Breakdancers, beggars aren’t the real problem
During the height of Tuesday’s evening rush hour, BART shut down service in the Transbay Tube because of a debris fire. Fortunately, no one was injured, but BART ran no trains between San Francisco and Oakland for a half hour. It took nearly an hour for BART to reopen the tracks in both directions.
Anyone who regularly rides BART during rush hour understands what a delay can mean: frayed tempers, platforms crammed with people and a horrible squeeze to get into any car that eventually shows up.
On Tuesday, the result was chaos at the Transbay bus terminal, where hundreds of confused passengers went to board buses for the East Bay. Commuters reported that their journeys home took up to two hours longer than usual.
In the annals of BART delays, Tuesday’s wasn’t notable. By the week’s end, I expect that everyone will have moved on. There are so many infrastructure failures in the Bay Area on a weekly basis, it’s hard to maintain the mental or emotional bandwidth for this one.
Yet this story immediately popped into my mind when I read the other big
BART story this week.
BART’s staff presented a new legal analysis to the BART Board of Directors on Thursday, Oct. 24, that essentially says it’s legal to ban panhandling in BART trains. In August, Debora Allen, a BART director representing Contra Costa County, proposed banning panhandling and other forms of solicitation inside the trains and stations. The debate’s been raging ever since.
“New York, L.A., D.C., Atlanta, and Chicago all have ordinances,” Allen said in a statement released Monday, Oct. 21. “People come to San Francisco from all over the world and they are shocked by what they see on our transit system.”
I have some bad news for Allen about the transit systems in New York, L.A., D.C., Atlanta and Chicago: Those ordinances don’t outlaw busking and other forms of entertainment (though they have rules about where this activity can take place). Those ordinances also haven’t stopped panhandling.
And you know what? It’s not the end of the world.
As a regular BART rider, my major concern is getting to my destination safely and quickly, not having to share space with a group of kids breakdancing for change or a beggar sharing her sob story at top volume. The dancers may be annoying. The beggar may be an unwelcome reminder that we live in a cold, merciless society that will happily discard us all at the soonest opportunity. But annoyance and discomfort have never been resolved by overbearing laws.
Why on Earth would this be any different?
There are all kinds of legal and ethical complications with these kinds of ordinances, too.
The American Civil Liberties Union is adamantly opposed to the idea, pointing out that it’s a restraint on free speech. Panhandling bans have a mixed record in court, thanks in part to the ACLU — last year the organization successfully challenged Sacramento and Chicago over their “aggressive panhandling” bans.
BART’s staff may believe it’s in the clear because BART is a “nonpublic” forum, but does it really want to spend time and money defending that lawsuit? Particularly when this is an ordinance that will have discriminatory impacts.
It has nothing to do with intimidation or assault, both of which are already on the books.
Instead, it’ll be used overwhelmingly against poor people and people of color. It’ll put them in greater danger of being arrested or subjected to use of force — because that’s what used to happen when BART police routinely detained buskers and panhandlers, according to its independent police auditor.
Being forced to acknowledge the harsh, latecapitalist realities of these groups of people seems to be the real driving force behind these ordinances, since I don’t hear anyone seeking to outlaw the charity solicitations that I get in the mail every day.
While the BART board is arguing over this, the real danger to the system’s integrity lies in delays like the one that occurred Tuesday. It lies in the endless uncertainty of scheduling one’s life around a system that was built for a different era, and leadership that has taken too long to modernize everything from parking fees to approaching homelessness to longterm financial planning.
As for the entertainers and the panhandlers? Their major competitors for attention should remain smartphones and rider indifference — not the law.
Annoyance and discomfort have never been resolved by overbearing laws.