Democrats’ policies are making mass transit too unsafe for city dwellers’ tastes
Zachary Faria
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Liberal policies are hollowing out Democratic cities, and the Democrats running those cities don’t care enough to do anything about it.
San Francisco’s BART system has seen a 60% decline in ridership since the start of the pandemic in 2020. While many try to downplay San Francisco’s population loss as solely the result of remote work and not crime, no such rhetorical crutch will work for the BART system. Safety is the top issue preventing people from riding BART, according to a survey by the Bay Area Council.
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According to the survey, 79% of riders feel more comfortable on BART with uniformed police officers present, and 73% think adding more officers on trains and in stations should be a priority. Just 17% feel safe riding the trains, and 16% think the system is clean. The system is dirty and dangerous because San Francisco’s leaders decided that crime is not a big issue and “quality of life” crimes shouldn’t exist.
Most recently, a man attacked another passenger on the BART system with a meat cleaver while trying to steal the victim’s backpack. That’s how far the situation has deteriorated on San Francisco’s public transit system.
A similar crisis is playing out in New York City. The Big Apple’s subway system finally saw a small decrease in crime earlier this year, but felony assaults on the system have remained at roughly the same level. Just as it appeared that New York City was turning a corner, the death of Jordan Neely threw the subway’s crime issues back into the spotlight.
Neely was killed after passengers, forced to restrain him for their own safety, put him in a chokehold. Neely had previously been arrested more than 40 times and had an active arrest warrant for felony assault.
Earlier this year, a Fox News meteorologist and a PBS reporter were also assaulted on the subway in separate attacks.
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Although subway crime is down, the looming possibility of being beaten by a career criminal whom the city has refused to lock up has continued to hang over riders’ heads. New York City is still seeing only 60% of its pre-pandemic ridership.
Democrats are making their own cities unlivable because their ideology forbids doing anything about violent career criminals and mentally ill, drug-addicted homeless people on their sidewalks and public transit systems. They refuse to enforce quality-of-life offenses and sacrifice quality of life in the process. Now they are surprised that the very transit systems they once bragged about are a shell of their former selves.