This is the subway equivalent of blaming a woman for getting raped because she wore “provocative” clothing. According to VICE and The Toronto Star, a young woman named Shamsa Al-Balishi was waiting for the subway at the Yonge-Bloor stop in Toronto when she was pushed onto the tracks by another woman, identified as 45-year-old Edith Frayne.
As you can see in the video below (50 seconds in), as the train approached the station, Al-Balishi was standing safely behind the yellow line. Then, as the train approaches, Frayne clearly shoves Al-Balishi onto the tracks (the women didn’t know each other). Fortunately, Al-Balishi rolled to the side of the tracks, so she wasn’t killed. She was, however, injured (from VICE):
According to court documents, Al-Balushi fell several feet off the platform and onto the tracks, before she rolled over until she wasn’t on the tracks themselves. She screamed, as did onlookers, while they could hear the subway travelling in the distance, the documents say, and the train slowly pulled into the station and Al-Balushi was stuck beside the train as it rolled in. According to the documents, she had to wait 30 minutes before she received help.
Al-Balushi suffered multiple injuries from the incident, including a broken rib, neck and back pain, bruising and contusions throughout her body, and trauma, anxiety, and depression. She’s currently unable to work.
Here’s a news report.
Frayne was arrested for attempted murder. Al-Balishi, however, is suing the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) for $1 million for multiple cases of negligence, “including the failure to implement adequate safety measures, respond to the emergency promptly, stop the subway train from driving onto the platform, and give emergency services access to the tracks to save her.”
Now I don’t know if Al-Balishi has a case here. You can’t stop a subway train on a dime, very few subways have any barriers beyond the yellow line, and I’m not sure what “emergency services access” means. And surely the TTC has a right to defend itself, as it did against some of the charges above.
Unfortunately, it chose another way to defend itself, involving, shall we say, “bad optics”:
In its statement of defence, the TTC maintains that Al-Balushi is herself responsible, at least in part, in addition to the assailant.
According to the TTC’s statement, Al-Balushi “failed to take reasonable steps and precautions for her own safety and protection.” The statement says “she chose to stand close to the edge of the platform,” “failed to pay due care and attention to her surroundings,” and “was travelling alone and unassisted on public transit when she knew or ought to have known that it was unsafe for her to do so.”
WHAT? Traveling alone and unassisted? A young vigorous woman should know that that was “unsafe”? At 9 p.m., when the accident occurred? Is the TTC suggesting that, as in some Muslim countries, women can go out only when accompanied by a male relative?
The Star adds this:
In its defence, the TTC says Al-Balushi failed to take reasonable steps and precautions for her own safety, including by standing on the yellow tiles at the edge of the platform and failing to pay attention to her surroundings.
Here’s a screenshot; Al-Balushi is clearly not standing on the yellow tiles the attack begins, but is shoved onto the yellow area and then down onto the tracks.
If I were a Canadian judge or jury, I’d have to go by Canadian law, but I have to say that blaming the victim for traveling alone and not taking proper precautions would anger me. Is there a way to get damages simply because the prosecution makes stupid statements? I don’t think so.
For some reason this bothered me more than the usual blame-the-victim scenario because of its arrant stupidity and, indeed, lies, so I tweeted at the TTC (below). I doubt I’ll get a reply. If you want to, the handle for TTC customer service is @TTChelps.
h/t: Ginger K.
There is the safety issue. I was surprised when I rode the subway in Singapore after riding trains in Japan. There is a glass wall at the edge of the platform with doors that open when the train arrives. We could use an upgrade in safety regulations. GROG
Absolutely. I have seen the glass wall in the Dubai Metro, a few lines of the Paris Metro, and several airport light rail systems.
Obviously, nothing excuses the ‘blame the victim’ mentality.
Japan did not have platform barriers when I lived there many years back (even on the Shinkansen platforms – but non-stopping trains, going through the station at 150 or so miles per hour, did not use the platform line but a line away from the platform); but over time there has been a steady increase in them on both train and subway station platforms. Generally waist high or so; and a good idea because the platforms pre-COVID used to get very crowded, though I never heard of someone being accidentally (or deliberately, for that matter) pushed to the tracks.
There’s some fun YouTube videos showing trains going through a station at high speed. Some have protective barriers, some don’t: https://youtu.be/UJU5tYnj-9s
That sort of system requires a degree of control of train braking and positioning which is relatively easy to incorporate on new-build railways, and has been since some time in the late 70s or early 80s. Retro-fitting to an existing railway system (of platforms, tracks, signalling equipment and sensors, control of the rolling stock) … a lot less easy. And you’d probably need to shut down line segments and stations for at least several months while installing and commissioning the equipment – which would get messily political.
I don’t get what you mean. Trains are always going to take significant time to slow down and stop and even if there were some new way to stop on a dime all the passengers would hurtle forward and then sue for countless more injuries. And how do you propose changing the position of the train? It seems to me that there is limited room in subways and boring extra tunnels to be able to divert a train would be prohibitive and even then diverting at speed would also be difficult.
But maybe I don’t understand what you mean.
Jesus, that sounds like some insurance-defense lawyer boilerplate bullshit. Whoever signed off on this for the Toronto Transportation Commission (assuming someone did) should be canned. And the TTC should insist on a better-quality defense team.
Yes, that was my thought too. Some TTC lawyer thought the way to deal with such a lawsuit is to push back in order to make the victim think that their lawsuit will be too costly and not succeed. Seems more likely to turn a perhaps frivolous lawsuit into a sure thing for the lady and with big penalties for TTC.
I’ve got two words of advice for the TTC: Oberlin College.
Plus, I’ll throw in another two on the arm: Bad Faith.
Or they didn’t even get a lawyer to wrote that and somebody just thought that was a good defence and it got past communications/pr people. It sounds so bizarre but I hear it more than once that you shouldn’t be alone if you are a woman. I heard it after a woman was sexually assaulted while kayaking in Georgia. So can women never do anything solo ever?!
I wonder if the answer would have been the same if they pushed a small elderly man onto the tracks. Have never heard a more victim-blaming statement in 40 years of teaching women’s self-defense. And this was even a woman POC!
From my 80 year old dad’s experience, yes.
You really couldn’t make it up. The victim was clearly standing outside the yellow zone before she was attacked. IADNAL, but the TTC’s victim-blaming defence is unconscionable regardless of the merits of Ms Al-Balishi’s legal case.
She should argue that if they feel she was standing too close that they are negligent for not putting the yellow line further back.
Divergent view:
Why is she unable to work? I can see she was terrified but instead of being grateful to be alive and in possession of all body parts she wants money. The assailant is a deadbeat with mental-health issues. No deep pockets there. The longer this case drags on, the less likely she is to go back to work again. A quick disposition of the case painting her as a gold-digger, even if unfair, will ultimately be in her best interests, which is to get on with her life.
The TTC and its insurance company have to defend vigorously and adversarially if she is trying to shake them down for a pension for life over an incident that is clearly not its fault. The optics don’t matter because the readership of the Toronto Star, a paper notorious for sob stories, doesn’t try personal injury cases. Most of these are settled but if decided at trial would be argued before a judge only. Juries for civil suits are rare in Canada. Statements of claim and defence are public Court filings whose only intended audience is the lawyer for the other side (and the judge in the unlikely event the case goes to trial.). What the public, including the Twitter-sphere, thinks of the TTC’s arguments is irrelevant. What the plaintiff’s lawyer thinks, in terms of getting her client to settle, is what counts. Contributing to her own misfortune is one of a long list of points always made in a Statement of Defence, just in case something comes out during Examination for Discovery that actually supports it.
Fortunately because of they way these cases are decided, Jerry’s tweet will not increase the likelihood of a huge settlement that would raise subway fares and degrade services for long-suffering Toronto commuters.
I actually do watch my surroundings in the subway, especially when a train is coming in. You see more people now standing with their backs against walls so no one can get behind them. There are crazy people out there. If the platforms are packed, you just have to hope there isn’t one behind you.
I think she will make good money in a settlement through the insurance company. These are considered dance cases and she won’t be a millionaire but she will be given shut up money. As you suggest, it isn’t easy to sue for cases like this as negligence has to be proven and from what I see all reasonable safety was in place.
But money for what? Even if the TTC accepts her claim that it was causally negligent in some way, (which I don’t see why it would), and their argument of contributory negligence on her part fails (or is just never mentioned again), what are the damages? She has an intact brain and all four limbs. Canadian Courts don’t make awards for pain and suffering or psychological trauma, and only rarely for punitive damages. Restoring the victim to wholeness to the extent that money can do so is the principle. But fault still has to be accepted or proven. If she holds out for more than token shut-up money—“We feel your pain and are sorry this happened to you on our premises”—her lawyer will have to tell her she won’t get enough more at trial to justify the litigation costs….and would more likely lose outright and get nothing. She might even have the TTC’s costs awarded against her, although this is unusual in Canada.
I’m not a lawyer but I have done criminal and civil medical-legal work as a witness.
This is an adversarial business adventure. It’s all about money, nothing else. Being outraged at anything made in a Statement of Defence is just nonsense. Fortunately in Canada it’s harmless nonsense.
” Canadian Courts don’t make awards for pain and suffering or psychological trauma”
Incorrect. Personal injury is not my field, but I have seen enough awards for psychological damages to know they are not uncommon.
Not my field, either. But I think in most US jurisdictions, to recover for “emotional distress,” one also has to have suffered a physical injury, too. (Ms. Al-Balushi’s cracked rib would suffice, I think.) And some US jurisdictions put a monetary cap such damages.
I practice in Canada, where Toronto is located.
Specifically to your comment, I do believe PI here has caps too, but I am not sure about any statutory prerequisites.
A close friend’s wife was admitted to a hospital and died within a few days, before he could even get down to see her. It wasn’t deemed anything serious, but I was with him when he got a call saying that she had died. (And from what I understand the hospital did make serious mistakes.) And as a mild-mild-mannered and forgiving person, he did understand. But it was lack of apology, even casual indifference to her death which made him consider suing them.
Would he have won a lawsuit against the hospital? I have no idea. But the last thing on his mind was money.
It’s called a nuisance claim. The insurance pays it out. It happens all the time in the insurance industry.
My wife did commercial insurance. It is not in the companies’ interests to pay out nuisance claims if there really is no merit and they can show the plaintiff that they can prove it. Municipalities particularly are being proactive with road and sidewalk maintenance so that “Pick up your feet” becomes an effective cost-less response to claims that someone tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and is now crippled for life. Scamming encourages more scamming and costs the property taxpayers more than they think it does. (Even landless peasants pay the landlord’s tax in their rent.) You don’t need to give everyone $5000 to go away if you can convince his lawyer he’ll get nothing.
These are business decisions about when to pay and when to fight but municipalities and insurers work together to minimize the steady drip of tax money that goes to nuisance personal injury suits. A company that’s not a soft touch can offer lower premiums to clients who do good risk management.
Sure but the tactic isn’t to get a lawyer at all if you are complaining. It’s to get the press (she has it in the Star) to embarrass a company and public entities are especially fearful of bad press then to threaten a lawsuit only to get the money to stop you from pursing it further. A friend of mine was in a three car chain accident once. The person in the front tried to sue everyone behind. The lawsuit was dismissed after putting my friend through terror but the guy got some sort of pay out. He had a ridiculous claim such as “it put my wife into premature menopause” and it was a small tap to the car. I don’t know what will happen here but I bet we never hear of it again.
Speaking as one who spent his childhood riding the subway system of NYC, I am a little alarmed by this news bulletin: ” You see more people now standing with their backs against walls so no one can get behind them. There are crazy people out there.” If that is the situation today, then one needs to be on constant alert for crazy people when walking down the street, or just leaving one’s house. [Maybe it might be safer to stay inside and never leave the house.] If there is an increasing prevalence of crazies like Judith Frayne—and I accept that this is likely—then one would like to know WHY. James Howard Kunstler would diagnose a general nervous breakdown, attendant on the beginning of the Long Emergency: milder symptoms in Toronto, with more extreme urban chaos and mass shootings further south.
I certainly think about it on a crowded subway platform. It doesn’t have to be a nut case. It could be a fight where someone pushes someone else and you are the victim of a carom. Or just the swell of the crowd. Best to wait well back until the front of the train is past where you’re standing. In general, there’s plenty of time to walk the 10 feet to the door before it closes.
You are correct. Anyone on the legal beat should stick to reporting on cases that are ongoing trial; quoting pleadings at verbatim is a lazy and cheap way of scoring social media likes, since they are poor representations of what would be the parties’ ultimate positions.
No surprise that this is coming from the Star.
I dunno… betting somewhere along the line she didn’t like how she was treated. During the rescue and the f*ck you statement. Here in the states, I believe most people sue because they feel officials ignored or dismissed them, when what victims (or their families) were looking for was a genuine apology.
I think the TTC could defend this case based purely on its own lack of negligence. The victim-blaming is gratuitous, and may backfire (or at least that’s my impression from across the Great Lakes).
I would like TTC to explain more about how their system is unsafe for passengers traveling alone. What is the optimal group size for safe travel on their system? Perhaps they could create an app to enable would-be passengers to meet up with others for the protection of numbers? Maybe they should only sell tickets to groups? This is a startling and asinine position for them to take.
Agreed, this defence argument does seem odd, even as boilerplate. I thought I’d said enough but …
Just guessing from her name, though, perhaps the defence has an imam or two lined up who will testify that by the standards of her community she absolutely ought not have been out and about without escort by male relatives. To mock that argument would get you accused of Islamophobia, or apostasy if she rebuts it herself. One hopes that an argument that sounds like sharia law wouldn’t get very far, but it would be interesting if the lead lawyers on each side were both observant Muslims, likewise the judge (if it ever got before one), how they would talk around this point in secular Canada. We are quick to assume that avowedly Catholic judges will rule only one way in abortion cases, after all.
Our most recently appointed Supreme Court Justice is a self-avowed practising Muslim who has argued that a diversity (our strength!) of legal traditions should be respected in Canadian jurisprudence, not just the English criminal law and the Civil Code (for Quebec) specified in our Constitution.
It is not appropriate to make moral judgments based on pleadings alone. To be fair, statements of defence are filed pre-disclosure, so umbrella boiler plate defences are common. If it isn’t pled, then it cannot be argued if later something comes up during discovery.
However, that is not to say that I am on TTC’s side. in my opinion, this woman has a good case for negligence.
Toronto, and frankly most Canadian municipalities, are guilty of turning public transit systems into defacto homeless shelters at the expense of passenger safety. Increases in crime, social disorder, and drug use are palpable, and are frequently the topic of city council criticism. In fact, not too long ago in my own city, an innocent victim had his throat slashed from behind by a stranger known to police while riding a city train.
A good point, and it applies to mass transit systems everywhere in North America—including very recent ones, like Seattle’s new light rail. However, the social disorder is not exactly due to the use of the systems by the homeless population per se. It is more exactly due to the drug-addled sub-population, which overlaps with the homeless group. I am curious whether the Toronto perpetrator Ms. Frayne belongs to the drug-addled category.
“the social disorder is not exactly due to the use of the systems by the homeless population per se”
Generally speaking, of course. Wherever homeless go, social disorder and crime follow.
In my city, and within John Tory’s self-described utopian jurisdiction (I follow Toronto news daily):
– As the number of commuters dropped, homeless groups filled the vacuum
– Public transit systems became havens for encampments and drug-dealing, the latter of which propelled by street-level runners who are addicts themselves (hundreds of arrests this year alone along our train line, now that the city needs to show they are doing something about passenger safety)
– The cities have ignored warnings of rising crime and disorder since 2020. In fact, councilors repeatedly capitulated to activist groups that demanded the closures of train stations and the prolonging of heat stations and shelters so that homeless may have places to sleep and loiter during the day, notwithstanding that shelters were available
Toronto in particularly had unique issues with encampments in the downtown core, and council over there has been notorious for refusing to take action with respect to their disbandment. They cannot get away with saying they were not aware of the risks.
I hope TTC ends up paying a huge award for their neglect, because the warnings will ripple to other jurisdictions with similar blase, sanctimonious, and indifferent attitudes regarding citizen safety, including my own.
You make a good point, James, one I hadn’t considered. Many transit systems have seen a rise in what is euphemistically called non-destinational travel: homeless people living in the vehicles and stations and the associated drug use and chaos, not to mention crowding with ungovernable people. Access to the subway directly from the street is controlled by fare turnstiles but the TTC has pretty much abandoned attempts to collect fares on busses as a way to reduce assaults on its drivers. Once on a bus, most routes outside the core give turnstile-free access to the subway platforms to do whatever, whether it’s a free trip to work or a warm place to shit (in Earl Butz’s memorable phrase.). Fares go up to compensate for fare evasion until those who pay feel like fools.
Unfortunately liberals seem unable to confront this. Someone last winter tweeted a photo of a Toronto subway car loaded with bums, captioned, “Evidence of Toronto’s abject failure to develop a humane housing policy for the vulnerable.” or words to that effect.
We don’t know if this particular assault had anything to do with homelessness. The TTC claims the two women knew each other. It could be argued that anyone who would push someone into the path of a train had no business using public transit in any case. A close look at how this person got into the system is in order. If the lawsuit motivates the TTC and the city to prevent themselves becoming San Fransicko North it will be a good thing.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/safety-drug-overdoses-ctrain-1.6483690
It frustrates me how they keep bleating about more clinics more housing more addiction counseling while ignoring the fact that citizens are genuinely and rightfully afraid of using public transit services. We have been capitulating for years — spending sky-rocketing amounts per capita on social issues — yet we are getting nowhere. Safety is a number one and immediate priority, but somehow our idiot officials have lost sight of that.
Jesus what a psychopath that Edith must be. As for motive, I initially assumed racism. However Toronto is so multicultural that this person would be pushing people left and right if it was just that. Maybe she was off some medication that day?
As for the victim, the interview in the clips gave me a really likeable impression and that she took the incident in impressive stride. Unlike #4 I don’t begrudge her the lawsuit against the TTC, even if it plausibly could have been pushed on her by an ambulance-chasing lawyer. It must have been a very traumatic experience, especially being stuck injured near the rails for half an hour afterwards (if I interpret the descriptions of the event correctly). And while surely one reason to go after the TTC is money, it makes sense to seek a sufficiently motivating punishment against the agency that would have the power to implement countermeasures to attacks like this.
I can’t see any viable countermeasures except putting up a glass wall with doors in it that open when the subway comes. (But what do I know about subways?)
Never touch the third rail is all I know, but for all I know that saying is strictly metaphorical these days (though I think I’ll let someone else run the experiment that tests the rule).
Never touch the third rail… unless you know what you are doing.
I think that would be a decent start. Another thing that came to my mind was to have security guards patrolling platforms (if they don’t have that already? I’ve never taken a subway in Toronto). In my experience people tend to behave differently under what appear to be vigilant eyes.
Besides, I think if an organisation like the TTC realised that it was strongly in their interest to reduce the incidence of such attacks, I’m sure they would be able to come up with additional viable options. Hence my opinion that it wouldn’t go amiss to provide some appropriate motivation.
Far cheaper to pay off the occasional pushing victim than to put barriers with motorized door-gates at every station. This has been discussed over the years. The principal operating problem is indexing the train doors with the gaps or doors in the barriers. Legacy subways are driven manually by a motorman who has only to stop the train before it reaches the far end of the platform and with the last car clear of the tunnel. A metre or two either way—a heavy rush-hour train takes a firmer touch with the brake than late at night—doesn’t matter on an open platform but would totally block boarding and egress through a barrier. Backing up is dangerous because they can’t see. And the doors would be one more thing to break down by malfunction or vandalism, causing service chaos. Some stations are exposed to icing.
Light, purpose-built, driverless airport trains and the like can be designed at great expense from the get-go to index automatically. There the cost is defrayed by eliminating the unionized motorman and through lucrative landing and retail concession fees. Municipal transit authorities can only dream.
My guess it was simply a lady with a grudge against the world. She saw an opportunity to “teach it a lesson” and took it. Only a hunch. If she had had an AR-15, many would likely have died.
When I ride the subway, I avoid staring at the rails before the car arrives, given that I’ve been prone to occasional bouts of l’appel du vide since first laying eyes on Niagara Falls as a kid.
I’d never heard that phrase before. So what happened at Niagara Falls? Did you dive right in? It is one thing to stare into the void — I suspect we’ve all done that — but another to want to join it.
It’s more of a momentary urge to take the leap and try your luck. From what I’ve read, it’s a fairly common phenomenon and has nothing to do with suicidal ideation.
I sometime experience a similar urge in the cardrooms of casinos when passing by the table where WSoP champs are playing no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em, but have thus far been able to resist that urge, too. 🙂
Yes, I’ve experienced it. I have a fear of heights and, when exposed to them, my fear is that I will have some random urge to jump. It’s an acknowledgement that we aren’t always in control of ourselves and we’re in a situation where there is no turning back.
Bingo.
Ahh, yes. when hitching to my mother’s funeral in 1979, I managed to get a lift with a pilot, who happened to be flying guests to my hometown area and gave me a lift in his 4-seater Cessna. While in the small plane—my first time—I was so terrified I really wanted to jump…well, I had the urge to get away…”fight or flight” even in this situation.
Yes, something similar happened to me. I had a business partner attempt to fly us in his small plane from Denver to Santa Fe. It was a somewhat stormy day and we had to go over some mountains to get there. It was a very bumpy ride and we ended up turning back. I’m not sure whether the pilot was worried about making it or he did it on my account. I was just glad to be back on the ground. We took a commercial flight instead. Later he told me of an incident involving his wife and son where they were unable to lower the landing gear. Turned out that he had dropped a screwdriver into the mechanism during an earlier maintenance task. A bullet dodged, I say.
I developed a pretty bad fear of heights in my adulthood. It seemed to be exacerbated by family skiing trips (I’m not much of a skier). The chair lifts. They got progressively more terrifying for me over time.
Yes it’s a mental issue…to a degree. So for instance when we got stuck, the chair lift being stopped for quite a while, over a high drop I became more and more terrified almost to the feeling of fainting. Just thinking logically one could ask “So you are afraid of slipping off the chair? Think about it: how often have you actually just randomly slipped off a chair or sofa you are sitting on. Doesn’t really happen, right? No more reason to think it’s going to happen now.”
EXCEPT…my terrified brain interjects…I have a fear of heights that doesn’t just disappear in the face of reasoning like that, hence I’m left actually dangling high in the air on a rickety chair feeling like fainting! I don’t normally have to contend with feeling like I’m losing it while just sitting on a chair on the ground. So the consequences of this fear of heights feel quite different.
Yes, those ski lifts were difficult for me as well. More than once I’ve gotten stuck on them for perhaps 20 minutes, once at its highest point. Seemed like forever and stuck with me for the rest of the day.
Last night I rewatched “Margin Call” about traders who try to get ahead of the earliest days of the 2008 financial crisis. Three characters on a rooftop approach the ledge; one climbs up on the rail and the others freak out; the guy on the ledge says, “You know the feeling people experience when they stand on the edge like this isn’t the fear of falling, it’s the fear that they might jump.”
I watched that film again recently, too, Mike. Matter of fact, it was that scene that made me recall the phenomenon and that there was a French term for it.
Helluva cast, huh?
Yeah I’d forgotten how watchable it was. Worth staying up late for.
Gosh, you’re right, Ken. If you stand on the viewing walkway right above the brink of Horseshoe Falls, you see this seemingly solid green slab of water at least six feet thick, more if the penstock gates up river are closed, curving so seductively over the edge it almost beckons you over and in.
I thought it was just me.
When I was a kid and first saw The Falls, I thought it was just me, too, Leslie. but about a decade later, a guy I was working with volunteered that he had had the same feelings, and I realized it might be more widespread.
It wasn’t until many years later that I came across the term l’appel du vide and learned just how widespread the phenomenon is and the wide variety of “voids” it applies to.
Meanwhile, in Missouri:
The Missouri Court of Appeals is siding with a woman who won a $5.2 million award against GEICO, in a case that centers on a unique auto injury claim: the woman says she contracted a sexually transmitted disease in a Hyundai sedan whose owner was insured by GEICO.
I don’t think the auto insurance was involved, though. The guy had an umbrella policy too, so she’s suing to get the money from that policy.
I think some of the responsibility lies with the train drivers. They should not enter the subway station if they see some commotion. In NY I once saw how a train driver stopped abruptly before entering the subway station, and blew the horn a few times. This was because an about two-year old child was standing by itself on the platform. The train driver only entered the station after someone took the child by the hand.
I haven’t been on the TTC in a few years but even without wandering crazies, the platforms at the Yonge/Bloor station (especially the north/south platforms, which it looks like where this happened) are scary – they were built at a time when the passenger load was much smaller and haven’t kept up with demand. During rush hour the platforms get very crowded. They either need to expand the platforms further or put in some sort of gate system like I’ve seen in other cities.