Ridership on all government transportation systems is falling, fast. Decent people stay away from dirty, disease and crime ridden buses and trains. But, we have now found a use for the trains—shelter for the homeless and a “safe” location to use drugs.
“From the moment you hit the stairs in the underground parking garage, it smells like pee. Wash the stairways, Metro. And then stop people from peeing in them. As I entered the car — waiting only a few minutes for a train — the first thing I noticed was trash, on the floor, and on my chosen seat, which I brushed off with the back of my hand. Pick up the trash, Metro. I sat down and started counting. Two guys were passed out, completely, slouched over in their seats. Bruised, cut, battered, sunburned — they were homeless drug addicts. Then I counted around the car, and was going to go with six housed people as well. But I had to revise that — two of those were wrapped in a dirty blanket, as if they were going to stay on the train forever. So, total, with me: Four homeless, five more fortunate.
Nothing scary, as such. Just heartbreakingly sad.
The story shows that even those paid to be on the train, as an Ambassador, do not like using it. Why aren’t they gett5ing the druggies and the homeless off the trains. Not to do so seems like another waste of tax dollars.
Riding a Gold Line train in the age of LA Metro anxiety
By LARRY WILSON, | Pasadena Star News, 3/22/23
I hadn’t been on an LA Metro light-rail train in slightly over three years.
I am willing to wager that the majority of you readers would say the same.
Driving past the mostly empty Gold Line train cars on the 210 Freeway, we knew something was wrong with mass transit in these parts.
We knew, as the taxpayers who have funded Los Angeles County’s attempt to catch up with the rest of the big-city world over the last three decades, that just when it seemed as if there were enough connectivity to make it all work, it all went south with the pandemic.
For years, during the worst of the pre-vaccine pandemic, we weren’t even getting into cars with friends and family. What would make us get on a public train, crowded or not?
And yet. That was more than partially an excuse. When I thought about it last week, I had been on trains in Scotland, and in Spain, over the last three years. For God’s sake, I had been on the New York City subway.
So what was keeping me from the hometown version?
Then, last week I read my former editorial board colleague Rachel Uranga’s front-page story in the Los Angeles Times, where she is now a staff writer. She and photographer Wally Skalij hung out at the Red Line station at MacArthur Park, where the classical music blares in order to keep the riff-raff away. But the riff-raff, in the person of fentanyl smoker Matthew Morales, quickly showed themselves anyway, and persevered. The scribe, the photog and the junkie boarded the train together at rush hour, and the smoker fired up, chasing the dragon of smoke through the plastic hull of a repurposed ballpoint pen. Morales collapsed in a stupor. The train operator walked by and barely noticed.
Really? We’ve just given up?
Monday, I grabbed the disused TAP card and boarded a southbound train at Del Mar. It was the easiest assignment ever: Get off at Chinatown, walk two blocks and have a French-dipped sandwich at Philippe’s, forever filled with characters — rich guys, poor guys, cops, city workers, families — that remind us we live in a real city.
I saw no crime, as such. I was never afraid. But, man, if I was running that railroad …
From the moment you hit the stairs in the underground parking garage, it smells like pee. Wash the stairways, Metro. And then stop people from peeing in them. As I entered the car — waiting only a few minutes for a train — the first thing I noticed was trash, on the floor, and on my chosen seat, which I brushed off with the back of my hand. Pick up the trash, Metro. I sat down and started counting. Two guys were passed out, completely, slouched over in their seats. Bruised, cut, battered, sunburned — they were homeless drug addicts. Then I counted around the car, and was going to go with six housed people as well. But I had to revise that — two of those were wrapped in a dirty blanket, as if they were going to stay on the train forever. So, total, with me: Four homeless, five more fortunate.
Nothing scary, as such. Just heartbreakingly sad.
I glanced into the next car and saw two tall, young, athletic men with slick gray jackets identifying them as Metro Ambassadors.
I walked back to talk with them. I did not identify myself as a reporter, so won’t quote them. Had they read Rachel’s story? They had.
Did they agree with her portrait of a transit system in crisis, given the open drug use and the unsavory characters? They did.
Would they themselves use Metro when off-duty? One wouldn’t; the other did, though buses seemed safer to him.
I pointed to the two guys passed out in my car, and to the one guy fidgeting wildly and talking to himself in ours. Was it their job to wake up such sleepers? It was not; could be dangerous for all, though they would stop someone igniting, say, a crack pipe, same as they would any smoker.
What should riders do if worried for our safety or someone else’s? Download the Transit Watch App or call 888-950-7233 and report your train car number and location; real cops will board the train within one or two stops. “We’re not guards, we’re not officers,” one ambassador said. But they’re good guys. So that’s good.
Fourteen minutes after boarding, we were in Chinatown. It was great to not have to park. Excellent sandwich. Nice double espresso at Homegirl Cafe up the street, where the reformed gang members with tattoos on their faces are positively angelic. Zero people passed out on the train home to Pasadena. As with other things in this life, if we all got together and took back the streets — or the light rail — and if our society found homes for the homeless, we would be in a better place.
