If you don't get it you don't get it

If you don't get it you don't get it
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. It will likely take years to recover from the post 9/11 removal of trash cans from Washington DC subway stations, especially from the platform.

The cans are just now being replaced with bomb resistant cans.

Before, the subway system was quite clean, and this is still remarked upon by people not from the area. But the difference these days is dramatic.

Without trash cans around, people tossed their newspapers and food trash in the subway cars and littered station platforms instead and they continue to do so.

I don't know whether or not WMATA, after the removal of the trash cans, added maintenance workers to work to keep the cars (and the station platforms) clean. I suspect that they did not.

Given what other jurisdictions have spent Homeland Security money on, maybe that could have been a source of funds...

This is but one of many examples of the workings of the "Broken Windows" public safety theorem.

People see trash and figure the space is uncared for and feel no strictures against tossing their own trash.

And litter begats more trash.