Bad Idea Given Stupid Encouragement

The City transit system includes an elevated rail line I'll call Elerail. It's okay, sort of. The city spreads north and south of the river, the Elerail runs alongside it. To some extent this distorts the transit picture by in essence, forcing "two-steps-forward-and-one-to-the-side" trips for commuters.

No matter, I favour it, and the extension they're now building (which is utterly loathed by a number of well-meaning people for, I confess, perfectly adequate reasons). But public transit is almost always a case of "if you build it, they'll take it" and the more so with this system for the reason below:

For some blindingly stupid reason when the system was built, in a haze of locally-grown smoke, the planners neglected to put in turnstiles.

I know. I love the City. In what other metropolitan area sprawling hundreds of square miles and containing 2.2 million grasping, venial, tight-fisted bastards does the transit authority say: "Hey man, can't we just share this with the world?"

It followed as the night the day that they should then have to hire a special force of cops, dredged from the very best of the rejects and retirees from real police forces, to catch turnstile-jumpers. One must sypathize for these Skycops. Theirs was made an unneccessarily difficult task because, as mentioned, there were no turnstiles to jump.

The regular local force in this city has a reputation somewhere between Sgt. Preston of the Mounties and the Gestapo, tending closer to the second. But Skycops get no respect at all.

So they're being given guns. The math, on the part of the individual responsible, obviously goes like this:

Cost of turnstiles, several million. Likelihood of appearing on television: Nil.

Cost of guns, several hundred thousand, odds of having to make a statement to the press and appear on television to defend someone who's shot an innocent bystander, thus impressing the 19-year-old I'm having it off with: Much better.

Worse yet, stupid citizens make statements like this:

"I guess it makes me feel a little bit more secure although I didn't feel all that insecure," said Robert Smith

Next week, the City will introduce an all-Canadian, local version of the Patriot Act, and some other blithering idiot will repeat the sentiments above. Haven't we learned not to encourage this sort of thing?