As Long as it Won’t Work, San Francisco Will Try It

John has written some excellent pieces on the trouble the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) is in. 

Perhaps one of the reasons it is doing so poorly–ridership is less than 50% of what it was pre-pandemic–is that the people running the system are, to put it kindly, insane. Workers are clocking in without doing work, garnering hundreds of thousands in unearned wages, while the system they work for is collapsing.

Public employees. What are you going to do, right?

Of the many problems the system has, one of the biggest is that the trains have become dystopic. Crime and open drug use are rampant, which drives away people who otherwise would use the system. This is particularly ironic, because San Francisco is one of the few American cities where transit should work well. The place is undrivable, the city is compact and dense, and if the transit system were good, people would flock to it. 

‘Robberies, per passenger trip, are up in recent years and account for most of violent crime reported by BART police.’

[BART is an acronym for Bay Area Robbery & Terror]

BART commuters say crime, open drug use keeping people away from the transit system https://t.co/5FyTmH5jye

— skepticalifornia (@skepticaliblog) November 7, 2023

BART is well aware that this is a serious problem, so they have come up with a solution that no doubt will do wonders for the safety of passengers. It is somewhat surprising that nobody else thought to try this!

If someone is harassing you in a way that makes you feel unsafe, hand a person close to you the 🔹 blue “You Got Me?” card to ask for their help. The card offers options for ways they might help you. pic.twitter.com/SW2frsJymo

— BART (@SFBART) March 29, 2024

You Got Me cards. 

Given what we know about the kind of crimes that happen on trains, I’m not sure exactly what these cards are supposed to accomplish. Perhaps a secret razor’s edge is on the card, or if held up high, it turns into a Bat Signal. But unless there is something more than meets the eye here, it is impossible to come up with a rationale for distributing these cards. 

The cards were created as part of BART’s Not One More Girl campaign, which encourages safety through bystander support and awareness, especially for girls and gender-expansive youth.

Learn more: https://t.co/43brq10wKQ pic.twitter.com/IwwvHsRANS

— BART (@SFBART) March 29, 2024

BART’s “Not One More Girl” campaign is not a bad idea in itself. Eliminating harassment of women is a more than laudable goal.

Perhaps, though, putting more police on the trains and not reserving prosecutions for the law-abiding people who would otherwise be willing to help might do more to reduce crime than handing out stupid cards. 

This sort of thing springs from the minds of idiots who think they can control the weather by throwing soup at art and gluing their hands to roads. It is deeply unserious, as are the people currently running San Francisco and many of our major cities. 

A tiny fraction of the population commits most criminal acts, and we generally know who they are. Time and again, you read about career criminals who escalate their crimes to the point of killing others, and they walk on the streets until that point. 

 Arrest the criminals and put them in jail. Clean up the streets. It isn’t sexy, it isn’t pretty, and it will never be perfect. 

But it works a hell of a lot better than a “You Got Me?” card. 

Geez.