Derailing troublemakers

Kathleen Angel has a good idea. After an unnerving experience on the CTrain in which she saw youths harassing another passenger, making racist remarks, talking loudly about weapons and urinating on the floor, Angel wants the city to come up with a smartphone app that would allow passengers to call for help.

That way, anyone who saw something untoward would not be noticed, bent over a smartphone and summoning officials. After all, so many people are engaged with their smartphones in the normal course of riding the train.

Train cars come equipped with either a red help button or a strip along the wall, but reaching up to press for help might result in that person also being targeted. And summoning help so conspicuously puts troublemakers on the alert to run out of the car the moment the doors open for the driver to investigate the fracas. It would be nice if other passengers in the car would intervene when someone is being harassed. But many hesitate to get involved for fear of violence being directed at them — and they have no idea whether the individual causing the trouble may be armed with a knife.

The system has its shortcomings because of culprits’ ability to flee through one door as the driver is entering through another. Angel’s idea may be well worth investigating. It’s a shame that things have come to this on Calgary’s LRT system, but Calgary Transit needs to look at ways people can feel safer and troublemakers can be caught.