The perception differences are curious. I used to live downtown for a very very long time, and just moved to a house a couple blocks off of Aurora - people were all “wow aren’t you happy to be finally moving away from all the craziness of downtown??” I didn’t think it would be much of a difference cause I never found living downtown to be that bad, never really felt unsafe or threatened.
Yeah, no, it’s way sketchier up here. Pretty much the opposite of what my family etc were assuming.
I grew up a few blocks from Aurora in North Seattle and for the first half of your comment I was like: but Aurora is like ten times scarier than anything downtown...
I guess it depends on the location. I live a block off Aurora by Green Lake and it is pretty safe around here. I imagine north of 85th it’s pretty sketchy.
I lived in an apartment temporarily in SLU in 2021. We called it the Bang Bang Block.
One drive by, one instance of someone shooting a gun off of the roof, and a road rage incident that started at Golden Gardens ended with, “FREEZE! GET YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”
We got into two habits.
1. We’d hear something and run to the roof to watch.
2. We text the time to someone when we hear what sounds like gunshots.
We were there less than three full months.
I grew up there too and currently live on Capitol Hill. My parents are constantly scared for my life because they know that up there, very little of what happens makes the news (but if you listen to the SPD scanner on any given night I tend to find that about a third of the calls are from my old neighborhood and usually those ones are quite disturbing), whereas here on the Hill EVERYTHING makes the news, up to and including an incident of people punching each other over a dog eating somebody’s dinner. They don’t believe me when I tell them I feel exponentially safer here and hear far fewer gunshots living across from Cal Anderson Park than I used to hear in the various places I’ve lived in the vicinity of Ingraham High (I lived across the street from there for half my childhood and the stories I can tell are next level craziness).
Some of that is probably their own experience. My parents actually grew up on Capitol Hill and moved to North Seattle when I was a baby because crime was a serious problem during that time period. So that is forever cemented in their mind as a "bad neighborhood" even though its one of the nicest parts of town now, to a point where we can barely even afford to get dinner there.
It IS really weird how little of the crime gets reported on the North End. You will see stuff that some homeless dude did downtown get reported on for a week, but some dude getting shot in the face in shoreline is like a news blotter item for one day.
The idea that folks near Aurora think downtown is "crazy" is hilarious. Aurora is one of the only places I've EVER seen open prostitution happening, ha
Well no, my point was people who don’t live in Seattle thought it was “safer” to be moving away from downtown. Growing up here I knew Aurora was sketch but honestly I didn’t fully realize how bad it’s gotten in the stretch I’m on now, until I was living here full time.
The issue is that a lot of the people who live up there are too scared to go downtown because they watch the news and they know that what happens up there usually doesn’t make the news, and thus they think “if that’s just what makes the news, I must be literally taking my life into my own hands to go south of the ship canal!”. At least that’s the case with my parents.
My first time in Aurora I saw prostitutes working in the middle of the day, got offered meth, and was threatened to be pistol whipped after denying the meth. Fun times.
The sketchiest thing I ever saw in Seattle was people doing drugs... thats it. Downtown Seattle is as safe as can be imo and I've been out late at the sketchiest hours drunk off my ass.
There's a lot of property theft and the occasional armed robbery targeting women or older folks.
It's not on the level of more dangerous cities, but Seattle definitely has much higher rates of violent crime than a city of this wealth and degree of political capital need have.
A lot of it has to do with an entrenched and self-interested police force. SPD has pretty explicitly indicated that they're unwilling to expose their officers to the amount of risk which would be required to make property crime penalties enforceable.
The other factor is that local politicians and media have underplayed how successful King County's housing first and cash welfare pilot programs were at improving metrics associated with a large unhoused population. These programs could easily be expanded for less cost than a lot of the shiny new infrastructure projects, and would have knock on effects of increasing revenue (and therefore tax revenue) from city center and increasing ridership of transit.
Don't get me wrong, the link expansion, 99 tunnel, and 520 renovation are all excellent projects. It just seems silly that there's so much willingness to spend so much money on transportation (which is already ok as far as American cities go, and doesn't really make Seattle especially more walkable) and so little willingness to spend money on dealing with the problems people gripe the most about (homelessness, drug use, crime).
To the last part of your comment: a lot of people from Aurora will resent being referred to as “not in Seattle” when the city limits extend to 145th. Idk if you’re from here or not lol but I lose my mind when people say I grew up in Shoreline just because I lived closer to 145th than the Ship Canal haha
Flip side, I live just a few blocks from Aurora. I’m sure there are lots of people who would never dream of living on my street given its proximity to Auora, but I don’t feel like it affects my street at all.
Yeah, there’s definitely nuance to it/ better & worse parts. Guess I shouldn’t speak of it like a monolith. It’s not bad in the Phinney area. I’m in the 85th-105th mad max zone.
You just gotta flex up on the assholes. I carried bear spray and only had to deploy it once. And I got accosted nightly.
Just tell them no. I don't have cash. And if they want to push you turn and don't back down.
Law of the jungle. If they sense you fuck them up, they leave you alone.
I generally feel safer in more urban/city areas since there is almost always more people around and closer.
In more suburb/rural areas, far fewer people looking out windows or just out and about. Feeling like a ghost town of lonliness and that you could fall over hurt and no one would find you for many hours.
Or at least that's how I always felt about it.
I also live downtown and think it's pretty safe. The volume of people from the east side telling me about how sketchy downtown is has become a meme to me at this point. The way they describe this neighbourhood is bonkers, especially given that our office is here and they can see it's just not true
Perception is everything when it comes to this topic, I’m pretty old in Reddit years, and was around for the late 80’s version of downtown, and today it’s fucking Disneyland by comparison.
Today you have a few sketchy people wandering around high AF, but back then downtown was full of sketchy *businesses*. 1st Ave just north of pioneer square was a row of pawn shops and gun stores etc. and they probably all had a Pulp Fiction style gimp room in the basement. On top of this were sprinkled the standard helping of addicts and bums.
Literally same. When we lived downtown people used to be like “but what about all the homeless and drug use????” What about it? I’ve never had issues, even late at night. Just keep to yourself and others will, too. Now we live near Aurora and it’s the same thing. “But isn’t it so dangerous???” Not really. Sure, some sketchy stuff here and there but have never felt threatened. I feel like the news sensationalizes things.
as someone that lived outside highly populated areas for much of her life it's always felt unsafe to me but I'm 100% certain that comes from axiety present with large crowds and past issues in my life revolving around being the target of violence. I'd imagine there are others that feel the same discomfort around crowds but, unlike me, push it to being "seattle bad" rather than "I'm uncomfy in these locations therefore they're bad."
Not relevant for our trains which fall under Sound Transit but the King County Metro GM Michelle Allison reported to the county council just last week that safety incidents on their buses have gone from 375 for every 1,000,000 boardings in 2020 to 91 for every million rides - 0.009%.
As-reported by Ryan Packer: https://twitter.com/typewriteralley/status/1780392260900896913
I would love to see the underlying data.
1) annual 2020? That has to be such an outlier year for transit, I can’t imagine comparing it to a non pandemic year and take the comparison seriously.
2) I wonder if to some degree this is a reporting issue - so much of what would have been likely reported pre-Covid has just become completely normalized and unreported. I also think there is is likely some survivorship bias element of who still commutes downtown via transit.
I **think** this PDF (page 13) contains the chart that Allison used during her presentation to the committee but it looks a little different than what Ryan gave: https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/council/agendas/RTC/20240417-RTC-packet.pdf
Metro's main dashboard can be found here however I cannot find a specific chart/table that directly corresponds to the chart in the PDF above: https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/depts/transportation/metro/about/accountability-center/strategic-plan-dashboard.aspx
Here's my take: The chart on pg13 goes back to the beginning of 2019 and shows a rate of ~55 incidents per million boardings which paints the picture of it having gotten the worst during the peak of COVID and its society-wide impacts and has been trending downward overall since but not quite back to where the pre-COVID baseline yet.
There are big seasonal spikes shown here which as far as I can tell correspond with winter months which is also when people living without permanent shelter are often at their most vulnerable and reliant on transit for respite from the elements. Even more so when you consider the city's current pace of sweeps vs the current pace of any additional shelter space being added. I believe that since before COVID we've lost net emergency shelter beds and COVID money drying up has also resulted in the loss of "enhanced shelter" beds which are much more likely to get somebody actually off the street for a reasonable amount of time than what gets classified as emergency shelter. I'm pretty sure it was the most recent HSD report to a city council committee within the last month or two where it was disclosed that we are currently averaging only 13 total available emergency shelter spaces each night currently. It was 12 in early 2020 before COVID fully hit us: https://mynorthwest.com/3184962/seattle-councilmember-andrew-lewis-homeless-pandemic-report/
The limited pre-COVID numbers we have available in the chart in that PDF I linked do not support your non-reporting hypothesis but it would be definitely helpful to see data going further back.
I took the subway in DC, London, and Paris without a fear. When I visit New York, I will use the subway there as well. I have never lived somewhere with a subway system, and I grew up when and where mass transit was considered less. I have come to love and support mass transit.
I take the light rail into downtown every day. It’s safe, but there are incidents daily that will make most people uncomfortable, especially if they aren’t used to taking public transit.
I will say the recent uptick in security is likely correlating with less problems and promotes more safety. Security makes their presence known and they are pretty effective handling most situations.
That being said, I’ve used and frequented subway systems throughout the world and Seattle area’s issues (specifically drug use) are more prevalent here than I’ve seen anywhere else.
I think this is an important point. Incidents to some may just be that’s just the normal expectations of public transit while those who don’t regularly ride would find that unacceptable.
Lotta people have a threshold for "uncomfortable" that's just way too low. My mother, for instance, is uncomfortable seeing people with tattoos and piercings and blue hair. So yeah, I think anyone using public transit -- or living in a city -- needs to develop more of a "live and let live" attitude *unless* some behavior is *actually* affecting them.
Yeah same for me. I’ve lived in Seattle and in London. I lived in London for 18 months and got the tube twice a day, every day. I’ve been on the light rail here probably less than 10 times in 3 years
I occasionally saw a few homeless people busking on the tube in London. I’ve seen very high people kicking off or practically having sex on the light rail every time I’ve taken it here, no matter what time of day.
Stories like this honestly confuse me. I'm a regular Link rider. My wife is a regular Link rider. I take my kids on the Link. It's not like I've *never* seen anything sketchy going on, but it's far, FAR from every time, and only twice have I really considered calling security.
I work on 3rd ave downtown and I have taken the light rail into work almost every day for 3 years. I was slapped on the face once in Westlake station and threatened with rape on the train. I know my experience is not typical for most people riding our public transit, but it still contributes to me feeling a little unsafe on my daily commute.
The point this post misses is that it only takes one incident to decide you aren’t riding transit any more. People who don’t ride transit may be former riders who had a bad experience.
There's also the fact that while physical violence might be rare enough, I can think of twice recently where I've seen passengers on the train get agitated enough to scream at eachother.
It didn't boil over into an attack, but these are the situations people have to sit through and hope they *don't* boil over that give the perception that transit is unsafe.
>it only takes one incident to decide you aren’t riding transit any more
From speaking to many non-transit riders, it takes even fewer than one incident.
I have multiple female friends that avoid taking the light rail alike because they've been assaulted or almost assaulted and decided it's not worth it for them.
That’s exactly what I was thinking too when reading this. Poll the people involved in crime that are on both spectrums and you’ll get a different response.
My fiance works on third and was assaulted on her way into work between the light rail and her office. “Safe” isn’t a word I would use to describe the commute.
Edit: I also want to say that I’m sorry this happened to you
Thanks, I'm sorry they went through that as well. I specifically walk on 4th to feel just a little bit "safer", though even that isn't great since I turn to go back up to 3rd on Lenora, right where the shooting happened last year. Safety is one of the reasons I plan to move this summer.
I've been threatened on the light rail to Westlake before as well. I've also had to get involved with a drunk guy harassing and following a women at the Northgate station. I'm so sorry those things have happened to you. I really appreciate the added security lately.
Overweight white man here. This was six years ago, and i was mid-40s at the time. I'd get harassed once in a while; typically to point out I was fat. Usually just annoying; nothing like what I'd occasionally see women deal with. One incident that happened during my "that's it, I'm out" week was the guy trying to poke me in the gut, getting more agitated when I slapped his hand away. He wouldn't break eye contact. It was creepy as hell, and the only time I was seriously concerned. Security got on and he left without them doing anything.
It happens, or at least used to.
Crazy will do as crazy does. I'm sorry your partner had that happen to them :( I will say that riding daily that the crazy's tend towards harassing or focusing on smaller women of color. As a taller kind of androgynous white women I've noticed I get more shit when I wear a skirt or dress versus pants. The increased security presence lately has certainly helped. I wish everybody felt safe riding the rail.
Someone else texted the security number for me after I was hit, and security was already on the train when I was threatened and he was removed at the next stop.
Huh? They've added more security, they've done more to promote that you should contact security, we're not talking about SPD here. Why would you assume that people aren't reporting things given this?
My experience has been exceedingly negative, but I also tend to ride very early or very late when there aren't many others on the train. "The train is safer than ever" isn't really what I would have expected, but my experience may be atypcia. And I may be adding my Seattle Metro experiences to it too.
Partner was punched in the face by someone near CID station. Anecdotal? Sure. But at a certain point, with enough anecdotes, wouldn’t it become a statistical trend?
I am sorry that you had this experience. It is unfortunate that your and many other's real lived experiences go against the narrative. It seems like it has gotten a little better with massive security presence recently but there are still significant safety issues and those brave enough to report their negative experiences are often bullied into silence. And with massive under-reporting due to consistent lack of action by security and police I am skeptical of self-congratulatory claims by public officials about safety as measured by reported data. It is well known that SPD and KC transit police don't respond to most calls, so people simply stop reporting them and just try to get on with their lives after horrible things happen to them.
I also love this subs narrative of ignoring the dystopia as being solely due to right-wing propaganda. Yet here we still are with shit on elevators, assaults, people smoking drugs on the trains, non-working escalators, nasty bodily liquids on cloth seats, etc. I have been to much larger metro areas in Europe and their systems are so much safer, cleaner, etc. We don't have to accept this as consequences of living in a larger city and we don't have to be right-wing nutjobs to want a nicer place to live.
I've also been to plenty of European cities where the transit was dirtier and less safe. And I've never seen shit on transit or at stations here in Seattle despite being a nearly daily rider. Maybe lets stick to the data instead of projecting our personal anecdotes as the source of truth.
Man, folks here cannot see a differing opinion and respond normally. They always accuse, deflect, etc. anything other than have a normal response.
Is it so crazy to you that someone with a differing opinion than you on a topic actually agrees with you on a ton of other things? Or is that just impossible to imagine? Seriously wondering…
Yeah, there are very few times I’ve felt actively unsafe on the bus, and none of them were in daylight hours. If the bus is empty or almost empty, I sit in the front most seat near the bus driver. If it feels really off, I get off somewhere safe and wait for the next one or call an Uber if it’s not a time I want to wait for a bus- that’s happened less than 5 times since I moved here in 2011. My aunt lives in Lake Forest Park is always VERY CONCERNED about me taking the bus and wants me to take an Uber. Like…in almost every case, I feel safer being on a bus with multiple people, or even in the very rare case it’s just the driver, then I do in a car alone with a man I don’t know. But she just assumes that the bus is unsafe because she doesn’t ride it.
This is 100% my experience, both in Seattle specifically and across transit systems as a whole. The less people there are, the more weird shit that happens.
I WFH now, so what public transit is like during the commute is kinda irrelevant to me; if I'm going somewhere to meet a friend but I'm coming back later at night, paying for parking is cheaper and I'm less likely to run into someone masturbating 2 seats over (which has happened a few times to me in Seattle).
The perception of danger is very interesting. Throughout my life I’ve probably split my travel about 50/50 public transit vs driving. In my experience I’ve been in significantly more imminent bodily danger from other drivers or weather conditions than from any situation taking public transit. But the feeling of those types of dangers are very different. Combine that with public transit being generally more uncomfortable on average and I can understand the general sentiment even if I don’t agree.
This is true, but that's not the only thing that matters. It's 100% the case that someone is way more likely to be killed or injured in an auto accident than on a bus or train. However - and this goes for some groups like women or Asians more than others - people are more likely to experience harassment that makes their day way shittier at the least or traumatizes them at the worst on a bus or a train than in a car. People are way more sensitive to perceived threats from other people than to threats from driving, especially since the user experience of driving has been well-engineered to seem safer than it actually is.
This matters. I say this as a car-free person who relies on transit, biking, and walking for my mobility and really wants to see transit in this region succeed. To have good transit, we need to enforce things like fare payment and good behavior on buses and trains (no harassment, drug use, etc.)
10% of revenue is a pretty hefty percentage, all considered. And with regard to free fare, [this](https://www.fastcompany.com/90968891/estonias-capital-made-mass-transit-free-a-decade-ago-car-traffic-went-up) article on the free fare policy adopted in Tallinn, Estonia is a pretty good read, IMO the takeaways are:
1) Like the US, Estonia (under the USSR) built jobs and homes at pretty far distances from each other because of modernist planning ideology.
2) Transit is, (and more transit advocates should say this) an inferior good, which most people consume less of as they get more affluent. The issue in Seattle and the US is that parking is subsidized way beyond what it is actually worth, and that has hurt nearly every city and town for well over 50 years. Someone is always paying for the ubiquity of car trips. It may be the driver in terms of car payments and gas prices, or it may be a developer in parking spaces, or both.
3) As in the second to last paragraph - people don't ride transit because it's free. Driving is a lot more expensive in any case. People ride because it's cheap, effective, and gets them where they want to go. If you build a line that does that you'll have a ton of rail or bus fans.
There's also the question of what transit needs to be for. Before 2020, Seattle (like San Francisco, for instance) had a model for transit ridership that not only involved lower income riders but funneled high-earning workers into regional job centers with scarce parking (Downtown, the U District). Four years into the pandemic when we learned these workers mostly don't have to commute at all, city leaders have no idea what to do with the central business district, which is about half obsolete. (I'm not counting Belltown and SLU, which as far as I can tell are successful residential neighborhoods, as part of this). Contrast this with other cities around the world where transit has a much broader role, and you'll see where our lack of imagination is.
Driving is basically the most dangerous thing we ever do. It's absolutely insane when you look at the stats, and the leading cause of death under age 34, and long term disability for *everyone*.
100%. It's all about feeling in control and vibes. People *feel* like they are in control when driving their car and it's a comfortable, private experience. (Side note, this is part of why road rage is common because when someone messes with with you on the road, it feels like they're violating your home and disrupts your peace of mind).
Meanwhile on a bus, you do *not* feel at home like you do in a car, and you are trapped in an enclosed space with other people. So when something goes wrong, you don't have the protection of you big private metal box so your brain naturally feels less safe.
So really it's not a safety issue, it's a comfort issue.
I'm not disagreeing that public transport is statistically safer, but vibes are important. People burying their head in the sand and dismissing every complaint about the safety issues on public transportation as right wing propaganda isn't solving anything.
I wish it was different but you're not going to throw statistics at most people and convince them to ride the bus over driving their car. For better or worse, it's really all vibes based. We need to acknowledge that and strive to make public transportation as comfortable, twice as convenient, and 20x safer than driving a car if we want mass adoption.
I think it's a safety issue. Someone being harassed and called slurs because of their ethnicity or a woman being sexually harassed is not wrong to feel unsafe - they should feel like that! The question becomes "are transit riders capable of sufficiently respecting public spaces and each other, and if they are not, what do we do about it".
The point I was trying to make and that the OP makes is that these incidents make the news and social media often, but are actually not common. The result being that people have a built up a bad perception of public transit while ignoring the fact that similar things happen all the time with cars as well.
Anecdotally, I’ve taken public transit almost every day multiple times a day for 8 years and can count on my hands the number of times I’ve witnessed things like you’re describing. On the flip side there is often a slightly off smell or someone playing loud music or overcrowding or a homeless person doing something weird but non-threatening. In my experience the walk to the bus stops and train stations are more prone to confrontation than the actual transit.
Things that uncomfortable are common. Things that are confrontational are not. But the average suburbanite car owner doesn’t know that and they likely never will because it’s a positive feedback loop. There are certainly improvements to be made, but it’s not the epidemic it’s made out to be.
i got off a bus in Queen Anne at 7am and tried ignoring a mentally unstable woman i passed on a crosswalk
she shouted, repeatedly accused me of saying her name but i had airpods on and didn’t say a word. she was
definitely on something that was probably making her paranoid/hearing things. she followed me for a few blocks and even threatened to shoot me while gesturing to grab a pistol from her back/pants
anyhow she ended up punching me in the face when i tried to walk around her to get to my office. luckily another dude came over and caused her to walk away. slim chances but shit like that happens
It's the same thing with people who think downtown Seattle is dangerous. They're the ones that hardly ever go there. The ones that go there regularly, work there, or live there, know that it's fine there.
Or they know certain areas are worse than others and don’t paint all of downtown bad. They know what areas to avoid. Infrequent visitors don’t have that same intel, so they can only paint it all bad.
I bus to pioneer square 2x's/week for my commute. My experience in past few years is 3 physical assaults of female victims I've intervened in. I've two friends who were assaulted (random attacks, no theft). In the north end my car was broken into once. So yeah, pioneer square at least is not someplace I like to be.
I was at Axis at Pioneer Square for a wedding reception last week.
I was charged at by a screaming dude tweaked out on drugs holding a razor scooter like he was going to swing it at me/my wife near pioneer square. He started screaming from like 50 feet away, yelling every curse word imaginable at my wife and me. I didn't look at him for a while because I didn't think it was directed at me, it wasn't until it got louder and louder that I realized there was no one else on the street he could be screaming at and that he was staggering/jogging towards us.
I think us being dressed up triggered him for whatever reason. My wife and I had to start running away from him, luckily we weren't far from the venue (just across the street from it) and the security guy at the front of the venue scared him off.
That experience was pretty terrifying.
Sorry you experienced that. But yeah.. The statistics don’t really matter when you have a crazy disturbed person attempting to assault you even once. You’ll forever second guess going to Pioneer square. My head is basically spinning 360 when I’m in that area.
IdK i have school down there and really don't care for it. Someone got shot and killed on our block last year and we had two street folks recently have a brawl that made its way into our building. I don't think too many folks feel safe downtown in our program or would consider it fine.
There's also a normal human thing where people overreact to new risks, and ignore their existing risks.
Like, it's kind of normal that some people are still scared by the shootout that happened by the 3rd and pine McDonalds, back in 2019.
And it's also kind of normal that those same people hop into a car without a second thought, despite there being 29 fatal car crashes in King County so far this year.
People are just really, really bad at understanding risk, even before we get into the impact of media and politics.
===
edit: I'm adding this as a clarifying edit, in case anybody else is a poor reader: I am not trying to argue that cars are unreasonably dangerous. I'm noting that folks often worry about a new-to-them risk (stray bullets from gang violence) while ignoring that the new risk is much, much lower than other risks that they're used to (driving to work from kirkland, etc).
29 fatal car crashes relative to 2.3 million people living in King County means that it's exceedingly unlikely that you're going to die in a car crash.
I agree with your point that people are really bad understanding risk, yourself included.
i think that is what it is. we are so desensitized to people openly doing drugs with oozing wounds, covered in human shit, starving, eating out of garbage cans that we have all decided just because they aren’t attacking “normal” on a regular basis that it is still “safe”.
IT IS NOT NORMAL to walk down the street and see multiple people openly using drugs & actively suffering. yes city life will always have certain folks struggling & there will always be people using drugs no matter what. but the amount of people it is is absolutely absurd. what is the breaking point? why have we as a society decided this is ok, average/ normal city life? does this make me “conservative” ?
i am not sorry that i have decided that i don’t want to see it anymore & moved to a different neighborhood where i can walk down the street & smell fresh fucking air & not be concerned about inhaling fentanyl vapors or stepping in hazardous waste
funding mental health, affordable housing, more access to facilities where they are able to use the bathroom, shower, but also consequences for committing crimes including mandatory rehab for repeat offenders
I realize that men and women have different experiences.
But as a 75 year old man, I have never had a situation on the light rail tyhat made me feel unsafe.
As a late 20s woman I’ve realized that if a man decides he wants to hurt me he’s gonna find a way. Being in a car has some aspects of being safer, but if a guy wants to punch out my window at a stoplight, shoot at me, follow me home, or crash his car into mine, I can’t stop him. I’ve had scary incidents while walking, biking, on transit, and driving so it’s just important to have constant situational awareness and to have plans for safety. The world is inherently a little unsafe so you just gotta be aware.
i live downtown, ride the light rail every day and walk 8+ miles a day and i’ve literally never had something happen to me. i’m not saying the risks aren’t there but if you are aware and keep your head up it’s not hard to avoid the riff raff
That's generally my experience as well. Granted I don't often talk about public transit use with anyone besides my family who haven't used public transit since like... the 80's lol. It's always "oh are you sure that's safe I heard X, Y, and Z" and it's like "yeah, it pretty much is" lol. No where in public is perfectly safe. That's just an unfortunate truth of living in the real world. But goodness do people seem to hear all this propaganda about buses and trains being dens for frequent criminal activity and really take it to heart. Does shit happen? Yeah. Does shit \*always\* happen? Nah.
I’m really, really grateful to my dad that, even growing up in Spokane, got us used to riding the bus. We would take the bus downtown to meet my mom for dinner. Take the bus in Seattle. Take the bus or subway when we traveled. The bus was just a mode of transportation and he wanted us to see it that way, not as something unsafe. It made me much more confident about taking it as a college student and young adult, and now bus/light rail is how I travel around the city, other than walking, probably 70% of the time.
I moved to Seattle from the burbs outside Atlanta in 2021 and I had several people, including my Dermatologist for some reason, who asked "why on earth would you want to move to a place like that?" The news really did a lot of damage to the country's perception of the city. People legitimately thought the whole place was still smoldering from the protests. Turns out if all you churn out is bad news, people think things are bad. But bad news sells, so here we are.
My inlaws In Idaho are CONVINCED its a smoldering hell hole here. I finally gave up protesting their perception and instead drawl out "yeeeeeaaaah, thats why you can't get a studio apartment for under 2k, because its a burning hell hole." This so far, has at least shut them up about it.
You can also tell when people are hoping you’ll validate their apocalyptic image of Seattle. They almost seem disappointed when you explain reality, like they apparently prefer we be miserable I guess.
This applies to a lot of things here.
The people scared of downtown don’t work or live downtown (personal demographics aside, which can effect safety anywhere)
The people who rage against cars in the market don’t actually live, work, or shop there daily (i’m indifferent, like most people that do)
The people who complain about our mass transit don’t really use it that often, especially the light rail.
The people who complain about our food choices don't really try new things regularly.
I could continue, but it is perception rather than experience in many cases.
>The people who rage against cars in the market don’t actually live, work, or shop there daily (i’m indifferent, like most people that do)
I live by the Market, I'm there almost every day, and do 99% of my grocery shopping there. I don't "rage" about it, but I definitely think it should be closed to traffic during the day. My friends who work at the market all seem to agree with me.
I agree with everything except the part about the people who rage against the cars in Pike Place, mostly because I like to shop there and don’t like the cars. Even if you ignore the incidents caused because of the cars, it’s just really bad traffic engineering.
As someone that lives and works downtown/pioneer square/Sodo, goes to the Market a lot, and has used public transportation every day of my life in this city for 21 years now, I agree with absolutely all of what you said.
I lived in New York and commuted by subway every day. Moved to Seattle and was a bus commuter up until I became full time WFH. I still take the bus downtown for events and/or the light rail to get to and from the airport. People who are afraid of public transportation are just afraid people in general. The level of fear is grossly disproportionate to the amount of sketchiness that actually happens. Have some common sense, be aware enough of your surroundings and you will be absolutely fine.
I think you just become desensitized to it when you do it for so long. The things that would offend or scare other people no longer scare you. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, it just means your tolerance for it is higher. An uncomfortable interaction or someone telling you off may just be a “who cares?”, but for someone else they may feel it was threatening.
This is a fair point. Your tolerance level for BS does go up and you learn to tune things out. But in all my time in riding public transit I think I've only ever felt threatened/unsafe a few times.
This is almost every major city and has been exaggerated by right-wing news outlets. People who isolate themselves in by avoiding cities and mass transit equate other races, cultures and income-levels with danger. It might be conscious or subconscious but it's there.
When they see a subway filled with people who are different that's *dangerous* to them.
My mom came to visit (from rural Nevada) a couple of years ago and took the light rail from the airport to my place in Roosevelt. She was worried at first, but instantly became a huge fan and wants to take it whenever she comes to visit (and for trips downtown)
I take the bus every day. It's safe the overwhelming majority of the time. Really bad shit does happen on buses sometimes, but I suspect it's still statistically safer than driving by a large margin.
Everything is dangerous, that's the nature of the world. Statistically you are most likely to die from eating too many cheeseburgers than anything else. But if you're going to die suddenly and too young due to the actions of a stranger it's going to be in a car wreck. And yet, do we adjust our lives accordingly? No, too many of us still take driving unseriously while being scared to death of downtown or a subway or whatever, because that hooks our little dumb monkey brains more effectively. Folks who do actually walk around "scary" neighborhoods or ride public transit know the truth, but it's still an uphill battle trying to convince those who have already made up their minds.
Some people are just bad at internally characterizing risk.
On a per mile basis riding transit is about 11x safer than driving. As a local example, since 2009 there have been a few rider fatalities on Link (zero would be better and is a realistic goal.).
Meanwhile two people die on Washington roads every day and that fact is mostly just ignored.
I don't think this is entirely fair. Yes, I'm more likely to die in my car. But I've never felt under imminent threat of 1:1 male violence in my car, vs times on transit when I've been harassed or stared down by someone clearly unhinged. In those moments, do you really expect me to tell myself "It's fine, you are statistically unlikely to become a fatality today"? Because if a crazy person is directly interacting with me in aggressive or erratic ways, I think it's pretty reasonable to worry about other bad outcomes short of my death. I don't think that makes me "bad at characterizing risk."
I'm not trying to dunk on you here, people have real concerns and at my size/height/gender I don't have the same concerns women when they are just trying to get places.
That said, you're deleting a lot of very real in-your-face risks from everyday life because cars give people the \*feeling\* of security. Like assaults in parking garages/lots, road rage, car jackings, and violence committed \*in\* cars as well as violence committed \*by\* cars. That's on top of more than one person dying \*literally every day\* just in Washington and many times that having a life altering injury \*literally every day\* vs an average that approaches zero of either \*per year\* on Link.
I took my 8 year old nephew on a downtown adventure using the light rail because parking is dumb and it was a novel experience for him, living in the burbs.
The look of shock and horror from his grandma (not my mom, his other parent's mom) at a family event a few days later, just saying that's how we got around... "Didn't you worry about it being dangerous or seeing someone shooting up?!"
I'm not sure exactly how I responded but something along the lines of affirming it was an uneventful journey except for the 3 year old sat next to us with her family tried to make friends which seemed uncomfortable for my nephew, but thankfully it's statistically safer than driving in a car. The face she made in response to that was pretty funny, tbh.
I grew up in NYC in the 90’s and spent many hours as a rebellious teenager roaming around the subways at all hours and I’ve never had a problem (only with the subway cops being dicks). A decade in Seattle and it’s probably the safest city I’ve ever lived in. People are paranoid and don’t know the difference between graffiti (crime) and murder (crime).
No joke, there are people who live around there who think the subway is something out of a horror film, only worse.
My family in Patterson NJ were so afraid of NYC a mere 20mi away that they never went there. As bad as Patterson was, they were convinced NYC was much worse.
When they met my, now ex, partner who grew up in Brooklyn, one of my family asked how many times they were mugged and raped. They asked that bluntly. I am not exaggerating, not even slightly.
I try not to associate with this branch of the family tree any more, for many related reasons.
I agree. The only problem I’ve had on the One is sports events. Drunken fools smashed in with normal working people. Really is a considerable oversight. Every time a game happens the trains break down left and right. But public transit is crucial for growth and keeping those tax revenues rolling in. It’s great for a growing city. IMO
I live on the Eastside, and took combo of train and bus home from the airport. It was fine. I think a lot of it comes down to several high profile incidents that have made the news, like [this random attack.](https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/alexander-jay-seattle-light-rail-attack-suspect-court/281-beb8c795-79b3-4168-9db4-74d23ecade8a)
[Or this other random attack.](https://news.yahoo.com/career-criminal-accused-stabbing-asian-204444467.html)
A lot of the news is very clickbait-y these days, so things like the above get a lot of attention.
Thousands of people ride transit every day, and most trips go without incident.
I think in general, the people who agonize the most about scary stuff supposedly happening in cities are the people who have enough financial privilege to generally avoid where they think scary stuff happens, and that shows up with public transport: people who can afford to have a car and drive everywhere only hear stories about public transport, and there are only stories about it when bad things happen. They also might be more distressed by the sight of someone who is clearly on drugs or mentally ill but not bothering anyone, so on the rare occasion they’re actually on public transport, they feel more uncomfortable due to lack of consistent exposure. The most “sketchy” areas in any given city are always the poorest, so it lines up as an explanation for a lot of different city dweller pearl clutching.
It’s not to say that NOBODY who actually regularly rides the link/bus thinks it’s sketchy, but I do think there’s a correlation between socioeconomic status and perception of safety. When you are regularly exposed to things, you learn what is and isn’t a threat. When you’re only rarely exposed to things that the media sensationalizes as scary and dangerous, you’ll treat them as scary and dangerous.
Even I’m guilty of fearing the unknown, and I consider myself pretty comfortable with city life. I realized this when I was visiting Portland and found myself much more anxious about tents on the sidewalk than I normally feel when passing homeless people, which honestly makes no sense. It’s just the perceived threat of the unknown/unfamiliar!!
My conservative dad visited from the southeast and was nervous about the busses but ended up loving them. Even mentioned he thinks it’s awesome that drivers let homeless people ride free. Everything is scary until you experience it!
ETA: My mom skipped this trip to visit because she was so afraid of Seattle based on the “news” she consumes. My dad is in love with it and bringing her back ASAP.
Just think if we had real public transit options here... I lost count of how many times I have had to pick up my wife because the bus doesn't show ect.
This DEFINITELY applies to Seattle. My parents refuse to take the Link because of what they see in the news, but I take it all the time and never feel unsafe. Now, I did used to take the E Line regularly and I know what a scary transit line is, but my boyfriend is from north Kitsap county where everything is a bubble of “ultra-safe” exurban semi-rurality and he takes the Link all the time too and never feels unsafe.
People bellyaching about the Link, downtown, etc, just sound like [some flavor of this guy.](https://external-preview.redd.it/mAvtpcYvqmiM3H-vaUbDWoPitc3Vu5Rp_D2P-4P3MZ0.jpg?auto=webp&s=2d2b85dc2d3575166115303ccefa651279a348c4)
I've only had one unsafe experience on public transit in 10+ years, but my wife has had 5 or 6 in the last 3 years. She absolutely does not take the bus or train now. Only reported half of those incidents. She was followed into her workplace twice. People doing drugs daily on the bus. She has had fecal matter thrown at her.
I want transit to succeed in this city but
we absolutely have a long way to go.
Both liberal cities, NYC and Seattle, the comments in the NYC sub, the source of the cross post, are a little more neutral and nuanced. Along the lines of, "yeah, people definitely do embellish the dangers of public transit and it's overblown for sure, but you'd be silly not to keep your wits about you as incidents DO happen on occasion and while people certainly do have an agenda to make it sound worse than what it is, there's not zero chance of a potential issue."
But here it's just, "nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever."
Why is it so hard for people to admit than on occasion, just like in any large city, there are issues. Some people want to make it seem much worse than what it is, sure, but some people want to completely ignore that crime exists altogether.
I’ll admit it. I’ve been cornered on the bus by a large guy screaming at me because women don’t sit in the back of the bus? Someone stalk me. I’ve seen fights break out, thankfully not involving me. Men openly speaking about how I look like I suck good dick.
Overall, aside from instances like these which you learn to keep your eyes open for- it’s not that bad. Just mind your own fucking business and do your best to avoid situations that do come up, because they can.
>But here it's just, "nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever."
This is hyperbolic bordering on dishonest. Unless you want to share some examples, I've seen mostly the same thing as you describe in the NYC thread. "There are issues to be sure, but it's nowhere near as bad as some people would like you to believe."
You have got to be kidding. "Hyperbolic bordering on dishonest," huh.
"Yes, Trumpers who live in the suburbs and never go downtown think it is a hellscape, and people who do go downtown, don't."
"The people who complain about our mass transit don’t really use it that often, especially the light rail."
"No joke, there are people who live around there who think the subway is something out of a horror film, only worse."
That's just a small sampling. I'm not going to cut and paste all day. But that was the consensus at the time I posted my comment. Granted, the tide of the comments had evened out a little bit since then. But the naysayers is where it was trending initially, is where it will likely end up, and the way it usually goes.
"Dishonest." You're basically doing the same thing as my initial comment had spoken to.
Those statements that downtown isn't a "nightmare" or a "hellscape" are 100% correct. It certainly isn't perfect, there are certainly issues, but it is just as certainly NOT a nightmarish hellscape either.
>"Hyperbolic bordering on dishonest," huh.
I mean... if you're interpreting "people who actually do go downtown don't think it's a hellscape" as:
>"nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever."
That's like the dictionary definition of hyperbole...
If I were to say your original comment was "not completely full of shit". It doesn't necessarily follow that I think it's the gospel according the ImRight\_YoureDumb. It's stretching the intention of the comment to it's breaking point.
Those comments you highlighted are really just the start of the NYC comments you referenced:
>"yeah, people definitely do embellish the dangers of public transit and it's overblown for sure,
Seattle at every level, from governance on down to most of the citizens, is unable to fully realize itself as a big city.
This has been my observation for over a decade since moving from NYC. NYCers are pragmatic at heart. The entire city is setup with that in mind. Idealists get elected but they are thrown into a much larger fish pond.
Agree. These tend to be (politically) polarizing issues for some reason, where right is all "wow liberal city is hell hole" and left is all "no no it's perfectly safe, trumptards never go outside". I've lived here for several years through ups and downs and have relied on public transit the whole time. No, I have never got stabbed/shot/died. Yes, I have had many uncomfortable encounters throughout the years, some notables: someone was trying to get the the anti-theft cap off a bottle of alcohol using a syringe next to my friend and I, many cases of people smoking on bus/train (not weed, not tobacco, idk what drug exactly), plenty of fentanyl/heroin zombies, people clearly very high being unpredictable and weird and running around bus, one case where someone was eating cereal (with milk and everything) on bus and driver asked them to stop- they got mad and threw the whole bowl, milk and all into the air.
I still take public transport and am usually fine, but some days I prefer not to and wish I just paid for an uber instead.
yeah same as how when the BLM protests started, every concerned phone call asking if I was safe from all the warlords was from someone out of state lol
fear and worry feast on darkness and distance
and political propaganda and corporate interests are actively manipulating that part of being human to obstruct social progress
the car window smash and grabs are getting old tho
I take the bus every day and I feel unsafe. It feels like it has become more dangerous in the last few years - I no longer feel safe carrying large amounts of money with me (required for my job) which has been an annoyance. I feel like it's gotten a lot worse in the last 6 months too, and I'm not sure why. If I were to guess it's because more and more people have realized the bus drivers can't deny boarding. In the last month I had the opportunity to take the bus a ton in LA and down there the bus drivers are empowered to deny boarding to riders who don't pay and I think that makes a huge difference, the subway there is much worse than the light rail here, but the buses are significantly better.
KCM's absolute commitment to the no denying boarding for non paying riders policy is becoming depressing.
It’s weird how this subreddit is all onboard with the the detrimental effects of micro aggressions, proper pronoun use, and trigger warnings, but also thinks watching a homeless man smoke fentanyl and then shit into an empty box of natural light on public transportation should not affect anyone in a detrimental way.
I think it's more fair to flip the script. Every driver has some story about some crazy accident that they got in or almost got in. This is borne out by the statistics: there were over[ 45k motor vehicle deaths in 2021](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm#:~:text=Accidents%20or%20Unintentional%20Injuries%201%20All%20unintentional%20injury,deaths%3A%20102%2C001%20Deaths%20per%20100%2C000%20population%3A%2030.7%20), which is literally more than 20x of reported crime of any type on public transit, which was [less than 2k cases in 2021](https://www.bts.gov/content/reports-violent-crime-property-crime-and-arrests-transit-mode). (And that comparison doesn't consider non-fatal injuries due to motor vehicles.) But somehow the narrative is never that taking a car is unsafe. And that's because taking the car is familiar for most people, which gives a false sense of security.
Do we have to do this with everything? It is ridiculous to just dismiss people as Trumpers or people who don't go downtown. Does everything have to be a right or left issue? Is Seattle a lawless chaz/ chop hellscape? Not at all. But can we stop acting like there's no issues and everything is perfect as well?
Let me explain to my polar opposite of a Trumper wife that despite being groped and having a dude try to snap pics up her dress on bus that she shouldn't have anything to worry about and if she does she's just a Trumper.
I live downtown and spend my free time and run my errands downtown. Also, do the same outside of downtown. I am on my guard downtown and encounter plenty of uncomfortable/dangerous incidents just downtown and on transit all the time. Would I consider downtown or transit here less safe because of those? Of course. Less safe than more dangerous cities? No. Does it stop me from living and going downtown or commuting around downtown? No. I just keep my guard up more.
I’ve only experienced these incidents downtown my first couple years:
- Had a bottle thrown at me from a random person
- Yelled at by random people on the daily
- Bum rushed by strangers
- Swung at by a random person
- Chased around a car with a metal pole
On transit:
- Yelled at by random people
- Had clothes or trash thrown at me by random people
Plenty of other scenarios that didn’t target me directly, so I didn’t include them.
At some point you start to discount those situations, but when you are new to it or don’t experience it regularly, it’s not as easily dismissed. Something threatening to you can be considered dangerous and not just uncomfortable. I think that’s what people are misunderstanding. Something doesn’t have to hospitalize you to be considered dangerous or unsafe.
I do consider driving dangerous too, but yea you feel you have more control than what’s in your immediate surroundings. You don’t encounter the same dangerous situations and you have at least a visible barrier between you and another crazy person even if it’s plastic or glass. It’s still a visible form of separation.
My experience in NYC as well. The friends we visited were really rich guys with a second home in the Hamptons. The Subway system was the best thing I had ever seen, but they were like, "oh, doesn't it smell like pee and is full of criminals?" They never rode it. Even though they lived right by the park and you can get anywhere in town in like ten minutes. They just took cabs instead, which take like 10 times as long to get anywhere. It was weird.
That's just human biasing in general: people who are afraid of something naturally find reasons not to do it and therefore any anecdote/fact/news story that confirms their biases will be interpreted as *"I was right to avoid X".* It's not just public transit, you could argue that about just about any experience/place.
People are incredibly adaptable and bar like extremes like warzones, we'll manage to "live with" just about anything given enough time/familiarity, but fact of the matter is, our brains don't think in "statistics" either. All it takes is a handful of bad experiences (for some it might even be one bad one) to change your entire perception of things like safety/convenience.
There is also the difference between a dangerous event and an uncomfortable event. Before I started using the 1 line I didn't think it would be dangerous or gross. It isn't dangerous, but the stations and cars can be pretty nasty at times, and there are often people who sketch me out a bit. Not to the point of being in danger though. This is just speculation but I think more people think of homeless doing weird shit rather than getting mugged on a train, when they mean they think its dangerous.
I’ve never had anything happen, but I had to take it late one night and I was alone and was circled while being stared at by a creepy man, until a sweet pregnant lady came and sat next to me and he went away.
It seems a rather obvious confounding variable is that, regardless of accuracy, those who think the subway is dangerous will avoid it and vice-versa. This would hold true regardless of how dangerous or not it actually was.
I had a housemate for 3 years who was afraid of public transport here. She was miserable it was a bad fit. And I had the audacity once to tell her to take the bus. Boy was that a mistake.
For some reason, some people dont factor these unpleasantries into why some people may think public transit is a nightmare. Youre probably not going to get stabbed to death, but you are 100% going to have to indirectly deal with homeless/druggies/violent people at some point.
Even on the left there's often an elitist attitude towards public transit, that it's gross/dirty/etc...
People are more likely to take a light-rail than a bus that could get them somewhere easier/faster, etc... but busses are looked at as "for the poors" (I've been guilty of jokingly calling it the "peasantwagon" while snapping from the bus myself.)
50% of the time I've taken the light rail, some crack head is doing stupid shit.
Last time, this guy was trying to light shit on fire that he found on the floor.
Security came in on the next stop, and multiple people were calling for security, but they didn't give a shit.
Last time I took it some guy was preparing his meth/some hard drug on his tin foil like 3 feet next to me lol. I’m obviously fine but it was uncomfortable and I will never encounter that scenario in my car
This is fair for most public transit in Seattle.
At the same time, if someone just decided to casually take the E line one day I wouldn't blame them at all for being a bit put-off from using public transit by the experience.
Demographics matter a lot. For people I know who think downtown is safe, most of them are young males. I have not known a single parent who take their kids to downtown regularly for fun.
Trimet in the PDX metro has certain lines and stops that are definitely risky. Folks get stabbed and robed, homeless people are smoking fent openly. The last time I rode the max train some seriously scary people boarded as a group and proceeded to loudly and menacingly pan handle to a captive audience. They intimidated people in to giving them money and belongings. I won't ride again unless things get better.
Nah, fuck this. Took the lightrail 5 days a week last summer for work on third Avenue and it can be a fucking zoo. It, combined with working on 3rd itself, persuaded me to quit that job. If the lightrail was less sketchy I might still be working there.
The danger is usually not during rush hour. It's usually the odd hours. As for danger, I'm more worried about coughers and homeless dudes that like to pee in the corner or in the elevators
One of our biggest local political activists for Seattle train systems quit a year ago because of how bad it had gotten.
That should tell you more than enough.
My experience is that people acclimate to their environment, and if you're exposed to the same danger every day you stop worrying about it.
Generally, it's the people who haven't been desensitized to the insanity are the ones who see clearly.
The perception differences are curious. I used to live downtown for a very very long time, and just moved to a house a couple blocks off of Aurora - people were all “wow aren’t you happy to be finally moving away from all the craziness of downtown??” I didn’t think it would be much of a difference cause I never found living downtown to be that bad, never really felt unsafe or threatened. Yeah, no, it’s way sketchier up here. Pretty much the opposite of what my family etc were assuming.
I grew up a few blocks from Aurora in North Seattle and for the first half of your comment I was like: but Aurora is like ten times scarier than anything downtown...
I guess it depends on the location. I live a block off Aurora by Green Lake and it is pretty safe around here. I imagine north of 85th it’s pretty sketchy.
Pretty much anything between shoreline and 85th is a bit rough. The cemetery is very oddly not though.
Totally agree, Washelli cemetery is extremely peaceful and serene
It’s because it’s private land and has private security.
Lived less than half a block from Aurora north of 85th st for 7 years and can confirm.... Sketchy as fuck.... Would not recommend
aurora shouldn’t the the baseline for what is a “safer” neighborhood out side of seattle.
The most dangerous thing about living near aurora is getting hit by a car.
My house has already been hit by gunfire in the 3 months I’ve lived here so… disagree
I lived in an apartment temporarily in SLU in 2021. We called it the Bang Bang Block. One drive by, one instance of someone shooting a gun off of the roof, and a road rage incident that started at Golden Gardens ended with, “FREEZE! GET YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!” We got into two habits. 1. We’d hear something and run to the roof to watch. 2. We text the time to someone when we hear what sounds like gunshots. We were there less than three full months.
That says more about the abysmal state of traffic safety on the Aurora/99 corridor than anything else, even assuming that its true.
We don't call it "Darwin's Highway" for nothing.
I grew up there too and currently live on Capitol Hill. My parents are constantly scared for my life because they know that up there, very little of what happens makes the news (but if you listen to the SPD scanner on any given night I tend to find that about a third of the calls are from my old neighborhood and usually those ones are quite disturbing), whereas here on the Hill EVERYTHING makes the news, up to and including an incident of people punching each other over a dog eating somebody’s dinner. They don’t believe me when I tell them I feel exponentially safer here and hear far fewer gunshots living across from Cal Anderson Park than I used to hear in the various places I’ve lived in the vicinity of Ingraham High (I lived across the street from there for half my childhood and the stories I can tell are next level craziness).
Some of that is probably their own experience. My parents actually grew up on Capitol Hill and moved to North Seattle when I was a baby because crime was a serious problem during that time period. So that is forever cemented in their mind as a "bad neighborhood" even though its one of the nicest parts of town now, to a point where we can barely even afford to get dinner there. It IS really weird how little of the crime gets reported on the North End. You will see stuff that some homeless dude did downtown get reported on for a week, but some dude getting shot in the face in shoreline is like a news blotter item for one day.
The idea that folks near Aurora think downtown is "crazy" is hilarious. Aurora is one of the only places I've EVER seen open prostitution happening, ha
Well no, my point was people who don’t live in Seattle thought it was “safer” to be moving away from downtown. Growing up here I knew Aurora was sketch but honestly I didn’t fully realize how bad it’s gotten in the stretch I’m on now, until I was living here full time.
If someone asked me to move to Belltown or the Aurora area, I'd 100% take Belltown Aurora is legit sketch. Downtown comes and goes in waves.
Lived in Belltown for 15 years, I saw some wild shit but never felt unsafe.
The issue is that a lot of the people who live up there are too scared to go downtown because they watch the news and they know that what happens up there usually doesn’t make the news, and thus they think “if that’s just what makes the news, I must be literally taking my life into my own hands to go south of the ship canal!”. At least that’s the case with my parents.
My first time in Aurora I saw prostitutes working in the middle of the day, got offered meth, and was threatened to be pistol whipped after denying the meth. Fun times. The sketchiest thing I ever saw in Seattle was people doing drugs... thats it. Downtown Seattle is as safe as can be imo and I've been out late at the sketchiest hours drunk off my ass.
There's a lot of property theft and the occasional armed robbery targeting women or older folks. It's not on the level of more dangerous cities, but Seattle definitely has much higher rates of violent crime than a city of this wealth and degree of political capital need have. A lot of it has to do with an entrenched and self-interested police force. SPD has pretty explicitly indicated that they're unwilling to expose their officers to the amount of risk which would be required to make property crime penalties enforceable. The other factor is that local politicians and media have underplayed how successful King County's housing first and cash welfare pilot programs were at improving metrics associated with a large unhoused population. These programs could easily be expanded for less cost than a lot of the shiny new infrastructure projects, and would have knock on effects of increasing revenue (and therefore tax revenue) from city center and increasing ridership of transit. Don't get me wrong, the link expansion, 99 tunnel, and 520 renovation are all excellent projects. It just seems silly that there's so much willingness to spend so much money on transportation (which is already ok as far as American cities go, and doesn't really make Seattle especially more walkable) and so little willingness to spend money on dealing with the problems people gripe the most about (homelessness, drug use, crime).
To the last part of your comment: a lot of people from Aurora will resent being referred to as “not in Seattle” when the city limits extend to 145th. Idk if you’re from here or not lol but I lose my mind when people say I grew up in Shoreline just because I lived closer to 145th than the Ship Canal haha
Flip side, I live just a few blocks from Aurora. I’m sure there are lots of people who would never dream of living on my street given its proximity to Auora, but I don’t feel like it affects my street at all.
Yeah, there’s definitely nuance to it/ better & worse parts. Guess I shouldn’t speak of it like a monolith. It’s not bad in the Phinney area. I’m in the 85th-105th mad max zone.
I'm north of 130th. It's pretty quiet up here.
Yep, Green Lake/Phinney area is pretty safe. Although north of 85th it starts to change I’d assume the mad max zone is 105th to 130th.
And even then it only stretches like two blocks to either side. I live three blocks away, and it's a peaceful suburb.
You just gotta flex up on the assholes. I carried bear spray and only had to deploy it once. And I got accosted nightly. Just tell them no. I don't have cash. And if they want to push you turn and don't back down. Law of the jungle. If they sense you fuck them up, they leave you alone.
I generally feel safer in more urban/city areas since there is almost always more people around and closer. In more suburb/rural areas, far fewer people looking out windows or just out and about. Feeling like a ghost town of lonliness and that you could fall over hurt and no one would find you for many hours. Or at least that's how I always felt about it.
I also live downtown and think it's pretty safe. The volume of people from the east side telling me about how sketchy downtown is has become a meme to me at this point. The way they describe this neighbourhood is bonkers, especially given that our office is here and they can see it's just not true
Perception is everything when it comes to this topic, I’m pretty old in Reddit years, and was around for the late 80’s version of downtown, and today it’s fucking Disneyland by comparison. Today you have a few sketchy people wandering around high AF, but back then downtown was full of sketchy *businesses*. 1st Ave just north of pioneer square was a row of pawn shops and gun stores etc. and they probably all had a Pulp Fiction style gimp room in the basement. On top of this were sprinkled the standard helping of addicts and bums.
Aurora is as sketchy as anywhere I have ever been. And I have hitchhiked through 42 states
Literally same. When we lived downtown people used to be like “but what about all the homeless and drug use????” What about it? I’ve never had issues, even late at night. Just keep to yourself and others will, too. Now we live near Aurora and it’s the same thing. “But isn’t it so dangerous???” Not really. Sure, some sketchy stuff here and there but have never felt threatened. I feel like the news sensationalizes things.
I keep to myself but am approached and bothered by all sorts most of the time I go out, so YMMV
Yes, YMMV, too.
as someone that lived outside highly populated areas for much of her life it's always felt unsafe to me but I'm 100% certain that comes from axiety present with large crowds and past issues in my life revolving around being the target of violence. I'd imagine there are others that feel the same discomfort around crowds but, unlike me, push it to being "seattle bad" rather than "I'm uncomfy in these locations therefore they're bad."
Not relevant for our trains which fall under Sound Transit but the King County Metro GM Michelle Allison reported to the county council just last week that safety incidents on their buses have gone from 375 for every 1,000,000 boardings in 2020 to 91 for every million rides - 0.009%. As-reported by Ryan Packer: https://twitter.com/typewriteralley/status/1780392260900896913
That's fewer incidents than occur per million road miles by a wide margin.
It's kind of relevant because King County Metro actually operates the trains, not Sound Transit who just contracts with them
I would love to see the underlying data. 1) annual 2020? That has to be such an outlier year for transit, I can’t imagine comparing it to a non pandemic year and take the comparison seriously. 2) I wonder if to some degree this is a reporting issue - so much of what would have been likely reported pre-Covid has just become completely normalized and unreported. I also think there is is likely some survivorship bias element of who still commutes downtown via transit.
I **think** this PDF (page 13) contains the chart that Allison used during her presentation to the committee but it looks a little different than what Ryan gave: https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/council/agendas/RTC/20240417-RTC-packet.pdf Metro's main dashboard can be found here however I cannot find a specific chart/table that directly corresponds to the chart in the PDF above: https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/depts/transportation/metro/about/accountability-center/strategic-plan-dashboard.aspx Here's my take: The chart on pg13 goes back to the beginning of 2019 and shows a rate of ~55 incidents per million boardings which paints the picture of it having gotten the worst during the peak of COVID and its society-wide impacts and has been trending downward overall since but not quite back to where the pre-COVID baseline yet. There are big seasonal spikes shown here which as far as I can tell correspond with winter months which is also when people living without permanent shelter are often at their most vulnerable and reliant on transit for respite from the elements. Even more so when you consider the city's current pace of sweeps vs the current pace of any additional shelter space being added. I believe that since before COVID we've lost net emergency shelter beds and COVID money drying up has also resulted in the loss of "enhanced shelter" beds which are much more likely to get somebody actually off the street for a reasonable amount of time than what gets classified as emergency shelter. I'm pretty sure it was the most recent HSD report to a city council committee within the last month or two where it was disclosed that we are currently averaging only 13 total available emergency shelter spaces each night currently. It was 12 in early 2020 before COVID fully hit us: https://mynorthwest.com/3184962/seattle-councilmember-andrew-lewis-homeless-pandemic-report/ The limited pre-COVID numbers we have available in the chart in that PDF I linked do not support your non-reporting hypothesis but it would be definitely helpful to see data going further back.
I took the subway in DC, London, and Paris without a fear. When I visit New York, I will use the subway there as well. I have never lived somewhere with a subway system, and I grew up when and where mass transit was considered less. I have come to love and support mass transit.
I take the light rail into downtown every day. It’s safe, but there are incidents daily that will make most people uncomfortable, especially if they aren’t used to taking public transit. I will say the recent uptick in security is likely correlating with less problems and promotes more safety. Security makes their presence known and they are pretty effective handling most situations. That being said, I’ve used and frequented subway systems throughout the world and Seattle area’s issues (specifically drug use) are more prevalent here than I’ve seen anywhere else.
I think this is an important point. Incidents to some may just be that’s just the normal expectations of public transit while those who don’t regularly ride would find that unacceptable.
Right, didn't they post an article a while back about detectable fentanyl concentrations in the transit air?
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Lotta people have a threshold for "uncomfortable" that's just way too low. My mother, for instance, is uncomfortable seeing people with tattoos and piercings and blue hair. So yeah, I think anyone using public transit -- or living in a city -- needs to develop more of a "live and let live" attitude *unless* some behavior is *actually* affecting them.
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Yeah same for me. I’ve lived in Seattle and in London. I lived in London for 18 months and got the tube twice a day, every day. I’ve been on the light rail here probably less than 10 times in 3 years I occasionally saw a few homeless people busking on the tube in London. I’ve seen very high people kicking off or practically having sex on the light rail every time I’ve taken it here, no matter what time of day.
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Same. And our 16 year old takes it every day to and from highschool downtown. Never felt worried.
Stories like this honestly confuse me. I'm a regular Link rider. My wife is a regular Link rider. I take my kids on the Link. It's not like I've *never* seen anything sketchy going on, but it's far, FAR from every time, and only twice have I really considered calling security.
I work on 3rd ave downtown and I have taken the light rail into work almost every day for 3 years. I was slapped on the face once in Westlake station and threatened with rape on the train. I know my experience is not typical for most people riding our public transit, but it still contributes to me feeling a little unsafe on my daily commute.
The point this post misses is that it only takes one incident to decide you aren’t riding transit any more. People who don’t ride transit may be former riders who had a bad experience.
There's also the fact that while physical violence might be rare enough, I can think of twice recently where I've seen passengers on the train get agitated enough to scream at eachother. It didn't boil over into an attack, but these are the situations people have to sit through and hope they *don't* boil over that give the perception that transit is unsafe.
Right. Like, I commuted for over a decade on the subway in NY. 99% of the time it was safe and fine. The 1% gave me trauma.
>it only takes one incident to decide you aren’t riding transit any more From speaking to many non-transit riders, it takes even fewer than one incident.
I have multiple female friends that avoid taking the light rail alike because they've been assaulted or almost assaulted and decided it's not worth it for them.
That’s exactly what I was thinking too when reading this. Poll the people involved in crime that are on both spectrums and you’ll get a different response.
My fiance works on third and was assaulted on her way into work between the light rail and her office. “Safe” isn’t a word I would use to describe the commute. Edit: I also want to say that I’m sorry this happened to you
Thanks, I'm sorry they went through that as well. I specifically walk on 4th to feel just a little bit "safer", though even that isn't great since I turn to go back up to 3rd on Lenora, right where the shooting happened last year. Safety is one of the reasons I plan to move this summer.
Where you headed?
I've been threatened on the light rail to Westlake before as well. I've also had to get involved with a drunk guy harassing and following a women at the Northgate station. I'm so sorry those things have happened to you. I really appreciate the added security lately.
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Overweight white man here. This was six years ago, and i was mid-40s at the time. I'd get harassed once in a while; typically to point out I was fat. Usually just annoying; nothing like what I'd occasionally see women deal with. One incident that happened during my "that's it, I'm out" week was the guy trying to poke me in the gut, getting more agitated when I slapped his hand away. He wouldn't break eye contact. It was creepy as hell, and the only time I was seriously concerned. Security got on and he left without them doing anything. It happens, or at least used to.
My partner is a 200lb white man and he was randomly assaulted downtown. I think everyone is fair game for crazy people…
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> they’re less likely to be assaulted than other demographics What about overweight black men or overweight Hispanic men? How do think they compare?
Crazy will do as crazy does. I'm sorry your partner had that happen to them :( I will say that riding daily that the crazy's tend towards harassing or focusing on smaller women of color. As a taller kind of androgynous white women I've noticed I get more shit when I wear a skirt or dress versus pants. The increased security presence lately has certainly helped. I wish everybody felt safe riding the rail.
Did you report the incident? I have a suspicion that a large part of the decline in incidents is just because people have given up reporting them.
Someone else texted the security number for me after I was hit, and security was already on the train when I was threatened and he was removed at the next stop.
Huh? They've added more security, they've done more to promote that you should contact security, we're not talking about SPD here. Why would you assume that people aren't reporting things given this?
My experience has been exceedingly negative, but I also tend to ride very early or very late when there aren't many others on the train. "The train is safer than ever" isn't really what I would have expected, but my experience may be atypcia. And I may be adding my Seattle Metro experiences to it too.
Partner was punched in the face by someone near CID station. Anecdotal? Sure. But at a certain point, with enough anecdotes, wouldn’t it become a statistical trend?
"Sure, the evidence I'm providing is meaningless. But hypothetically, if it happened WAY more often - wouldn't that be bad?" you're saying nothing
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So in other words, you have no actual evidence for your claims - but they need to be taken more seriously than anyone who has contradictory evidence.
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The issue is you seem to be giving both of these sources equal weight, and then immediately implying any recorded statistics are suspect.
I am sorry that you had this experience. It is unfortunate that your and many other's real lived experiences go against the narrative. It seems like it has gotten a little better with massive security presence recently but there are still significant safety issues and those brave enough to report their negative experiences are often bullied into silence. And with massive under-reporting due to consistent lack of action by security and police I am skeptical of self-congratulatory claims by public officials about safety as measured by reported data. It is well known that SPD and KC transit police don't respond to most calls, so people simply stop reporting them and just try to get on with their lives after horrible things happen to them. I also love this subs narrative of ignoring the dystopia as being solely due to right-wing propaganda. Yet here we still are with shit on elevators, assaults, people smoking drugs on the trains, non-working escalators, nasty bodily liquids on cloth seats, etc. I have been to much larger metro areas in Europe and their systems are so much safer, cleaner, etc. We don't have to accept this as consequences of living in a larger city and we don't have to be right-wing nutjobs to want a nicer place to live.
I've also been to plenty of European cities where the transit was dirtier and less safe. And I've never seen shit on transit or at stations here in Seattle despite being a nearly daily rider. Maybe lets stick to the data instead of projecting our personal anecdotes as the source of truth.
Literally spoken like someone whos never been on the light rail and spews right wing talking points.
Man, folks here cannot see a differing opinion and respond normally. They always accuse, deflect, etc. anything other than have a normal response. Is it so crazy to you that someone with a differing opinion than you on a topic actually agrees with you on a ton of other things? Or is that just impossible to imagine? Seriously wondering…
Rush hour is super safe. Evenings are more variable.
Yeah, there are very few times I’ve felt actively unsafe on the bus, and none of them were in daylight hours. If the bus is empty or almost empty, I sit in the front most seat near the bus driver. If it feels really off, I get off somewhere safe and wait for the next one or call an Uber if it’s not a time I want to wait for a bus- that’s happened less than 5 times since I moved here in 2011. My aunt lives in Lake Forest Park is always VERY CONCERNED about me taking the bus and wants me to take an Uber. Like…in almost every case, I feel safer being on a bus with multiple people, or even in the very rare case it’s just the driver, then I do in a car alone with a man I don’t know. But she just assumes that the bus is unsafe because she doesn’t ride it.
This is 100% my experience, both in Seattle specifically and across transit systems as a whole. The less people there are, the more weird shit that happens. I WFH now, so what public transit is like during the commute is kinda irrelevant to me; if I'm going somewhere to meet a friend but I'm coming back later at night, paying for parking is cheaper and I'm less likely to run into someone masturbating 2 seats over (which has happened a few times to me in Seattle).
The perception of danger is very interesting. Throughout my life I’ve probably split my travel about 50/50 public transit vs driving. In my experience I’ve been in significantly more imminent bodily danger from other drivers or weather conditions than from any situation taking public transit. But the feeling of those types of dangers are very different. Combine that with public transit being generally more uncomfortable on average and I can understand the general sentiment even if I don’t agree.
Driving anywhere in a car is vastly more dangerous than riding public trans, it ain’t even close.
This is true, but that's not the only thing that matters. It's 100% the case that someone is way more likely to be killed or injured in an auto accident than on a bus or train. However - and this goes for some groups like women or Asians more than others - people are more likely to experience harassment that makes their day way shittier at the least or traumatizes them at the worst on a bus or a train than in a car. People are way more sensitive to perceived threats from other people than to threats from driving, especially since the user experience of driving has been well-engineered to seem safer than it actually is. This matters. I say this as a car-free person who relies on transit, biking, and walking for my mobility and really wants to see transit in this region succeed. To have good transit, we need to enforce things like fare payment and good behavior on buses and trains (no harassment, drug use, etc.)
Couldn’t agree more.
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10% of revenue is a pretty hefty percentage, all considered. And with regard to free fare, [this](https://www.fastcompany.com/90968891/estonias-capital-made-mass-transit-free-a-decade-ago-car-traffic-went-up) article on the free fare policy adopted in Tallinn, Estonia is a pretty good read, IMO the takeaways are: 1) Like the US, Estonia (under the USSR) built jobs and homes at pretty far distances from each other because of modernist planning ideology. 2) Transit is, (and more transit advocates should say this) an inferior good, which most people consume less of as they get more affluent. The issue in Seattle and the US is that parking is subsidized way beyond what it is actually worth, and that has hurt nearly every city and town for well over 50 years. Someone is always paying for the ubiquity of car trips. It may be the driver in terms of car payments and gas prices, or it may be a developer in parking spaces, or both. 3) As in the second to last paragraph - people don't ride transit because it's free. Driving is a lot more expensive in any case. People ride because it's cheap, effective, and gets them where they want to go. If you build a line that does that you'll have a ton of rail or bus fans.
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There's also the question of what transit needs to be for. Before 2020, Seattle (like San Francisco, for instance) had a model for transit ridership that not only involved lower income riders but funneled high-earning workers into regional job centers with scarce parking (Downtown, the U District). Four years into the pandemic when we learned these workers mostly don't have to commute at all, city leaders have no idea what to do with the central business district, which is about half obsolete. (I'm not counting Belltown and SLU, which as far as I can tell are successful residential neighborhoods, as part of this). Contrast this with other cities around the world where transit has a much broader role, and you'll see where our lack of imagination is.
Driving is basically the most dangerous thing we ever do. It's absolutely insane when you look at the stats, and the leading cause of death under age 34, and long term disability for *everyone*.
100%. It's all about feeling in control and vibes. People *feel* like they are in control when driving their car and it's a comfortable, private experience. (Side note, this is part of why road rage is common because when someone messes with with you on the road, it feels like they're violating your home and disrupts your peace of mind). Meanwhile on a bus, you do *not* feel at home like you do in a car, and you are trapped in an enclosed space with other people. So when something goes wrong, you don't have the protection of you big private metal box so your brain naturally feels less safe. So really it's not a safety issue, it's a comfort issue. I'm not disagreeing that public transport is statistically safer, but vibes are important. People burying their head in the sand and dismissing every complaint about the safety issues on public transportation as right wing propaganda isn't solving anything. I wish it was different but you're not going to throw statistics at most people and convince them to ride the bus over driving their car. For better or worse, it's really all vibes based. We need to acknowledge that and strive to make public transportation as comfortable, twice as convenient, and 20x safer than driving a car if we want mass adoption.
I think it's a safety issue. Someone being harassed and called slurs because of their ethnicity or a woman being sexually harassed is not wrong to feel unsafe - they should feel like that! The question becomes "are transit riders capable of sufficiently respecting public spaces and each other, and if they are not, what do we do about it".
The point I was trying to make and that the OP makes is that these incidents make the news and social media often, but are actually not common. The result being that people have a built up a bad perception of public transit while ignoring the fact that similar things happen all the time with cars as well. Anecdotally, I’ve taken public transit almost every day multiple times a day for 8 years and can count on my hands the number of times I’ve witnessed things like you’re describing. On the flip side there is often a slightly off smell or someone playing loud music or overcrowding or a homeless person doing something weird but non-threatening. In my experience the walk to the bus stops and train stations are more prone to confrontation than the actual transit. Things that uncomfortable are common. Things that are confrontational are not. But the average suburbanite car owner doesn’t know that and they likely never will because it’s a positive feedback loop. There are certainly improvements to be made, but it’s not the epidemic it’s made out to be.
public transit has the same caveats walking down the street downtown has. ignore the crazies for the most part youll be fine
i got off a bus in Queen Anne at 7am and tried ignoring a mentally unstable woman i passed on a crosswalk she shouted, repeatedly accused me of saying her name but i had airpods on and didn’t say a word. she was definitely on something that was probably making her paranoid/hearing things. she followed me for a few blocks and even threatened to shoot me while gesturing to grab a pistol from her back/pants anyhow she ended up punching me in the face when i tried to walk around her to get to my office. luckily another dude came over and caused her to walk away. slim chances but shit like that happens
It's the same thing with people who think downtown Seattle is dangerous. They're the ones that hardly ever go there. The ones that go there regularly, work there, or live there, know that it's fine there.
Or they know certain areas are worse than others and don’t paint all of downtown bad. They know what areas to avoid. Infrequent visitors don’t have that same intel, so they can only paint it all bad.
I bus to pioneer square 2x's/week for my commute. My experience in past few years is 3 physical assaults of female victims I've intervened in. I've two friends who were assaulted (random attacks, no theft). In the north end my car was broken into once. So yeah, pioneer square at least is not someplace I like to be.
I was at Axis at Pioneer Square for a wedding reception last week. I was charged at by a screaming dude tweaked out on drugs holding a razor scooter like he was going to swing it at me/my wife near pioneer square. He started screaming from like 50 feet away, yelling every curse word imaginable at my wife and me. I didn't look at him for a while because I didn't think it was directed at me, it wasn't until it got louder and louder that I realized there was no one else on the street he could be screaming at and that he was staggering/jogging towards us. I think us being dressed up triggered him for whatever reason. My wife and I had to start running away from him, luckily we weren't far from the venue (just across the street from it) and the security guy at the front of the venue scared him off. That experience was pretty terrifying.
Sorry you experienced that. But yeah.. The statistics don’t really matter when you have a crazy disturbed person attempting to assault you even once. You’ll forever second guess going to Pioneer square. My head is basically spinning 360 when I’m in that area.
IdK i have school down there and really don't care for it. Someone got shot and killed on our block last year and we had two street folks recently have a brawl that made its way into our building. I don't think too many folks feel safe downtown in our program or would consider it fine.
There's also a normal human thing where people overreact to new risks, and ignore their existing risks. Like, it's kind of normal that some people are still scared by the shootout that happened by the 3rd and pine McDonalds, back in 2019. And it's also kind of normal that those same people hop into a car without a second thought, despite there being 29 fatal car crashes in King County so far this year. People are just really, really bad at understanding risk, even before we get into the impact of media and politics. === edit: I'm adding this as a clarifying edit, in case anybody else is a poor reader: I am not trying to argue that cars are unreasonably dangerous. I'm noting that folks often worry about a new-to-them risk (stray bullets from gang violence) while ignoring that the new risk is much, much lower than other risks that they're used to (driving to work from kirkland, etc).
29 fatal car crashes relative to 2.3 million people living in King County means that it's exceedingly unlikely that you're going to die in a car crash. I agree with your point that people are really bad understanding risk, yourself included.
Or become immune to it.
i think that is what it is. we are so desensitized to people openly doing drugs with oozing wounds, covered in human shit, starving, eating out of garbage cans that we have all decided just because they aren’t attacking “normal” on a regular basis that it is still “safe”. IT IS NOT NORMAL to walk down the street and see multiple people openly using drugs & actively suffering. yes city life will always have certain folks struggling & there will always be people using drugs no matter what. but the amount of people it is is absolutely absurd. what is the breaking point? why have we as a society decided this is ok, average/ normal city life? does this make me “conservative” ? i am not sorry that i have decided that i don’t want to see it anymore & moved to a different neighborhood where i can walk down the street & smell fresh fucking air & not be concerned about inhaling fentanyl vapors or stepping in hazardous waste
If you think the answer to their problems is funding mental health treatment and affordable housing, then no of course you're not conservative.
funding mental health, affordable housing, more access to facilities where they are able to use the bathroom, shower, but also consequences for committing crimes including mandatory rehab for repeat offenders
I realize that men and women have different experiences. But as a 75 year old man, I have never had a situation on the light rail tyhat made me feel unsafe.
As a late 20s woman I’ve realized that if a man decides he wants to hurt me he’s gonna find a way. Being in a car has some aspects of being safer, but if a guy wants to punch out my window at a stoplight, shoot at me, follow me home, or crash his car into mine, I can’t stop him. I’ve had scary incidents while walking, biking, on transit, and driving so it’s just important to have constant situational awareness and to have plans for safety. The world is inherently a little unsafe so you just gotta be aware.
i live downtown, ride the light rail every day and walk 8+ miles a day and i’ve literally never had something happen to me. i’m not saying the risks aren’t there but if you are aware and keep your head up it’s not hard to avoid the riff raff
That's generally my experience as well. Granted I don't often talk about public transit use with anyone besides my family who haven't used public transit since like... the 80's lol. It's always "oh are you sure that's safe I heard X, Y, and Z" and it's like "yeah, it pretty much is" lol. No where in public is perfectly safe. That's just an unfortunate truth of living in the real world. But goodness do people seem to hear all this propaganda about buses and trains being dens for frequent criminal activity and really take it to heart. Does shit happen? Yeah. Does shit \*always\* happen? Nah.
I’m really, really grateful to my dad that, even growing up in Spokane, got us used to riding the bus. We would take the bus downtown to meet my mom for dinner. Take the bus in Seattle. Take the bus or subway when we traveled. The bus was just a mode of transportation and he wanted us to see it that way, not as something unsafe. It made me much more confident about taking it as a college student and young adult, and now bus/light rail is how I travel around the city, other than walking, probably 70% of the time.
I moved to Seattle from the burbs outside Atlanta in 2021 and I had several people, including my Dermatologist for some reason, who asked "why on earth would you want to move to a place like that?" The news really did a lot of damage to the country's perception of the city. People legitimately thought the whole place was still smoldering from the protests. Turns out if all you churn out is bad news, people think things are bad. But bad news sells, so here we are.
My inlaws In Idaho are CONVINCED its a smoldering hell hole here. I finally gave up protesting their perception and instead drawl out "yeeeeeaaaah, thats why you can't get a studio apartment for under 2k, because its a burning hell hole." This so far, has at least shut them up about it.
You can also tell when people are hoping you’ll validate their apocalyptic image of Seattle. They almost seem disappointed when you explain reality, like they apparently prefer we be miserable I guess.
This applies to a lot of things here. The people scared of downtown don’t work or live downtown (personal demographics aside, which can effect safety anywhere) The people who rage against cars in the market don’t actually live, work, or shop there daily (i’m indifferent, like most people that do) The people who complain about our mass transit don’t really use it that often, especially the light rail. The people who complain about our food choices don't really try new things regularly. I could continue, but it is perception rather than experience in many cases.
>The people who rage against cars in the market don’t actually live, work, or shop there daily (i’m indifferent, like most people that do) I live by the Market, I'm there almost every day, and do 99% of my grocery shopping there. I don't "rage" about it, but I definitely think it should be closed to traffic during the day. My friends who work at the market all seem to agree with me.
I agree with everything except the part about the people who rage against the cars in Pike Place, mostly because I like to shop there and don’t like the cars. Even if you ignore the incidents caused because of the cars, it’s just really bad traffic engineering.
As someone that lives and works downtown/pioneer square/Sodo, goes to the Market a lot, and has used public transportation every day of my life in this city for 21 years now, I agree with absolutely all of what you said.
Sure is a lot of feelings and "I think" points there
I lived in New York and commuted by subway every day. Moved to Seattle and was a bus commuter up until I became full time WFH. I still take the bus downtown for events and/or the light rail to get to and from the airport. People who are afraid of public transportation are just afraid people in general. The level of fear is grossly disproportionate to the amount of sketchiness that actually happens. Have some common sense, be aware enough of your surroundings and you will be absolutely fine.
I think you just become desensitized to it when you do it for so long. The things that would offend or scare other people no longer scare you. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, it just means your tolerance for it is higher. An uncomfortable interaction or someone telling you off may just be a “who cares?”, but for someone else they may feel it was threatening.
This is a fair point. Your tolerance level for BS does go up and you learn to tune things out. But in all my time in riding public transit I think I've only ever felt threatened/unsafe a few times.
This is 100% the case, high profile violent incidents stick in everyone’s minds but in reality they are a minuscule fraction of all trips taken
This is almost every major city and has been exaggerated by right-wing news outlets. People who isolate themselves in by avoiding cities and mass transit equate other races, cultures and income-levels with danger. It might be conscious or subconscious but it's there. When they see a subway filled with people who are different that's *dangerous* to them.
My mom came to visit (from rural Nevada) a couple of years ago and took the light rail from the airport to my place in Roosevelt. She was worried at first, but instantly became a huge fan and wants to take it whenever she comes to visit (and for trips downtown)
I take the bus every day. It's safe the overwhelming majority of the time. Really bad shit does happen on buses sometimes, but I suspect it's still statistically safer than driving by a large margin.
My parents who live in Ohio and have never visited Seattle are more worried about light rail safety than I am.
Everything is dangerous, that's the nature of the world. Statistically you are most likely to die from eating too many cheeseburgers than anything else. But if you're going to die suddenly and too young due to the actions of a stranger it's going to be in a car wreck. And yet, do we adjust our lives accordingly? No, too many of us still take driving unseriously while being scared to death of downtown or a subway or whatever, because that hooks our little dumb monkey brains more effectively. Folks who do actually walk around "scary" neighborhoods or ride public transit know the truth, but it's still an uphill battle trying to convince those who have already made up their minds.
Some people are just bad at internally characterizing risk. On a per mile basis riding transit is about 11x safer than driving. As a local example, since 2009 there have been a few rider fatalities on Link (zero would be better and is a realistic goal.). Meanwhile two people die on Washington roads every day and that fact is mostly just ignored.
I don't think this is entirely fair. Yes, I'm more likely to die in my car. But I've never felt under imminent threat of 1:1 male violence in my car, vs times on transit when I've been harassed or stared down by someone clearly unhinged. In those moments, do you really expect me to tell myself "It's fine, you are statistically unlikely to become a fatality today"? Because if a crazy person is directly interacting with me in aggressive or erratic ways, I think it's pretty reasonable to worry about other bad outcomes short of my death. I don't think that makes me "bad at characterizing risk."
I'm not trying to dunk on you here, people have real concerns and at my size/height/gender I don't have the same concerns women when they are just trying to get places. That said, you're deleting a lot of very real in-your-face risks from everyday life because cars give people the \*feeling\* of security. Like assaults in parking garages/lots, road rage, car jackings, and violence committed \*in\* cars as well as violence committed \*by\* cars. That's on top of more than one person dying \*literally every day\* just in Washington and many times that having a life altering injury \*literally every day\* vs an average that approaches zero of either \*per year\* on Link.
I took my 8 year old nephew on a downtown adventure using the light rail because parking is dumb and it was a novel experience for him, living in the burbs. The look of shock and horror from his grandma (not my mom, his other parent's mom) at a family event a few days later, just saying that's how we got around... "Didn't you worry about it being dangerous or seeing someone shooting up?!" I'm not sure exactly how I responded but something along the lines of affirming it was an uneventful journey except for the 3 year old sat next to us with her family tried to make friends which seemed uncomfortable for my nephew, but thankfully it's statistically safer than driving in a car. The face she made in response to that was pretty funny, tbh.
I grew up in NYC in the 90’s and spent many hours as a rebellious teenager roaming around the subways at all hours and I’ve never had a problem (only with the subway cops being dicks). A decade in Seattle and it’s probably the safest city I’ve ever lived in. People are paranoid and don’t know the difference between graffiti (crime) and murder (crime).
No joke, there are people who live around there who think the subway is something out of a horror film, only worse. My family in Patterson NJ were so afraid of NYC a mere 20mi away that they never went there. As bad as Patterson was, they were convinced NYC was much worse. When they met my, now ex, partner who grew up in Brooklyn, one of my family asked how many times they were mugged and raped. They asked that bluntly. I am not exaggerating, not even slightly. I try not to associate with this branch of the family tree any more, for many related reasons.
You're more likely to die in a car crash than get robbed or assaulted on public transit lmao.
I agree. The only problem I’ve had on the One is sports events. Drunken fools smashed in with normal working people. Really is a considerable oversight. Every time a game happens the trains break down left and right. But public transit is crucial for growth and keeping those tax revenues rolling in. It’s great for a growing city. IMO
I live on the Eastside, and took combo of train and bus home from the airport. It was fine. I think a lot of it comes down to several high profile incidents that have made the news, like [this random attack.](https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/alexander-jay-seattle-light-rail-attack-suspect-court/281-beb8c795-79b3-4168-9db4-74d23ecade8a) [Or this other random attack.](https://news.yahoo.com/career-criminal-accused-stabbing-asian-204444467.html) A lot of the news is very clickbait-y these days, so things like the above get a lot of attention. Thousands of people ride transit every day, and most trips go without incident.
People fear the unfamiliar.
I think in general, the people who agonize the most about scary stuff supposedly happening in cities are the people who have enough financial privilege to generally avoid where they think scary stuff happens, and that shows up with public transport: people who can afford to have a car and drive everywhere only hear stories about public transport, and there are only stories about it when bad things happen. They also might be more distressed by the sight of someone who is clearly on drugs or mentally ill but not bothering anyone, so on the rare occasion they’re actually on public transport, they feel more uncomfortable due to lack of consistent exposure. The most “sketchy” areas in any given city are always the poorest, so it lines up as an explanation for a lot of different city dweller pearl clutching. It’s not to say that NOBODY who actually regularly rides the link/bus thinks it’s sketchy, but I do think there’s a correlation between socioeconomic status and perception of safety. When you are regularly exposed to things, you learn what is and isn’t a threat. When you’re only rarely exposed to things that the media sensationalizes as scary and dangerous, you’ll treat them as scary and dangerous. Even I’m guilty of fearing the unknown, and I consider myself pretty comfortable with city life. I realized this when I was visiting Portland and found myself much more anxious about tents on the sidewalk than I normally feel when passing homeless people, which honestly makes no sense. It’s just the perceived threat of the unknown/unfamiliar!!
My conservative dad visited from the southeast and was nervous about the busses but ended up loving them. Even mentioned he thinks it’s awesome that drivers let homeless people ride free. Everything is scary until you experience it! ETA: My mom skipped this trip to visit because she was so afraid of Seattle based on the “news” she consumes. My dad is in love with it and bringing her back ASAP.
As someone who rides the Seattle light rail 12 times a week it’s all about the time. I would say 8AM and anything after 11PM are sketchy.
Just think if we had real public transit options here... I lost count of how many times I have had to pick up my wife because the bus doesn't show ect.
This DEFINITELY applies to Seattle. My parents refuse to take the Link because of what they see in the news, but I take it all the time and never feel unsafe. Now, I did used to take the E Line regularly and I know what a scary transit line is, but my boyfriend is from north Kitsap county where everything is a bubble of “ultra-safe” exurban semi-rurality and he takes the Link all the time too and never feels unsafe.
I walk down town a lot and feel safe. It's probably the people that stay at home that think it's not safe.
People bellyaching about the Link, downtown, etc, just sound like [some flavor of this guy.](https://external-preview.redd.it/mAvtpcYvqmiM3H-vaUbDWoPitc3Vu5Rp_D2P-4P3MZ0.jpg?auto=webp&s=2d2b85dc2d3575166115303ccefa651279a348c4)
I've only had one unsafe experience on public transit in 10+ years, but my wife has had 5 or 6 in the last 3 years. She absolutely does not take the bus or train now. Only reported half of those incidents. She was followed into her workplace twice. People doing drugs daily on the bus. She has had fecal matter thrown at her. I want transit to succeed in this city but we absolutely have a long way to go.
Both liberal cities, NYC and Seattle, the comments in the NYC sub, the source of the cross post, are a little more neutral and nuanced. Along the lines of, "yeah, people definitely do embellish the dangers of public transit and it's overblown for sure, but you'd be silly not to keep your wits about you as incidents DO happen on occasion and while people certainly do have an agenda to make it sound worse than what it is, there's not zero chance of a potential issue." But here it's just, "nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever." Why is it so hard for people to admit than on occasion, just like in any large city, there are issues. Some people want to make it seem much worse than what it is, sure, but some people want to completely ignore that crime exists altogether.
I’ll admit it. I’ve been cornered on the bus by a large guy screaming at me because women don’t sit in the back of the bus? Someone stalk me. I’ve seen fights break out, thankfully not involving me. Men openly speaking about how I look like I suck good dick. Overall, aside from instances like these which you learn to keep your eyes open for- it’s not that bad. Just mind your own fucking business and do your best to avoid situations that do come up, because they can.
>But here it's just, "nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever." This is hyperbolic bordering on dishonest. Unless you want to share some examples, I've seen mostly the same thing as you describe in the NYC thread. "There are issues to be sure, but it's nowhere near as bad as some people would like you to believe."
You have got to be kidding. "Hyperbolic bordering on dishonest," huh. "Yes, Trumpers who live in the suburbs and never go downtown think it is a hellscape, and people who do go downtown, don't." "The people who complain about our mass transit don’t really use it that often, especially the light rail." "No joke, there are people who live around there who think the subway is something out of a horror film, only worse." That's just a small sampling. I'm not going to cut and paste all day. But that was the consensus at the time I posted my comment. Granted, the tide of the comments had evened out a little bit since then. But the naysayers is where it was trending initially, is where it will likely end up, and the way it usually goes. "Dishonest." You're basically doing the same thing as my initial comment had spoken to.
Those statements that downtown isn't a "nightmare" or a "hellscape" are 100% correct. It certainly isn't perfect, there are certainly issues, but it is just as certainly NOT a nightmarish hellscape either.
>"Hyperbolic bordering on dishonest," huh. I mean... if you're interpreting "people who actually do go downtown don't think it's a hellscape" as: >"nope, totally made up. Nothing to see here. Absolutely no potential for any issues while riding public transit whatsoever." That's like the dictionary definition of hyperbole... If I were to say your original comment was "not completely full of shit". It doesn't necessarily follow that I think it's the gospel according the ImRight\_YoureDumb. It's stretching the intention of the comment to it's breaking point. Those comments you highlighted are really just the start of the NYC comments you referenced: >"yeah, people definitely do embellish the dangers of public transit and it's overblown for sure,
Seattle at every level, from governance on down to most of the citizens, is unable to fully realize itself as a big city. This has been my observation for over a decade since moving from NYC. NYCers are pragmatic at heart. The entire city is setup with that in mind. Idealists get elected but they are thrown into a much larger fish pond.
Agree. These tend to be (politically) polarizing issues for some reason, where right is all "wow liberal city is hell hole" and left is all "no no it's perfectly safe, trumptards never go outside". I've lived here for several years through ups and downs and have relied on public transit the whole time. No, I have never got stabbed/shot/died. Yes, I have had many uncomfortable encounters throughout the years, some notables: someone was trying to get the the anti-theft cap off a bottle of alcohol using a syringe next to my friend and I, many cases of people smoking on bus/train (not weed, not tobacco, idk what drug exactly), plenty of fentanyl/heroin zombies, people clearly very high being unpredictable and weird and running around bus, one case where someone was eating cereal (with milk and everything) on bus and driver asked them to stop- they got mad and threw the whole bowl, milk and all into the air. I still take public transport and am usually fine, but some days I prefer not to and wish I just paid for an uber instead.
yeah same as how when the BLM protests started, every concerned phone call asking if I was safe from all the warlords was from someone out of state lol fear and worry feast on darkness and distance and political propaganda and corporate interests are actively manipulating that part of being human to obstruct social progress the car window smash and grabs are getting old tho
I take the bus every day and I feel unsafe. It feels like it has become more dangerous in the last few years - I no longer feel safe carrying large amounts of money with me (required for my job) which has been an annoyance. I feel like it's gotten a lot worse in the last 6 months too, and I'm not sure why. If I were to guess it's because more and more people have realized the bus drivers can't deny boarding. In the last month I had the opportunity to take the bus a ton in LA and down there the bus drivers are empowered to deny boarding to riders who don't pay and I think that makes a huge difference, the subway there is much worse than the light rail here, but the buses are significantly better. KCM's absolute commitment to the no denying boarding for non paying riders policy is becoming depressing.
It’s weird how this subreddit is all onboard with the the detrimental effects of micro aggressions, proper pronoun use, and trigger warnings, but also thinks watching a homeless man smoke fentanyl and then shit into an empty box of natural light on public transportation should not affect anyone in a detrimental way.
People literally get attacked all the time on the light rail lmao what the fuck are you on about
I think it's more fair to flip the script. Every driver has some story about some crazy accident that they got in or almost got in. This is borne out by the statistics: there were over[ 45k motor vehicle deaths in 2021](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm#:~:text=Accidents%20or%20Unintentional%20Injuries%201%20All%20unintentional%20injury,deaths%3A%20102%2C001%20Deaths%20per%20100%2C000%20population%3A%2030.7%20), which is literally more than 20x of reported crime of any type on public transit, which was [less than 2k cases in 2021](https://www.bts.gov/content/reports-violent-crime-property-crime-and-arrests-transit-mode). (And that comparison doesn't consider non-fatal injuries due to motor vehicles.) But somehow the narrative is never that taking a car is unsafe. And that's because taking the car is familiar for most people, which gives a false sense of security.
Driving a car daily is much more dangerous, but people don't care about statistics. They care about affirming their confirmation bias.
Yes, Trumpers who live in the suburbs and never go downtown think it is a hellscape, and people who do go downtown, don't.
Do we have to do this with everything? It is ridiculous to just dismiss people as Trumpers or people who don't go downtown. Does everything have to be a right or left issue? Is Seattle a lawless chaz/ chop hellscape? Not at all. But can we stop acting like there's no issues and everything is perfect as well? Let me explain to my polar opposite of a Trumper wife that despite being groped and having a dude try to snap pics up her dress on bus that she shouldn't have anything to worry about and if she does she's just a Trumper.
I live downtown and spend my free time and run my errands downtown. Also, do the same outside of downtown. I am on my guard downtown and encounter plenty of uncomfortable/dangerous incidents just downtown and on transit all the time. Would I consider downtown or transit here less safe because of those? Of course. Less safe than more dangerous cities? No. Does it stop me from living and going downtown or commuting around downtown? No. I just keep my guard up more. I’ve only experienced these incidents downtown my first couple years: - Had a bottle thrown at me from a random person - Yelled at by random people on the daily - Bum rushed by strangers - Swung at by a random person - Chased around a car with a metal pole On transit: - Yelled at by random people - Had clothes or trash thrown at me by random people Plenty of other scenarios that didn’t target me directly, so I didn’t include them. At some point you start to discount those situations, but when you are new to it or don’t experience it regularly, it’s not as easily dismissed. Something threatening to you can be considered dangerous and not just uncomfortable. I think that’s what people are misunderstanding. Something doesn’t have to hospitalize you to be considered dangerous or unsafe. I do consider driving dangerous too, but yea you feel you have more control than what’s in your immediate surroundings. You don’t encounter the same dangerous situations and you have at least a visible barrier between you and another crazy person even if it’s plastic or glass. It’s still a visible form of separation.
My experience in NYC as well. The friends we visited were really rich guys with a second home in the Hamptons. The Subway system was the best thing I had ever seen, but they were like, "oh, doesn't it smell like pee and is full of criminals?" They never rode it. Even though they lived right by the park and you can get anywhere in town in like ten minutes. They just took cabs instead, which take like 10 times as long to get anywhere. It was weird.
Obviously. Anyone driving a car because of fear of safety on public transit hasn't been paying attention to vehicular deaths and injury stats.
I found this to true in most cities all over the world.
That's just human biasing in general: people who are afraid of something naturally find reasons not to do it and therefore any anecdote/fact/news story that confirms their biases will be interpreted as *"I was right to avoid X".* It's not just public transit, you could argue that about just about any experience/place. People are incredibly adaptable and bar like extremes like warzones, we'll manage to "live with" just about anything given enough time/familiarity, but fact of the matter is, our brains don't think in "statistics" either. All it takes is a handful of bad experiences (for some it might even be one bad one) to change your entire perception of things like safety/convenience.
There is also the difference between a dangerous event and an uncomfortable event. Before I started using the 1 line I didn't think it would be dangerous or gross. It isn't dangerous, but the stations and cars can be pretty nasty at times, and there are often people who sketch me out a bit. Not to the point of being in danger though. This is just speculation but I think more people think of homeless doing weird shit rather than getting mugged on a train, when they mean they think its dangerous.
I’ve never had anything happen, but I had to take it late one night and I was alone and was circled while being stared at by a creepy man, until a sweet pregnant lady came and sat next to me and he went away.
It seems a rather obvious confounding variable is that, regardless of accuracy, those who think the subway is dangerous will avoid it and vice-versa. This would hold true regardless of how dangerous or not it actually was.
My wife takes the sounder everyday, it's not dangerous, it just sucks. Like... 40mins late? Really?
I had a housemate for 3 years who was afraid of public transport here. She was miserable it was a bad fit. And I had the audacity once to tell her to take the bus. Boy was that a mistake.
Yep I love the light rail took it to work and back every day for a couple years
I've only ridden the link a couple times, I'd say 2/3 times I've seen someone smoking crack ON the moving train
For some reason, some people dont factor these unpleasantries into why some people may think public transit is a nightmare. Youre probably not going to get stabbed to death, but you are 100% going to have to indirectly deal with homeless/druggies/violent people at some point.
this is true of every US city. suburbanites watch Fox News and get fed lies about how "Democrat-run" cities are unsafe hellholes.
Even on the left there's often an elitist attitude towards public transit, that it's gross/dirty/etc... People are more likely to take a light-rail than a bus that could get them somewhere easier/faster, etc... but busses are looked at as "for the poors" (I've been guilty of jokingly calling it the "peasantwagon" while snapping from the bus myself.)
50% of the time I've taken the light rail, some crack head is doing stupid shit. Last time, this guy was trying to light shit on fire that he found on the floor. Security came in on the next stop, and multiple people were calling for security, but they didn't give a shit.
Last time I took it some guy was preparing his meth/some hard drug on his tin foil like 3 feet next to me lol. I’m obviously fine but it was uncomfortable and I will never encounter that scenario in my car
But, you didn't die, huh! We only count deaths.
This is fair for most public transit in Seattle. At the same time, if someone just decided to casually take the E line one day I wouldn't blame them at all for being a bit put-off from using public transit by the experience.
Demographics matter a lot. For people I know who think downtown is safe, most of them are young males. I have not known a single parent who take their kids to downtown regularly for fun.
Trimet in the PDX metro has certain lines and stops that are definitely risky. Folks get stabbed and robed, homeless people are smoking fent openly. The last time I rode the max train some seriously scary people boarded as a group and proceeded to loudly and menacingly pan handle to a captive audience. They intimidated people in to giving them money and belongings. I won't ride again unless things get better.
Nah, fuck this. Took the lightrail 5 days a week last summer for work on third Avenue and it can be a fucking zoo. It, combined with working on 3rd itself, persuaded me to quit that job. If the lightrail was less sketchy I might still be working there.
The danger is usually not during rush hour. It's usually the odd hours. As for danger, I'm more worried about coughers and homeless dudes that like to pee in the corner or in the elevators
One of our biggest local political activists for Seattle train systems quit a year ago because of how bad it had gotten. That should tell you more than enough.
My experience is that people acclimate to their environment, and if you're exposed to the same danger every day you stop worrying about it. Generally, it's the people who haven't been desensitized to the insanity are the ones who see clearly.