Re the article ‘‘Bad behaviour blitz on trains’’ (Leader, February 15).
Good to note that the police are trying to sort the grubs out, but there is clearly not enough resources!
I have been travelling on Sydney trains daily for almost 40 years.
Due to the massive increase in construction and demolition going on, there are vastly more workers putting their cement covered boots on seats, wearing the same filthy dust covered construction clothes all week, and tool boxes covered in filth.
It would be very unusual for a train trip where I did not see at least one grub in my carriage breaking the law.
I think its fair to say that almost every carriage on every trip during tradies hours (i.e. early mornings and in the early afternoon) contain people behaving in this manner.
There are also a large number of aggressive people who will occupy more than one seat by sleeping across them or spreading out with their tool packs.
May I suggest the police start to patrol the trains during tradies hours, and not so much during office hours. I can walk through a train at 6.30am and see at least 50 individuals behaving in this manner.
Add this to the hundreds of trains across the network, and you will catch thousands of these people in one episode. It’s not rocket science, it just needs the will to actually do something instead of procrastinating and the provision of resources.
The train guards are now instructed not to intervene. Unfortunately, gone are the good old days when the guard or police could haul the anti-social types off the train.
This means that no one is responsible for doing anything about this problem, so it only continues to get worse. If the government is serious about getting cars off the street and encouraging public transport use, they need to get back to basics and apply a zero tolerance approach to bad behaviour.
name supplied, Como
Can we have a bad behaviour blitz on everything ... cigar butts out of windows, on footpaths, trolleys, garbage in general, loitering, foul language.
We don’t appear to have street manners and police don’t seem to bother to much with minor stuff.
Max Murray, Hurstville
