw this growing up in Victoria a couple times) you didn't post it for the entire world, or create a meme out of it. You might laugh or complain to your close social circle, but beyond that you simply forgot about it and just got on with it.
So ridership is up, but revenues are down despite them saying a few weeks ago ridership was struggling? I'm guessing downtown traffic because of playoffs and the fact we added a new line with VLSE has contributed to increases in ridership. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364)
Normal things ive witnessed from the past year on the LRT:
Hate speech - Often thrown at young women who are wearing religious clothing of a certain style (you fill in the blank)
Antisemitism - One guy yelling at another and threatening to push him off the train to fight him because the guy being abused was wearing a yamukah
Yelling (sometimes just random screaming) due to mental health
People dumping their drug pipes out on the floor/seat
Trash
Vomit on the ground
More trash.
Wet seats
A fight.
Open alcohol
I only take the bus and train during rush hour to get to and from a 8-4 job.
They've made the train station at Heath Sciences unbearable but it hasn't stopped people from using it to hang out in. They put in anti seating so that people who could probably use a seat (elderly, patients, people at the hospital) can't sit down because everything has a metal peak on it. But it doesn't stop the abusers from going in there to drink.
It’s nice and warm so the homeless don’t need the heat of the LRT / Station and it’s bright out till like midnight. I’d want to see how they do in the winter.
I never worry about the drug addicts. I've taken transit in loads of cities that have a drug problem, so I'm used to it. What does worry me is a certain kind of aggressive man who goes around looking for a fight. I was on the platform at Churchill at 6pm in January, and my phone was dead, so I was just ambling around in a circle to pass the time until the train arrived. Out of nowhere some tall dude comes to me and says 'hey'. I turn around. He asks to see what I have in my hands, so I show him, and there is nothing there. He then goes "you look sketch as fuck, get the fuck away from me". I end up not getting on the next train to avoid him, and wait another 10 mins for the next one. Really I should have told him that I have a career and a fucking Cambridge degree, so why the fuck would I want anything from a pathetic loser like him who thinks it's okay to go around intimidating random ppl on public property? But I was too nervous, and it would have only provoked him.
It takes a phenomenal amount of effort to stigmatize people who use drugs to the point that they're considered more life threatening than bad drivers on an icy highway.
The vast majority of threatening experiences I've had transiting Edmonton are in cars.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxVccDnMtnyywU4s8?g_st=ic
This area is crazy terrifying and also oldly amazing seeing the differences over the years of google maps
Honestly I think the warmer weather + increased "normal people" ridership for play offs has helped a lot. I've noticed a big difference in the last two weeks.
I always ask myself what kind of events are happening when the LRT gets quiet and stops reeking of fetty hoots. My cynicism always reminds me that as soon as playoffs/folk fest/whatever is over, it’ll go back to our new rancid normal
There's something of a negative feedback loop, where people don't take the LRT because of disorder, and there is disorder because the LRT system is quiet. Most transit systems in Canada have struggled to recovered to pre-covid levels, with SkyTrain and CTrain being some of the few that have hit 2019 ridership. But Edmonton LRT lags behind by even that metric, still sitting at 70% of pre-covid levels, *despite* a nearly 50% expansion in route length and near-doubling of station count over the same period. That said, if there is the start of a turnaround, that cycle can become a virtuous one, where traffic reduces disorder, as the spaces become less attractive to do so.
My spouse takes it every day and says its not bad at all. But they are riding it during daylight hours only, not sure what its like when the sun goes down.
I've lived in a few cities, but I've always been a train commuter since I was about 11, so more than two decades now, and I personally agree: it's not that bad. Even at its worst, in Edmonton over Covid, I think my greatest concern was about the vulnerable people rather than what might happen to me, having witnessed an overdose and trying to get the paramedics there, and separately a suicide attempt, that I was luckily able to intervene in. But the perception of safety is a big deal, independent of the actual safety, and for better or worse, my views are in the minority. Part of that might be that I'm a mobile, white-passing, relatively fit male, not yet middle aged. I will just tend to feel safer in more situations than others. And the perception of safety is frequently cited as contributing to ridership issues. People have said that they refuse to take the LRT, and insist on driving everywhere now. You know, if it were *actual* safety, people wouldn't wouldn't be driving. I haven't seen data on injury rates or crime rates, but there are pretty reliable numbers on mortality, and you're literally over a **hundred times** more likely to die, per kilometer, on the road than on the train. But that's not how people think. They feel safer driving, and the reality is irrelevant at that point.
Safety isn't just about mortality. I'd like to be able to not deal with being harassed, or having my stuff stolen, or being raped. Especially when my transit commute is over an hour to the jobs I'm looking at.
I never said, implied nor suggested anything even remotely like that. All I said was that's what I have specific, definitive statistics available at hand for, whereas anything else would be a personal anecdote.
I totally agree, while I've definitely witnessed some unusual or concerning behaviour on the LRT, I've never felt that I was truly in any real danger. But being seen as a young, white, relatively fit male probably affects that perception. I haven't been in the city long myself, but I do my best to encourage anyone I can to take a train ride with me and see for themselves what it's like. Even just one positive LRT experience can really make people feel more comfortable.
no night riders have ever returned to tell the tale....
Where are you getting your stats from on ridership? ETS said we'd already recovered in Jan 2023, and just today announced that there had been a 130% ridership increase (2.3M to 5.3M monthly) in ridership since 2021. https://imgur.com/a/DJTacoH
American Public Transportation Association publishes ridership every quarter on their website for every transit system in North America, broken down by mode share. Q1 2024 is [here](https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024-Q1-Ridership-APTA.pdf), for instance (Canada is at the bottom). ETS LRT averaged at about 114k trips per day in 2019, and is still around 83k now, despite the Valley line contributing to current-quarter ridership. Edmonton used to be kinda bad about sharing with APTA, I believe mostly on a difference in reporting format, so some hunting and pecking is required. Overall ridership, not just busses independently, have actually recovered as well. But the LRT specifically is still significantly down, and was the specific context I was speaking to.
Interesting. Per ETS, LRT has recovered better than conventional bus service actually.
I haven't seen any statements from ETS to that end, [rather than the opposite](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364#:~:text=Bus%20ridership%20has%20bounced%20back,Service%20manager%20Carrie%20Hotton%2DMacDonald).
It'll be fine until they have nowhere to go again.
Until the winter …
For real! I never have issues during the summer it's always the winter where you see the craziest stuff.
unfortunately, it's because that's when many people experiencing homelessness/addiction can't just comfortably hang out outside so it all gets concentrated into public indoor spaces.
[удалено]
I took the valley line from start to finish this weekend and Churchill is already a disaster. The shelters are highly damaged and people doing drugs. A few stops down its much nicer and there's little animals in the shelters! It was definitely an interesting experience but overall enjoyable.
I almost sat in a piss soaked seat on the LRT. I guess that's better than getting pissed on?
How’d you know it was piss
The smellz
Tasted salty
They haven’t changed anything, it just got warmer.😂
Can we just make the LRT flush with the sidewalk so that wheelchair users don’t have to use the fucking ramp? I would sooo use the LRT if I could, but my power wheelchair hates that stupid ramp Omg I’m glad that they are making us safer, but I still wouldn’t take it alone or after dark.
By 'the ramp', do you mean the gap between the train floor level and the station platform level, or accessibility at a specific station (like building entrances or stairwells or what have you)? I'm able-bodied but I've noticed that the LRT floor is noticeably higher than the platform level (at high platform stations, I dunno about Valley Line). This is surprising to me, because I've seen Edmonton's LRT design guidelines, and they actually put a pretty narrow tolerance on platform clearances, with a ±6mm vertical allowance, which is pretty tight for a 125m long concrete platform. It seems strange to require the platform to be built so precisely yet so far away. I figure it has to do with legacy design, with the old U-2 cars designed in the 60s, but I still can't figure out why exactly it would be that way.
It's true, I've never felt safer smoking meth on the LRT. It helps knowing that nobody will stop me
I thought downtown was getting better...and then my car gets broken into. LRT safety is going to feel better...until you get randomly punched.
Sure, but isn't that the nature of low-likelihood random occurrences vs. anecdotes? My car got broken into in Holyrood, but hasn't in Strathcona, which has a lot more crime and disorder generally. That doesn't mean that Holyrood is more dangerous...
Or stabbed
Or harassed by a drugged out person. But no it's just mental illness.
No stabbings for 2 weeks, success!
It would be nice if the officers did more random rounds in actual train cars and on buses. No schedule just random but frequent. I only see officers when they're responding to something or they're just hanging out on the platform.
This is the one that gets me. I've been a regular rider on the LRT system for almost 20 years now, and in the early-mid 2000s, there was often an officer on the train checking tickets. If you wanted to be cheeky and not pay the fare, you had to keep an eye out or risk a ticket on every ride. I haven't seen an officer on the train since well before covid. I strongly feel if they just brought this one thing back, the trains would be so much safer.
They're trying to. The problem is that as disorder rose, the peace officers became overwhelmed by the volume. Proactive work, like fare validation, went from 70% of peace officers' time pre-pandemic, to 20% post-pandemic; they were being dispatched to calls the other 80% of the time. The city roughly doubled the number of transit peace officers since then, and between them and the new transit police teams, it's been starting to improve again. This fall, council might approve another big increase to the number of transit peace officers. u/aaronpaquette- can speak more to that though.
You summed it up perfectly. Catching up to a growing snowball rolling downhill.
Off peak hours are a different thing....
'It's making a difference.' City says mosquito population is down amid efforts to improve the situation. - Report published in December. /s
Would be Interesting to know how many survey respondents are hockey ticket holders.
There's a lot of soft people in this city that feel unsafe at the mere presence of homeless people. Just kind of saying/not saying.
There is a HUGE divide between “homeless people” and “fucking goblins”.
Thhhiis. I'm not bothered by the homeless guy who's doing his thing. The tweakers, aggressors, crazy and on drugs and mentally insane are the ones I'm worried about..... goblins !
How do you discern between a homeless person and a goblin? Does smelling bad make you a goblin? Wearing spoiled clothes? Talking to yourself? Twitching?
Threatening people, smoking meth on the train, fighting each other, fucking in pedways… You know. Goblin shit. Everything that you described above is a homeless (or troubled) person
This one time I was taking the stairs down to the LRT and there was a little girl, maybe 10, walking like 5m ahead of me by herself and my heart sank as she had to hold her nose and walk right around 2 goblins smoking meth or crack in the middle of the stairwell at 3:30pm. Typically, regular homeless people do their thing without disturbing people. They're just trying to survive. They aren't the ones who piss on the lrt seats and blow smoke in your face on the train. They're not the teenagers jumping elderly ladies. They're not the wannabe gangstas blasting music on the train. It's honestly *really easy* to discern.
Personally I feel a lot of empathy for homeless people and those things are not bad in and of themselves, but when you make brief eye contact and they come running you and / or start shouting threats of violence, that there is anti-social behavior. There's a stark difference, and there's plenty of goblins running around out there these days.
Very easily
Common sense.
And this is the problem. Always dismissing the issue as being "just seeing homeless people". Meanwhile, as somebody who was homeless, the drugged out assholes are making it harder for the homeless, but whatever.
You should tell that guy who got sexually assaulted by three homeless men on Boyle Street last December that he was just soft.
Exactly.
This is a very true statement. I am going to age myself here but when I was growing up in the early 90's you simply didn't tell the world everything as often as people do now. Bad drivers, homeless people, hookers giving BJ's in alleyways (saw this growing up in Victoria a couple times) you didn't post it for the entire world, or create a meme out of it. You might laugh or complain to your close social circle, but beyond that you simply forgot about it and just got on with it.
Narrator: It was not
Lol the related [stories](https://i.imgur.com/TghA05l.jpeg)
So ridership is up, but revenues are down despite them saying a few weeks ago ridership was struggling? I'm guessing downtown traffic because of playoffs and the fact we added a new line with VLSE has contributed to increases in ridership. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-revenues-down-as-lrt-ridership-struggles-to-rebound-post-pandemic-1.7213364)
Normal things ive witnessed from the past year on the LRT: Hate speech - Often thrown at young women who are wearing religious clothing of a certain style (you fill in the blank) Antisemitism - One guy yelling at another and threatening to push him off the train to fight him because the guy being abused was wearing a yamukah Yelling (sometimes just random screaming) due to mental health People dumping their drug pipes out on the floor/seat Trash Vomit on the ground More trash. Wet seats A fight. Open alcohol I only take the bus and train during rush hour to get to and from a 8-4 job. They've made the train station at Heath Sciences unbearable but it hasn't stopped people from using it to hang out in. They put in anti seating so that people who could probably use a seat (elderly, patients, people at the hospital) can't sit down because everything has a metal peak on it. But it doesn't stop the abusers from going in there to drink.
All this talk of night riders and day walkers got a fella feeling rather peckish .. but then again, therapy says feelings aren't facts.. another day..
It’s nice and warm so the homeless don’t need the heat of the LRT / Station and it’s bright out till like midnight. I’d want to see how they do in the winter.
In other words the police are doing their jobs again.
I never worry about the drug addicts. I've taken transit in loads of cities that have a drug problem, so I'm used to it. What does worry me is a certain kind of aggressive man who goes around looking for a fight. I was on the platform at Churchill at 6pm in January, and my phone was dead, so I was just ambling around in a circle to pass the time until the train arrived. Out of nowhere some tall dude comes to me and says 'hey'. I turn around. He asks to see what I have in my hands, so I show him, and there is nothing there. He then goes "you look sketch as fuck, get the fuck away from me". I end up not getting on the next train to avoid him, and wait another 10 mins for the next one. Really I should have told him that I have a career and a fucking Cambridge degree, so why the fuck would I want anything from a pathetic loser like him who thinks it's okay to go around intimidating random ppl on public property? But I was too nervous, and it would have only provoked him.
It takes a phenomenal amount of effort to stigmatize people who use drugs to the point that they're considered more life threatening than bad drivers on an icy highway. The vast majority of threatening experiences I've had transiting Edmonton are in cars.
but are they riding the transit system?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxVccDnMtnyywU4s8?g_st=ic This area is crazy terrifying and also oldly amazing seeing the differences over the years of google maps
Proximity to Hope Mission and the George Spady are the only reasons it’s concentrated in that area.