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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Crime happens, it was not invented by the light rail system.  Anywhere there are people there is crime.  That is why we hire policemen.  We keep enforcement in perspective by supervising those policemen with a court system.  Anything that weakens that court system is dangerous. My claim that people prefer the illusion of safety to actual freedom is evident all around you.  People support the bizarre treatment of citizens by TSA because it makes them feel safe, even though TSA has never caught a terrorist.  They have, however, arrested numerous citizens who had the audacity to be offended by their tactics, and they make a substantial amount of money auctioning off all the property they have seized from those citizens. Congress has passed the USAPatriot Act which negates the need for many search and wiretap warrants and Americans support it.  Our government tortures military and CIA prisoners, and Americans support it.  Congress in the last couple of days, attached to the defense funding bill, a section that allows the President to detain people, even citizens arrested in the US, for years without trial if he suspects them of terrorism.  President Obama says he is going to sign it.  People think it's a good idea because it makes them feel safer. I stand by my statement that Americans prefer the illusion of safety to actual freedom. An unconstrained government is more dangerous that any terrorist or any criminal. [/quote] Balancing personal freedom with the need for personal security is a challenge.  To hear you tell it, however, people wanting to be safe from crime are wimps.  What are you saying?  That the TSA should be abolished, and we should go back to the day when anyone could roam around an airport or board an airplane without any meaningful security? Yesterday, I flew from Baltimore to Austin via Little Rock and Dallas.  I passed through security in less than two minutes.  The same was true when I flew from Austin to Baltimore via Orlando. I don't know anyone who likes the airport screening procedures.  But they dislike even more the prospect of being hijacked or worse. Moreover, no one was complaining about the procedure.  Most of the reasonable people that I know accept it as the world that we live in. As is frequently the case, you missed the main point of my posting.  The light rail system in Dallas is a magnet for crime as reported by the Dallas Morning News.  That is not to say that crime does not happen elsewhere or that transit creates crime.  But it is easy pickings for the bad guys and a few bad gals.  If you think I am kidding, take a ride on DART during the late evening hours.  Notice who rides the trains and, moreover, who hangs around the transit stops, especially those in relatively remote locations. Crime rates in the United States, especially those for violent crime, have declined dramatically.  For example, in Texas, the murder rate has dropped from more than 3,000 in 1995 to 1,249 in 2010.  But many if not most people in this area believe transit is afflicted with high crime rates.  And that is one of the reasons they stay away from it. Less than three per cent of the people in the Austin area ride public transit.  And of those who do, approximately 40 per cent don't have an alternative.  They are poor.  As long as people believe that riding public transit is not safe, they won't use it.
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