Rather than just help them (which is cheaper btw) they take services away from everyone in an attempt to make their area shitty enough they’ll go somewhere else…
Completely ignoring that they’re making it shitty for the people they want to keep too, which makes people want to leave and depressed selling prices, which can easily lead to a panic and flight from an area destroying the community.
Even from a purely selfish capitalistic perspective, it’s best to just have a fucking safety net. Beyond all the ethical reasons we should, there’s not a single logical reason not to fucking help people.
The problem is that businesses see it as a way to drive customers into their stores where they can then demand they either buy something or leave. This is end stage capitalism bullshit where they’re trying to wring blood from a stone.
But have you considered that maybe my good and just God has given me a mission to make everyone else suffer?
I’m sure it’s written somewhere in the bible. Idk I’ve never read it.
Neither have most Christians.
Yeah, but Republican voters want to hurt people who aren’t like them. How will your proposal help them do that??
No? Have a safety net? The more that die, the more theoretical wealth becomes available to them. Even if it’s homeless.
It reaches the same goal for them. That’s why it’s selfish and capitalistic, it works. It just sacrifices everything that isn’t I. It’s that doomer mentality, of why bother helping. world’s dog shit, so be dog shit.
Live your life one of two ways, how the world wants or how you want the world to be.
I want this world to be better, so I do what I can to make it how I wish it was. Trying to quit a weed addiction, so I do small shit like not litter butts, or pick up garbage I think might be cool, help animals in danger, do something when you can.
Just talk. Capitalists however profit from any social benefits because they’re pathetic cowards that need daddy’s wallets until they’re decrepit middle age men.
Ps. This is just something that makes me feel special and I don’t have many friends. The other day on the train an old black guy and an old white guy were talking about how the world is ass. There hasn’t been a good president since George Washington, not the time to enlist cause what are we fighting for. I was tired, but eventually asked why is now the wrong time if tomorrow is worse. There’s never a good time, because you aren’t trying. Anyways, an EVEN older black man standing next to me says, something about back in his day even hoodrats tried to help. Everyone was quite.
They keep dealing with the symptoms of the problem but never the root of the problem.
Namely the weak, cowardly, ignorant, parasitic minority of wealthy idiots that want to horde the wealth of the world for their own short insignificant lives.
The 90s in the USA were a simpler time, but some folks got it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-O4k9jZzE
You should really read the politics section for John Popper’s Wikipedia page.
Oh… Oh no… Really?
Edit: I could have lived with it except for endorsing gwb. You don’t get to call yourself a libertarian and sign off on gitmo and patriot act. Those are like the difference between being problematic but principled ass and just an ass.
It doesn’t really say too much damming. You can be socially libertarian and economically left and still be a good person.
You have to remember that the democrats shot themselves in the foot with the entire rock industry when Tipper Gore waged christian housewife war on them.
Closing Down The Park
Blues Traveler
12:55
Bulldoze the community garden
And replace it with glass
Well duh. If people start gathering in public and talking to each other with a modicum of comfort, they might get thoughts in their heads
And thoughts lead to actions!
And you know what’s an action? Addressing the wage gap!
We must stop that!
Which is why we need a world where people are constantly being forced to move and never allowed to ever stop moving, for fear that they may some day stop and think.
To add another layer: allowing homelessness is one of the most widespread and visible acts of violence perpetrated by the state, supported by the market, and accepted-- or at least tolerated-- by most of the public. I wonder if institutions don’t address it because scares people into obedience.
Reflect on the focus of violence in stories about slavery. Hypothetically, without violence, slavery is still awful: robbing a human of their autonomy, spending their lives bettering the lot of those in power rather than their own. But we focus on the violence, not only because of the obvious, visible horror, but because you can’t rob someone of their autonomy without violence.
When it comes to homelessness, the violent act is not only inaction: failing to address risks and pitfalls, or add safety nets (focusing on growth, instead), but also what your original post is about: removing public facilities, forcing people to play the line-go-up game in order to have nice things, lest they have a string of bad luck and end up on the street, exposed to the elements.
The state and market didn’t cause the blizzard that may kill unhoused people, but they did nothing to try to get them out of its path. Isn’t that the purpose of these institutions? Yet homelessness is everywhere and it makes being unemployed all the more terrifying-- to be that much closer to the streets. “Better to take what you can get,” participate in an unjust market or it could be you.
It’s kind of crazy how swiftly Occupy was wiped off the zeitgeist. A key cultural event of the 2010s gone as if it never happened.
Far more often than not, even bloody revolutions do not achieve their goals, or lead to merely cosmetic and/ or short-lived changes. E.g. Kent Gang Deng investigated 269 major peasant rebellions over 2106 years of Chinese history. Guess how many of these actually rewrote history in any way, shape or form.
Recently, I’ve been reading several interesting pieces on the “Occupy” movement, the related G20 and other protests in the Western world, dating back as far as the 1960s. The bottom line being: asking nicely for some minimum demands that even conservative politicians can get behind, like capping CEOs’ wages, will not get the job done. In fact, some of the powers that be can use it for their internal power struggles and to show it off as a sort of legitimization folklore. “See how democratic we are? We even have protesters in little tents! Don’t worry, they aren’t hurting anyone.”
All hope is not lost, though, if new protest modalities can be found.At this point the only valid forms of protesting are basically doxxing the billionaires and gathering outside their homes. Only problem is you’ll be at the gate of an estate thats empty half the time.
That’s why Putin made public gatherings illegal
I’m currently on vacation in California at an outdoor mall. I’m squat/sitting on a tiny piece of concrete that’s like 8” off the ground and am so mad that I can relate to this picture. Why the fuck can’t we just have benches!?!
Because poor people might use them, so fuck you pleb.
That would provide homeless people with 1 possible point of comfort, can’t have that.
Is that why we hate Soviet housing so much, because it gave the homeless dignity, shelter and comfort?
I think that’s what’s so pervasive about capitalism: The superiority it gives people. It has a perpetual struggling class that the comfortable can always point to and say, “At least I’m better than that.”
Well that and a million other reasons.
Homeless people are just losers who lost the game of Capitalism, their punishment is just and necessary for them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and start a Fortune 500 company
/sPretty much it, yeah. Capitalism is fundamentally evil and they’ve spent so many decades now projecting all of its flaws on to any society that tries to work to a brighter future.
At this point capitalism is just feudalism with a stock market.
Always has been.
I thought we hated it because they were all ugly monotonous blocks with often pretty bad apartment layouts, often used to import a bunch of Russian workers to an existing city to slowly replace the local culture. But maybe that’s just me.
That’s not to say I don’t like the idea of everyone having housing, or even the idea of big apartment buildings. Just make them not look like prisons ffs. And put elevators in 5 story and lower buildings too. The soviet 5 story apartment buildings at least in my country never had elevators, so they were like a big F U for disabled people, as you couldn’t even get to the first floor without taking the stairs. Disabled people could only live in the bigger ones.
I thought we hated it because they were all ugly monotonous blocks with often pretty bad apartment layouts, often used to import a bunch of Russian workers to an existing city to slowly replace the local culture. But maybe that’s just me.
Certainly not anywhere else, with replacing local workers and their culture with bland carbon copy lookalikes…
At least it was a effient use of space, building up than sideways.
Well, it’s mall. Its goal is maximizing profits.
I’m visiting Naples at the moment with my Italian boyfriend, and I remarked to him that Naples has a lot of places that people can just hang out without spending money, something that the UK has lost. Part of this is due to the climate, but also corporatism hasn’t hit Italy as hard as other western countries. It really is a shame.
corporatism hasn’t hit Italy as hard as other western countries
Why did I read this?
I dunno. I didn’t read it. Did you find anything interesting?
I have no idea. I don’t think so.
I wish society would put more into making the world work better for rule followers instead of focusing so much on punishing rule breaking (which often punishes everyone).
I don’t think being poor should be cause of being seen to be a rule breaker.
You target poor/homeless with laws aimed to “prevent loitering”. The “rule breakers” are the people who simply are affected the most by the laws. Being poor shouldn’t cause you to break rules but think about it, overdraft fees, late fees, etc all targeted at the poor. Like someone else said earlier the punishment is aimed at a symptom not the problem. It’s why we’re all here lamenting about how ridiculous it is.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France
The word humanity or even the derivative humane, are complete falsehoods. This is humanity, cruel and selfish,dumb and easily motivated towards violence and hatred. We suck as a species.
Agreed, imagine if instead of tearing down benches so people couldn’t sleep in the park, they instead added bike lifts to help people get up a steep hill in the park or maybe a sprinkler system for the kids to play in… actually adding value and stuff
Removing public amenities is just the first step. The next step is to erect fencing around public parks and other spots where people like to enjoy themselves. Source: living in Dublin “the city centre is for working and shopping only” Ireland.
Fuckin trashbag the more you read about him.
Motherfucker purposely built the bridges for local streets going over the highways much lower than avg to prevent buses (and thus poorer folks) from being able to get to Jones beach: https://www.nycurbanism.com/blog/2020/7/28/robert-moses-low-parkway-bridges
Freedom before capitalism happens.
Free dumb after capitalism happens.
Reminds me of that story about a sports field that got weird „opening hours“ because some old fuck nearby didn’t like the children being noisy near his house. After some months it got turned into a parking lot because „no one was using the sports field“.
Bro, I hate children too. But you have to draw the line at lung cancer.
That’s kind of my head canon of why the park near my parent’s house no longer has benches. It’s three blocks away from a school, and kids/teens would hang out there.
Guessing some Karen whose house faced the park flipped their shit.
So he hates the noise the youth made, but is ok with people revving to the extremes.
You know how in the south, they closed public pools instead of desegregating because they would rather have no pools than let black people swim?
That impulse didn’t go away. And it wasn’t limited to the south and their hatred of black people.
Hopefully it’s because they’re putting in new benches made from the bones of real estate tycoons ❤️💖
They got rid of them at the bus stop near me. There used to be an indoor space for people to wait in, but they closed that down. And this is in Alaska. Having to wait a half an hour for the bus to arrive after taken a shower is a shitty way to wake up.
The boring-dystopia solution: a company that rents out chairs, and records everything that happens around those chairs for training AIs.
Their excuse, ‘for the safety of children’.
Shhh. Don’t give them ideas
There’s a few zombies in there. It’s like playing wheres waldo
Just people living their best radioactive lives and you’re mocking them?
“They Live” by John Carpenter for those thinking this is some AI generated image
It’s as if they don’t want you to be able to get out of your house and socialise except for some paid time at private properties (cafes, restaurants etc). And no this isn’t just a US problem, it’s a Europe problem as well.
Guys. I am pretty sure that is Moynihan train station next to Penn Station. People sitting on the floor are literally leaning against the stairs down to the track. Thats is where people lineup to go on the train when it arrives at the station. Of course you don’t put benches there. In this station there is a seating area where all you need to do is show your train ticket. On the other side there’s a food hall with lots of public seating. There just isn’t seating directly where all the foot traffic is. I take trains in the North East corridor on Amtrak somewhat often. There’s seats there. Just not where seating would obstruct movement on and off the train platforms.
Of course you don’t put benches there.
I’m not following. Why not? This is clearly a place where people gather and then wait for a period of time long enough to feel that sitting is necessary. Provide a fucking place for them to sit, it’s not complicated
There’s a platform for trains, with benches down the middle. But the edges are open for people to walk around
That is dangerous in NYC. Penn/Moynihan Station is a terminating station. I’m guessing over 60% of the train capacity often unloads at Penn/Moynihan Station (assuming NE corridor from DC with stops in philly and other towns along the way). You can’t have passengers waiting to board obstruct that many people disembarking on a narrow platform. You’re thinking of suburban train stations that just quickly pass through, not a major urban station. Also, because it’s amtrak there’s a lot of luggage being carried which needs more space. Not to mention room for dedicated luggage service to move bags to baggage claim.
I personally pictured the Hoboken PATH station specifically. However on the opposite end of the scale I was very surprised at the lack of seating in the new WTC station
seating area where all you need to do is show your train ticket
This is still fucked
On the other side there’s a food hall with lots of public seating.
“GIVE YOUR MONEY!”
Just not where seating would obstruct movement on and off the train platforms.
All I see is huge open area. You can even put them right on platform.
Look at a station map or visit the station. When you have 2 or more trains boarding near simultaneously the queue to get down the the platform level is pretty long and snakes. There’s a difference between waiting for a train at a terminating station where you don’t know the the track assignment vs boarding a train at a non terminating stop or minor station where the is no grand hall. Moynihan has underground non open air platforms so you need to keep people waiting above in the hall since there’s not a lot of room at platform level.
This is the map:
See that area on the right called ticketed waiting room? That is where everyone with a train ticket can sit at a bench/chair or grab a table/desk to do some work. On the other side there is a food hall. As someone that travels out of that station regularly, I think the design totally makes sense based on the size, amount of foot traffic, and etc. If I need a place to sit before my train boards, I know where to sit.
The waiting area with seats:
These are the one way escalators that you don’t line with benches where people queue to get up. You don’t want people sitting and possibly blocking the escalators either.
The real crime here to complain about is that the Old Penn Station was destroyed to put in a MSG. We have a stadium at the expense of a well designed train station. Moynihan being built next door on a small footprint really was a breath of fresh air to a terrible train station. You don’t get situations like this in Moynihan: https://www.westsidespirit.com/binrepository/576x432/0c0/0d0/none/3502612/ODJP/penn1_4-3802539_20211210112648.jpg
Instead you get this queue for 1 train boarding on track 13/14. (it is worse if there’s multiple trains boarding simultaneously):
If there are multiple simultaneous boardings, I am not sure if they use space between escalators to snake the line instead of wrapping around all escalators (at times I do see some of those lane rope things in use to encourage people to no clog up the middle to foot traffic) That does not compare to a minor philadelphia suburb platform where you wait on the platform because the already full train isn’t going to stop for more than 2 minutes to pick up a few passengers. That would be a massive safety risk to allow this kind of seating on platform in NYC rail system with underground platforms. And this is not even considering how to move people off a train before moving the next group on the train. Also crew changes since NYC is a terminating station for a lot of lines.You can have folks queuing up and still have a lot of room for people to navigate through the main hall. Probably as a much a security and anti-terrorism feature as well as a design to not obstruct boarding or create bottle necks for emergency egress.
I don’t think you’ll find many new yorkers complaining about a lack of seating in Moynihan right on the main hall where all the foot traffic is. We like it when people get the fuck out of our way while we try to get from point A to B.
Edit: also I don’t think people understand the scale of NYC’s population and train rider ship. Moynihan ridership is 8 million annually. 2nd place is DC with 3.6 million. Moynihan is a amtrak only station so it’s built for luggage, but even then Moynihan is probably a smaller station than either DC or Philly, yet has over double the ridership. I don’t think folks appreciate how much traffic goes through a relatively small train station, but I think that factors into the design of NYC stations vs any other picture you have of spacious stations that have less than half the ridership in buildings of comparable size.
Edit 2: In this thread people that don’t understand the difference between Amtrak, regional commuter trains, or subways, or the difference between urban vs suburban stations, above ground vs underground stations, and the fact that NYC has over double the annual amtrak ridership than the 2nd and 3rd most used amtrak stations. Not to mention, NYC has tons of benches and public seating. Sections of broadway are closed down with chairs and tables out, bryant park isn’t too far away with tons of public seating. Not surprised that the small train station is designed to have seating options only for riders of the train.
Instead you get this queue for 1 train boarding on track 13/14. (it is worse if there’s multiple trains boarding simultaneously):
First of, are people waiting for boarding here or what? I see all of them are in standing pose. To board a train they need to be on platform where train is, not in the middle of hall.
Edit: also I don’t think people understand the scale of NYC’s population and train rider ship. Moynihan ridership is 8 million annually.
IT IS SO TINY! Even Kursk train station had 12 million of annual “far”(national+international) ridership in 2018. You can add 59 million annual ridership of regional trains on it. Or consider Yaroslavl train station annual ridership of of 6 and 72 millions respectively.
And while seating there sucks too, at least there is no requirement to have ticket.
Edit 2: In this thread people that don’t understand the difference between Amtrak, regional commuter trains, or subways
I presume Amtrak is how americans call (inter)narional trains.
Yes, they are standing to board. Because the NYC train station is under ground (tunnels are needed to get under the river, the platform is also under ground like a subway. The platform for the tracks are very narrow. So a train will come in, it will disembark all passengers and change crew. During this time above ground passengers get in line to present tickets. They then walk downstairs to the platform and board the train. But because the platform is underground and relatively small, it is not a comfortable or safe place to wait to board while guests disembark.
Platform for amtrak at Penn Station/Moynihan:
I think that is correct about consider Amtrak like an international train like SNCF in France to TGV. It’s passenger focused, but generally for longer trips with people carrying luggage. We also have regional/commuter trains for rides less than ~90 minutes meant to get people to work in the city.
For seating, it’s somewhat limited because of the size of the station, but it’s also right in the middle of new york city. If you are looking to sit for an extended period of time and the weather is nice, there’s public seating at bryant park or the squares or blocked off seats on broadway outside of times square. But NYC doesn’t have a ton of space, and the train station is designed to prioritize the train passengers.
During this time above ground passengers get in line to present tickets.
So my first guess was correct, presenting tickets is done before even entering the platform. I can see it on regional trains with turnstyles in front of platform, but for international trains it is unusual. Usually tickets are presented on platform right in front of train.
Platform for amtrak at Penn Station/Moynihan:
Interesting… Looks smaller than I expected.
30th St Station in Philly, and I’m sure many other train stations in the world, has a similar layout with stairs down to the tracks. And has benches along the railing. The benches don’t obstruct the movement of people going up or down the stairs, but start from the top of the stairs and sit along the unused space to the sides of the stairs. The line to show tickets forms to one side of the stairs so that while passengers leaving the train can go up the stairs on their right the passengers joing can go down on their right. If you are early to your train, you can sit right there in the front of the line on a comfortable bench, and the line can form behind you.
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The layout is different in philly. Train stairs are on the sides of the main hall, not in the center of it. The center of the main hall is clear of seats to allow traffic to come through. The design of moynihan puts the stairs to the tracks in the middle of the hall, not the sides of the hall. So the seating options are put near the side to allow more flow of traffic in the center of the hall. I’m also pretty sure this is also a result of modern anti-terrorism design to be easier for security as well. Seating exists for waiting. At Moynihan they don’t really announce what track your train will be on until like 5 or 10 minutes before boarding starts. So there’s not really a way to know where to wait for ‘your’ train even if benches were next to the tracks.
Also, 30th St Station in philly has less than half the annual amtrak ridership as Moynihan, but roughly the same size building.
Moynihan train station
Man, there’s an entire article about how there’s not enough seating there.
“not enough” is completely different than saying non existent. Moynihan is the most trafficked Amtrak station in the US with more ridership than DC and Philly combined. Yet the size of the station is comparable to the stations in DC and Philly. Thank you MSG for destroying the Old Penn Station.
I think the answer, as an engineer, is to sit and observe the station at busy times, take note of where people are sitting, and put some benches there.
But the post is really about the disappearance of benches from public spaces in the U.S. as a whole, with the intended effect of keeping the homeless population out of view. Instead of facing the root cause of the homeless epidemic, we’re merely brushing them aside, out of the way, where we can pretend they don’t exist. It’s really awful, and further traumatizes an already at-risk population by reinforcing the idea that they’re not wanted, don’t matter, and aren’t worth helping. They’re people, we should be doing more to help them. The benches aren’t really the issue.
Nice thing about NYC is that housing is a right based on the Callahan v. Carey ruling. Every person that asks for temporary shelter is supposed to have access to it. It’s not perfect, doesn’t have the funding or capacity to deal with the bussed in migrants, but it’s better than most cities/states. And it does more to address the issue directly than viewing benches as a crutch for the problem.
But re the engineer question, I think Moynihan probably had a lot of engineers. And safety, security, egress, congestion, etc were considered in the design which is why they put seating around the perimeter and not the center of the hall.
