Off Topic: Let people take their pictures.

Harassing your patrons or the public for taking photos or videos is dumb.

I was recently in Montreal, and when trying to take a photo of some new fare gates installed on the REM, a security guard came up and gave me trouble because something something “public safety”.

I’ll be honest — the number of times I have been told not to take pictures or videos in a public space is vanishingly small given I am a public transport YouTuber: it’s kind of my thing.

And of course I’m biased on this topic, but it was something I thought about long before I ever made videos, and I’m not even sure I am a major victim from this policy. I remember being in “transit fan” groups when I was in high school and seeing posts about how transit employees called the cops on children because they were taking photos of trains or buses when not trespassing or endangering anyone; I can only imagine how groups who are already disproportionately targeted by police would feel about this.

Acadie Station on the Montreal Metro.

I decided I wanted to write this piece because it’s so clearly a bad thing that still happens a lot. And in most cases, everyone involved besides seemingly the creator of the policy knows it’s bad. Telling people not to take photos of something they are seeing is at best weird and at worst can be threatening — for no good reason. There’s just exceedingly few reasons to bother someone!

Transit systems in general are pretty bad about allowing photo and video. Some places try to ban photography, which is obviously impossible to enforce; worse still, often there is no clear policy on this, and it’s left up to grumpy employees with nothing better to do than to bother harmless people passionate about the system. When I was in London recently with a friend who was taking some footage of a train station, an employee who took issue with this could not even bother to politely ask them to stop and instead got aggressive and yelled. I can imagine the excuses — “security”, maybe — but nobody with nefarious intent is going to conspicuously take photos or video in a place covered with CCTV cameras. I can also imagine someone claiming that taking a video of a TFL facility might “harm their brand” or something like that — but what harms it way more is harassing your customers.

And it isn’t just transit (although I do have a lot of experience with that). What’s often far worse is major private developments that straddle the line between public and private like mixed-use office complexes and malls. While visiting a major development in Toronto a year or so ago known as CIBC Square, during a visit to the very widely advertised park (which is actually a privately owned public space or “POPS”, but that’s something to discuss in a future post) built as part of the development over the tracks on the approach to Union station, I was harangued by a security guard who said I wasn’t allowed to take photos — which, to be clear, is insane when the promotional materials for your development advertise the park as an attractive amenity for the citizens of the city. News flash, people like taking pictures of attractive things... duh!

Now, obviously I am not angry at the security guards who are tasked with enforcing such ludicrous policies, and so consider the “reasons to allow photos” I’m about to share to be directed at… property management, and whomever handles this at transit agencies.

1. If a person is in or around your space — they may well be your customer! Would you want to make a customer angry… so that they don’t have photos of a public space that tons of people can easily see (and take photos of when security isn’t looking)? It’s also inviting conflict for no good reason. Imagine the public relations nightmare a situation like this escalating even a little bit could be.

2. Having security harass people taking photos seems like a terrible use of security resources. If all they are doing is babysitting the public, then you may not really need security.

3. Anyone with ill intent probably won’t be obviously walking around taking photos.

4. Not wanting photos taken might have been enforceable when cameras were big devices that most people were not carrying with them. In 2023 anyone sitting on their phone could be taking photos - and thats fine! It just highlights why spending energy on this is nonsensical.

5. If someone takes photos of your public thing and then does something bad elsewhere or is just a controversial figure, you are not on the hook. People can take pictures of things in public — there is no culpability on you!

6. And then most of all, pictures of your thing are good! Here are some reasons someone might take a picture at a transit station or big development.

   1. They are visiting and sharing their travels — in this case, the person taking the picture is reinforcing the idea of going to your property/using your service.

   2. They like the design! In this case, you are getting the benefit (attention and potentially tons of it on the internet) that you wanted when you got architects, artists and designers to create a nice thing!

   3. They are an advocate — maybe they are taking a picture of a subway station to advocate more subways, or of a mall to push for a redesign. At worst, you don’t have to associate with their cause since anyone can take an image in a public space, but at best (and this pertains to transit systems in particular) you are helping them help you!

   4. They are taking pictures of something that makes you look bad, an overflowing trash bin at a mall or something unsafe on a transit system. But this is still a positive for you! The public is gathering intel and telling you what things to fix! So often property managers at places like airports desperately want the public’s feedback and solicit it with things like buttons with different faces on them that patrons can use to provide that feedback. Someone posting a picture of something dirty or unsafe is taking most of the work of finding problems out of it for you! If you are a transit agency, a politician who sees a tweet saying how dirty their local subway station is will probably be a lot more open to, say, increasing funding for cleaning!

Now, I do want to highlight that some places are actually pretty good on this issue. Both the TTC and GO Transit have pretty clear policies letting people take pictures and video with reasonable restrictions like not disturbing employees, getting in the way of passengers, or using tripods which could hit things.

And I think these systems have benefitted from these policies. Online, you’ll see tons of pictures of the TTC subway on Wikipedia pages dedicated to explaining different parts of rapid transit system for example — that helps build the association between the TTC and the very idea of rapid transit, but also that Toronto is the kind of laid-back and welcoming place that doesn’t get up in arms when someone takes a picture of a train. I have to credit the TTC and GO to an extent for making my videos and blog better, because for all their faults they don’t waste time telling me not to take them. I can only imagine this is amazing for their brand awareness, and also helps with public awareness about the challenges these systems face.