
BART's Fare Evasion Crackdown Exposes the 'Deadly Elegance' of Hostile Design - fezz
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13861966/barts-fare-evasion-crackdown-exposes-the-deadly-elegance-of-hostile-design
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glangdale
This article starts with a valid point and careens into insanity.

Arguably a design that permits a chunk of downtown to turn into a homeless
encampment is "hostile" to the original purpose of a bench downtown, which is
to be sat on by a range of different people in the course of the day.

If those BART gates are anything like the ones in Sydney, though, they are a
substantial risk. During the roll-out of our "Opal" card system I got my leg
slammed - hard - by the gates doing that thing where the mechanics are a
little too slow to keep up with the electronics and a bunch of people are
going through one after the other and largely keeping the gate open. To be
clear, I'm talking about walking through the gate only after having the
comforting little noise that said "yes, I scanned your card and you're OK" \-
not me trying to race through the system regardless of status.

I lift weights, am a fairly healthy middle-aged man, and am large (6'2.5",
235kg) and getting hit by that _normal_ gate _hurt_. I cannot imagine what the
consequences of this kind of paranoid design - especially amp-ing up the gate
with more nasty stuff - would do to someone who is older and frailer (but
perhaps not old/frail enough to feel like they have to use the special wide
gate). It is completely unreasonable to endanger more vulnerable legitimate
transit users to get a little more compliance, especially where the biggest
scofflaws will still just vault the gates or 'draft' through behind others.

~~~
danaris
> Arguably a design that permits a chunk of downtown to turn into a homeless
> encampment is "hostile" to the original purpose of a bench downtown, which
> is to be sat on by a range of different people in the course of the day.

If you are a city official, and you _know_ that you have a significant
homeless population that would like a place to sleep that's safer and more
comfortable than the ground, which is the more hostile course of action?

a) Propose changes that would result in there being fewer homeless on the
streets, or even fewer homeless overall (eg, more & better shelters, providing
them with free housing as has been proven to work in multiple places, etc)

b) Propose changes that make your area unfriendly to the homeless so they go
elsewhere and lower someone else's property values

c) Do nothing whatsoever

Blithely talking about the "original purpose of a bench downtown" ignores the
fact that there are real people suffering, not just because of the policies
that replace more standard benches with anti-homeless benches, but because of
the mindset that underlies them: homeless are a plague to be driven out,
rather than human beings who deserve our compassion and help.

It is a position of privilege to be able to sit and talk about "the original
purpose of a bench downtown" as if that's much more important than people's
suffering.

~~~
glangdale
I like choice (a) best of all. I don't think taking serious steps to help the
homeless in incompatible with wanting to have a downtown that isn't full of
poo and untreated mentally ill people.

I don't think SF is going to be in a great position to implement any of the
steps in (a) if they lose a giant whopping chunk of jobs, revenue and tax base
when those 'rusted-on conferences' finally get scared off and move to other
cities, or when tourists decide SF is Just Too Damn Sketchy.

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akira2501
Maybe I'm showing my age, but I honestly don't understand what's "anti-poor"
or "anti-homeless" or "ableist" about this design? To me, it can only seem
this way if you see fare evasion as a natural right of the citizens.

Am I a curmudgeon, or is the level of concern shown in the article a
legitimate thing?

~~~
jarfil
In some places, homeless and poor people get issued tickets for free rides
because of their condition. In others, they put inverted guillotines because
it would be unsightly to post armed guards preventing the undesirables from
illegally using the service.

It isn't about fare evasion, it's about how a given society perceives its more
disadvantaged members: some want to help them, others want them to just die
off.

~~~
danem
> some want to help them, others want them to just die off.

Oh please, as if it that dichotomy were only true.

BART runs a massive deficit each year, and yet you think there should be no
deterrents to evading fare? The BART barely collects on the tickets it issues
as is[1]. Plenty of people who are able to pay and are of sound mind hop the
turnstiles. If you want to subsidize the travel expenses for a certain group,
fine, but why promote even more lawlessness in an already terrible system?

[1]
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Almos...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Almost-
everyone-gets-away-with-jumping-BART-gates-14048881.php)

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nlh
I’m having a lot of trouble with this article. It’s conflating a park bench
with armrests or a ledge with spikes (both, I think, at least legitimate
points of discussion when it comes to hostile design) with something designed
to prevent people from stealing service.

BART service has a fare, gated by turnstiles. People try to steal that service
by jumping over those turnstiles. So BART has modified them to make it harder
to steal.

Of course the design is hostile - it’s trying to prevent theft!

Am I missing something?

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glangdale
Yes, you are. Those turnstiles have always been more or less symbolic - they
are designed to make it obvious that people are fare-evading, not to stop
them. If you wanted to stop people fare-evading you would have floor to
ceiling turnstiles that are literally turnstiles.

The marginal improvement in the security that adding nasty new bits to the
turnstiles increases the chance that less able or unlucky users will get
nailed by the turnstile - the young, the old, the frail, the plain old
disorganized. There are plenty of people who don't perceive themselves as so
disabled as to need the special 'wide gate' but who are put at risk by a
system tuned for preventing jumpers and 'drafters'. As I said elsewhere on
thread, I've been nailed by a similar turnstile in Sydney (without the extra
stuff on it) - while using the system correctly - and it hurt like hell, and
I'm a large, able-bodied man. I think the same hit on a 105lb female friend of
mine would probably stop her from walking for several days.

It's just not worth it. Want to stop jumpers? Get your security guys off their
asses and patrol the goddamn trains.

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darkpuma
> _" Yet an underlying concern is that pilot programs like these could
> alienate riders from taking public transportation entirely."_

Junkies defecating in the train station discourages me a hell of a lot more
than "hostile design", which for the most part is purely decorative from my
perspective because my perspective is not that of somebody wishing to do
precisely that which the "hostile design" is meant to encourage.

"Hostile design" is in fact _defensive design_ , designed to protect the
common people from the anti-social _and frequently hostile_ behaviors you
frequently see on public display in Californian cities. We need more of it.

(Note also that "hostile design" does not focus just on the homeless, but in
fact encompasses a wide range of techniques aimed at addressing a wide range
of anti-social behaviors. For instance, skate boarders can be discouraged from
playing in crowded areas where they present a risk to bystanders with use of
furniture and structures specifically designed to discourage skateboarders.
This addresses the problem of skateboarders causing property damage or
frightening bystanders without threats of force (e.g. property owners calling
the police or hiring a security guard) or any other form of confrontation.
Isn't that better, or at least safer, for everybody involved? Similarly,
"hostile" design allows property owners to discourage the homeless without
instigating a confrontation between the homeless and police officers.)

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lordCarbonFiber
Discussion around hostile design always seems to miss the forest for the trees
to me. To point out a concrete example, is it better to address homeless
populations with some combination of state housing and UBI programs or, accept
homelessness as an axiom and design public spaces to that end? The latter
seems considerably more elitist and fatalist.

~~~
Gibbon1
I read an economist's back of the envelop calculation on what the appropriate
BART fare should be. When automobile subsidies and externalizes[1] were
included the appropriate fare was negative. Ditto for Muni.

And example, I took HWY80 to work and paid nothing for the pleasure. Why
should the AC Transit or BART riders have to pay a fare when the freeway
commuters don't?

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the_watcher
Looks like you forgot your citation, I'd like to read it if you can update.

~~~
Gibbon1
[https://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/08/so-why-isnt-
riding-b...](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/08/so-why-isnt-riding-bart-
free-a-back-of-the-envelope-finger-exercise-calculation.html)

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AdamM12
> Yet an underlying concern is that pilot programs like these could alienate
> riders from taking public transportation entirely.

I thought this was the best line of the whole thing. If you can't pay for it
then how can you be alienated? If you are paying for it then isn't the so
called "hostile" design no longer hostile?

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bassman9000
> A city

> BART

> San Francisco

> Fruitvale

Ok

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ridicuus101
This is a politicized article and doesn't belong on hacker news. As someone
who used to live in the bay area but no longer does, I can't help but think a
lot of the people there have some major issues where they take every normal
thing that other cities do to keep quality of life high and berate any
attempts to do the same in the bay area as if every decision made for public
health, safety and overall cleanliness of an urban area has to be optimized
for the homeless and drug addicts. It's honestly pretty strange and seems sick
to me.

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dictum
Where do politics belong?

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bendbro
Hackernews explicitly lists politics as off topic. While deciding what is and
what isn't politics is often politicized in its own right, the moderators do a
great job enforcing this rule.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
krapp
Hacker News explicitly lists " _most_ stories about politics, or crime, or
sports, _unless they 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._" as
off-topic - not any story with any political dimension at all, which would
likely make most stories posted off topic, were that the case.

