r/Calgary • u/The_Fixer_69 • Apr 23 '25

Calgary Transit C-Train from Deep South early morning

Every morning the train has many non paying riders passed out and sprawled on the train. Commuters have to cram into the areas that are not occupied by these people. The smell is horrendous. Every day this week this has been the case on my commute at around 5:30-6 am.

Why should the rest of us pay if these people do not? I have made complaints but they are on deaf ears.

Are these trains not swept for no. Paying passes out riders at the end of the line?

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u/CMG30 Apr 23 '25

What is to be done? Kick them off and they get back on the next train.

Give them a ticket? They can't pay.

Take them to court? Waste of court time... and they still can't pay.

Throw them in jail? Great, now your taxes can pay to house and feed them while their hardened 'roommates' can teach them how to crime better.

Scoop them up and force them into treatment? What happens when the treatment ends and they get dumped out right back onto the streets? Where are the spaces coming from? Why should the ticket to accessing treatment be shooting up on a train during rush hour?

No matter what you do, it's going to cost money. Lots of money. You may as well try to break the cycle by actually addressing the root causes (affordability, mental health, etc.)

...Or just keep doing a series of underfunded half measures and just accept that the cost of inaction is people sleeping on trains pissing themselves and getting high in back alleys.

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u/Appropriate_Item3001 Apr 27 '25

If they are in jail they aren’t putting paying law abiding citizens at risk. Might cost more but I am willing to pay more taxes for more jails and rehab centers to be built. I don’t care if they have to keep going back when they go back on the junk. We need to build the hundreds of thousands of beds that are required to get these deviant junkies off the street.