I’m very surprised at this. I’ve been in the Helsinki metro area for half a year now, and HSL is by far the cleanest, quietest, most punctual and SAFEST public transit I have ever seen.
Even the occasional drunk / hobo are well behaved and I’ve never seen any harassment occur on the metro. Compare this to New-York, London, Berlin or Barcelona and HSL feels like a library on wheels.
What have you experienced?
https://yle.fi/a/74-20221184
Posted by Pretend_Income_5312
9 Comments
you can thank the iltapaska “news” for people being more and more scared of their fellow humans.
that’s legit all there is to it.
fuck the for-profit media!
There definitely are issues, especially at night time. Generally I’m not afraid to use public transport in HSL area, but there have been situations where I’ve felt threatened. Things have certainly gone worse from what it was 10-20 years ago. I’ve rarely used public transportation in the mentioned bigger cities. I’m sure there are more issues in those though.
I think public transport is still very chill but there are the occasional moments especially during weekend nights that feel a bit restless, and some of this restlessness seems to be spilling over to the daytime a little more, which might be a sign of the times.
It’s not about physical safety, some just don’t want to listen to idiots shouting and blasting some tiktok/YouTube nonsense or video calls from their phones.
Compared internationally, yeah its very safe. On the metro you mostly just run into the occasional drunk or village crazy.
Some of the stations and commute trains are a bit more dicey with the large groups of druggies and wannabe gangsters.
The worst I’ve come across is an overdose death, people fighting and me getting kicked and spat on by Russian crackheads.
As for women, its a whole different world. Almost everyone faces some form of harrasment as per usual.
I also really don’t get it.
Sometimes I find there’s quite a wide gulf between people’s perceived insecurity and actual insecurity. Helsinki has a lot of a Finns living here originating from other parts of the country, who I think are fundamentally uncomfortable living in cities.
Groups of 3-10 people that frequent the stations during nighttime just hanging around not waiting for transport. It’s perfectly sensible to see it as a threatening situation because it’s survival instinct.
I mean I dont feel scared when using public transportation but I do understand people feeling uneasy or scared. Only thing you really need to do is open your eyes there’s a lot of drug usage in the capital and the people can cause a lot of stress to fellow humans. This has increased year in year from how common it nowdays is. On top of this there’s a lot of groups usually acting weird.
Linnanmäki-sörnäinen with trams can be pure hell, loads of druggos, i have seen fights, needles being used in the tram, drunks and passed out junkies every week, people screaming about peukku and hallucinating, interestingly enough mostly very early in the mornings, but later in the afternoon as well. Definitely does not feel safe at all