3 ms·

> The CTA goes pretty much everywhere and isn't an open-air drug market. To be fair, the antisocial behavior I witnessed on the CTA {Green Line|Red Line south

> The CTA goes pretty much everywhere and isn't an open-air drug market. To be fair, the antisocial behavior I witnessed on the CTA {Green Line|Red Line south of Roosevelt} and the Muni is comparable. I've never been verbally accosted by passengers on CTA like I have on Muni, but I did witness blatant pickpocketing and a drugged passenger break the bus door on CTA, which I've never seen on Muni. For what it's worth, my sense is that the issues that SF has Chicago doesn't--homelessness, untreated mental illness--largely stem from cost of living differences, particularly housing prices. Everything from opening shelters to operating mental health facilities to avoiding homelessness in the first place is easier when real estate is more affordable. (To give an example, my hometown of College Station, Texas--hardly a bastion of liberalism!--had a quite effective program for preventing homelessness in the '90s and the aughts: straight-up building enough houses to house virtually all the needy and pricing them far below market rate. This worked because of the combination of a rich suburban tax base and rock-bottom real estate prices, which would not work in Chicago or anywhere in California.) That doesn't excuse SF and the state of California from failing to better address the problems, of course.

inferiorhuman 8y ago
For what it's worth, my sense is that the issues that SF has Chicago doesn't--homelessness, untreated mental illness--largely stem from cost of living differences, particularly housing prices. My experience is that Muni itself is generally OK (yes even the 8/9, 14, and 38), but that BART has gotten really bad over the past couple years. For a while Muni stopped running the (then new) hybrid buses in the Bayview because people would hit the external kill switches when the bus was stopped. There are a couple of California-specific and SF-specific issues at play as well. SFPD simply doesn't ride Muni, although I believe they're contractually obligated to. Meanwhile BART PD is spread very thin (around four officers at any given time for their SF stations). At the state level, California makes it very difficult to force someone to stay on psychiatric medication or keep them in an institution. I don't believe this is as much of an issue in Illinois.

inferiorhuman 8y ago

For what it's worth, my sense is that the issues that SF has Chicago doesn't--homelessness, untreated mental illness--largely stem from cost of living differences, particularly housing prices. My experience is that Muni itself is generally OK (yes even the 8/9, 14, and 38), but that BART has gotten really bad over the past couple years. For a while Muni stopped running the (then new) hybrid buses in the Bayview because people would hit the external kill switches when the bus was stopped. There are a couple of California-specific and SF-specific issues at play as well. SFPD simply doesn't ride Muni, although I believe they're contractually obligated to. Meanwhile BART PD is spread very thin (around four officers at any given time for their SF stations). At the state level, California makes it very difficult to force someone to stay on psychiatric medication or keep them in an institution. I don't believe this is as much of an issue in Illinois.