It's not the poor people you notice, it's the tweakers and homeless people shitting themselves you notice. And the criminals [1]. The poor people look just like any other person on a train so you can't tell they're poor in the first place. Maybe they have crappier shoes and a crappier phone but that's irrelevant because they behave like normal people.
Seriously, have you ever taken a BART train late at night where there was a guy tweaked out of his mind? Or sat in chairs that look like they were shit on 5 times and never properly cleaned? Why do you expect people to deal with that as if it's perfectly okay? Why do you expect people not to take alternative modes of transportation when that's what they have to deal with? This kind of anti-societal behavior is only accepted in the US, and nowhere else in the world.
Anecdotal evidence: I only rode on the BART once. When we disembarked, my girlfriend got a few feet ahead of me. A strange man turned around and started screaming at her and physically grabbed her shoulders. I heard her scream and ran at him and violently defended her.
My experience with the BART may have been unique, but from what I've read it probably is not.
yes I take bart late at night all the time and I don't care. Doesn't bother me.
and my point is that the ne'erdowells or whatever is correlative of poverty. the conditions present in the greater bay area are represented on bart and I guess if you're a cloistered tech bro and you've never been to oakland that's scary or something
And my friends were sexually assaulted and mugged at gunpoint, yet we do not assume that this is acceptable behavior or should be tolerated because of someone's income level.
Honestly, I don't understand people who try to normalize violence and argue on public forums that it's acceptable that public transit be an open sewer just because it gives them a faux edginess in liking "gritty" public spaces or sense of twisted moral superiority to those who do care about these things.
I really don’t think this is a rich or poor issue. It is possible to have public transportation that can transport rich or poor equally, while maintaining safety and cleanliness.
For example, public transportation that has locked “cabins” for people who want to feel additional security. For cleanliness, constant sanitization of seats and floors. Trash bins available on the train, with workers replacing them as needed during station time.
No one is kicking a poor person off MUNI but if a homeless person pees on the seat, it gets cleaned up immediately. People that feel unsafe can go into the cabin. Unarmed security guards can be placed at every station, not to hassle riders, but to give assistance to people that ask.
This is not some foreign concept — some Asian countries do this quite well.
I will never come to understand why the cloistered folks of Palo Alto hate poor people so much and will always resent them for it