There’s More to a CalTrain Conductor’s Job Than Citing Passengers
The train car stirs without fail each time the passengers hear a beep in the distance or a verbal “Tickets please!” informing them it’s time for the CalTrain conductor to verify they’ve all paid for their spot on the bustling, morning commuter train. Contrary to what most would expect, there’s a lot more to a conductor’s job than waking up sleeping passengers to ensure they have tickets or citing passengers who don’t.
Edward Steiner and Lee Guillory have been Bay Area CalTrain conductors for almost 20 years, with Guillory mentoring Steiner early on. They can be found working six days a week, typically on the morning trains. In addition to checking tickets, their job, like all conductors, also includes verifying the train’s mechanics are up to par before passengers even see the train roll in, walking through the train cars during the ride to check if anything is out of place, communicating stops and bicycle boarding etiquette, dealing with difficult riders, and making passengers feel comfortable when riding on CalTrain. There are at least two conductors per train, in addition to an engineer, who drives the train, and sometimes a rover who focuses on ticketing.
Car Checks
Before the commuters even see the train rolling into their stop, Steiner and Guillory take time to inspect the train in San Jose, which includes ensuring the train’s mechanics are working properly (e.g., doors are opening and closing and headlights are operating) and checking the temperature and cleanliness of the cars. Steiner has a shorter inspection time — he starts his briefing at 6:49 a.m. before the train rolls out of San Jose at 7:09 a.m. To Steiner, this train check ritual is a “dance” that he and his co-conductor, Tina, do each morning when they split duties. Steiner typically walks through the train cars, which hold the passengers, and Tina goes straight to the locomotive, the engine where the engineer drives the train, to go through the controls. “Learning the train troubleshooting end of [the job] — it’s experience,” says Steiner. Pointing at Guillory, he continues, “and I learned from the best, this man here.”
Steiner is able to diagnose and solve 90% of mechanical issues on his own; the other 10% of causes are sent to the mechanics team. To get to the point of solving mechanical issues on your own, “takes a lot of troubleshooting, technique, education, [and] hands on work,” says Guillory. “You’re not going to pick this up overnight. It takes some seasoning. It takes some explanation. It takes some reading on the individual’s part.”
Conductor Schedules
The number of trains a conductor rides is based on seniority and the schedule he or she has. Some conductors do two trains per day, one north, one south, and some do three. According to Steiner, a week doesn’t go by without being asked to work an extra day. And, sometimes, says Guillory, “When we have service disruptions, we could work more because when the fleet falls down or they have a breakdown or an incident [such as a pedestrian or car accident] … the whole thing goes to hell in a handbag so to speak.”
Boarding Communication
“Bicycles board first. Bicycles board first!” If you are a frequent CalTrain passenger, there’s a fairly good chance you’ve heard this chant from the conductors during each stop. According to Dan Lieberman, CalTrain’s Public Affairs Specialist, CalTrain conducted a pilot program to test bikes boarding first and found that by allowing bikes to board first, they were spending approximately a minute less dwell time at the station. It is important to allow bikes to board first because the vestibules are less crowded, bicyclists aren’t trying to navigate a heavy bike around passengers, and bicyclists can negotiate with other riders by moving their bike in front of or behind other riders’ bikes. If one bike car is full, the bicyclists have to board the other bike car or wait for another train. By not allowing bicyclists to board first, “you’re just jamming the whole system and delaying your own train,” says Lieberman. Trains on average have approximately two minutes of boarding time at each station, with slightly more time for the more crowded stops, which means everyone, including bicyclists, must board within a quick and orderly fashion.
Issuing Citations
Passengers must have a valid ticket before boarding the train or they will be subject to citation. No matter the excuse, conductors do not waver if someone does not have a valid ticket. “All of us try with our train to be consistent,” says Guillory. “When we don’t have consistency then it’s a breakdown in the system and you have people throwing that in your face.” The mobile app also makes it harder to have a good excuse for not having a ticket. However, since the Bay Area is a cultural melting pot, the conductors try to be empathetic toward visitors from other countries or to people who don’t speak English, and they try to educate them on the CalTrain system.
People will go at lengths to avoid receiving a ticket, even moving to a different train car when they hear the check is happening, including deboarding the train to badge in with their Clipper Card or buying a ticket on the CalTrain app the moment they hear there will be checks (again, all passengers must have a valid ticket before boarding a train and conductors can see the timestamp of when a ticket was purchased on the CalTrain app).
Steiner recalls just one incident when he chose to exercise leniency: At the Bayshore stop, a female passenger claimed that someone had urinated inside the ticket machine where the tickets are dispensed. When the passenger held up a wet paper and swore that it was a CalTrain ticket, Steiner said, “Drop the ticket, it’s O.K.!”
Disruptive Passengers
Whether it’s a stubborn passenger who doesn’t want to pay for a ticket or a troubled passenger on drugs, the conductors are prepared to handle each case.
Conductors constantly walk through the cars, looking for vandalism, broken toilets or dirty restrooms, needles, torn seats, and disruptive passengers. While it rarely happens, according to Lieberman, conductors may have to call the Transit Police to brief them on the situation and to assist in removing a dangerous, drugged ,or disruptive passenger from the train.
“We’ll make a quick stop, usually at a regular station stop that we’re supposed to stop at,” says Steiner. “Very rarely do I try to make an [unannounced stop]. That causes too much [of a] problem. Police come in, they come over and they can do something I can’t do. They can touch the person. I can’t touch anybody ya know. All I can do is ask.” At that point the Transit Police escort the passenger off the stop and the train rolls on.
“It’s not always people with mental issues that have those issues,” says Guillory. “You got regular professionals who refuse to pay their share to ride. They’ve been gaming the system for a while. They are working. They have a regular job. They wear a suit. They refuse to pay their share. They want to give you attitude. So, it’s a different mixed bag altogether.”
According to Guillory, the TransAmerica agency trains the conductors on customer service skills so they know how to communicate with people in difficult situations.
Conductor’s Attitude
According to Steiner and Guillory, there is not necessarily one train they prefer over the other. “I think it’s attitude, really,” says Steiner. “I’ve worked all the trains and yeah, at night [the passengers] all get drunk and there’s that vomit issue, but the thing is most of them are real happy and they just want to go home. … And the biggest challenge of that evening is making sure they wake up and get off. I don’t want to end up in San Jose with 8 people who want to get off in Mountain View.”
Says Guillory, “I look at it as how I come to work and what I want to do for my passengers. I want to get people from point A to point B. And no matter what’s going on out here — there are football games, soccer matches, concerts, parades, events all up and down this peninsula, every day, 365 days of the year — when I wake up in the morning I come with a happy face.”
Fast Facts About CalTrain
● Since CalTrain started in 1992, the number of passengers has tripled.
● By 2022, CalTrain is hoping to launch 19, seven-car train sets, which are being referred to as Electric Multiple Units (“EMUs”). There’s a chance some diesel cars will still be in use at launch but CalTrain plans to phase those out. Additionally, increasing to seven-car train sets from five- or six-car sets means CalTrain will be able to move more people per train.
● Ridership dips around January and February and picks up in the summer, which is considered busy season due to summer events, vacationers, conferences, bike riders, etc.
● CalTrain does not coordinate with other Bay Area public transportation schedules as they are different agencies. Therefore, a train will not wait for a bus to unload all of its passengers who want to board the train, even if the bus is just a minute late.
● The names on the locomotives are mostly municipalities, but one is named Jackie Speier because she was instrumental in raising funding for CalTrain.
● A morning baby bullet train typically arrives in San Francisco with 1,000 passengers.
● There are no cameras currently on board any trains (other than in the locomotive). However, there are discussions about equipping the new EMUs with cameras to get more accurate head counts of passengers boarding and de-boarding.
● The train cars did not have touch sensors on the doors until 2002. Thanks to touch sensors, if someone gets caught in a door today, it will automatically open.
● There is no Wi-Fi on the trains today. CalTrain plans to have it up and running in the next couple of years.
Edited by Ryan Morgan.
