That's actually what I was trying to understand. I recall evasion being less of a thing when I was living in Toronto (so much so that I used to get in trouble with late transfers sometimes) so I was wondering what changed.
It sounds like a combination of increased ridership and decreased staffing.
I'd note that I also don't see inspectors on the GO with the regularity that I used to, either.
How about...hiring staff at all gates, like they did back when I lived in Toronto. It's been nearly 20 years, but I recall it being somewat difficult to get into a station, and only marginally easier to get on a streetcar or bus, without having paid a fare.
It makes sense when you realize Ford won't do anything that returns private money to the public, but will do everything and anything that enriches the private sector.
Removing tolls from the 407 would be a public benefit, so he won't do it. You'd be more likely to see him sell the east-of-Pickering chunk of 407 for a "tax break" and claim it's a win.
You'd think this, but so far he just seems to keep damaging more things and rolling everything up into a kind of metastasizing grift that gets it's tentacles into everything.
The reason citizens feel this way is because they've seen the half-assed policy we have, where we don't enforce drug laws, but don't support addicts either, and the result is serious harm to just about any city of size in most of Canada.
The correct solution would be a) housing and comprehensive supports for addicts, so they have a roof over their head and can get clean, b) safe-supply, and c) actual enforcement of laws and bylaws so that the only place you can use your safe, free supply is the home from a) or the treatment centre in b).
All of this would cost money and political capital. The cheap solution was to just do a half-assed job enforcing laws about drug use, and a similarly half-assed approach to the crime caused by drug use, with a token few bucks thrown at safe-consumption. This looked wonderfully progressive, and it had the benefit of being cheap and keeping the riff-raff out of nice suburban spaces. Basically, we looked at Portugal's solution, and did maybe 30-50% of it, and looked all shocked when it didn't work.
Now we're dealing with a situation where we didn't address the causes of addiction, and piled on not addressing the impacts, either. And people--voters, people who live and work in downtowns scorched by addiction--are unhappy about it. And now it's a more expensive problem then it was 10-15 years ago.
This is painfully typical of Canada: ignore a problem when it's cheap to fix, half-ass a solution, and then cry poverty and powerlessness when the problem metastasizes into a crisis. See: healthcare, education or immigration
The how-to-search-for-people-to-follow thing caused me trouble with Mastodon. I could handle getting a client and an account, but actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge. Discoverability was pretty broken.
Bluesky doesn't seem to have that problem.
Lemmy I've stuck with because it handles that better.
And this attitude is precisely why people won't support SCS.
You might think think this, and people like you might think this, but it convinces no one else, and telling them they're selfish is a great way to get them to vote against you in even greater numbers.
Try building some bridges and explaining how SCS sites actually reduce crime, needle waste and such. Then talk about how we need housing on top of that.
Yes, people are selfish and care about their own interests. They're people. You need to work within those constraints if you want change. If your plans for a better society involve expecting better people, you won't get there.
One hole, because of Danger Diabolik