To solve light rail crime, start with agents on every train

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If you’re appalled by the shooting death of a Green Line passenger on the night of Nov. 29, you should be. The apparent murder of 33-year-old Sharif Darryl Walker-El, Jr., as the train approached the Hamline Avenue Station in St. Paul was the first fatal shooting onboard a light-rail vehicle in Metro Transit history.

The tragedy came eight days after another Green Line rider was shot in the leg aboard a train at the Western Avenue stop. Her injuries were described as non-life-threatening.

Other shootings and even killings have occurred off the trains, at stations or facilities. All are tragic; no violence is acceptable anywhere on the system.

But Walker-El’s killing comes less than six months after an announcement that the number of safety ambassadors, or TRIP agents, riding Blue and Green Line trains would be doubled.

Yet they aren’t on every train. Metro Transit officials declined to answer specifically if there was one aboard the train Walker-El was riding, saying only that “police responded to a reported shooting onboard a westbound Green Line train approaching the Hamline Avenue Station,” and subsequently arrived to find him shot. They released few other details, other than there was a lone suspect, citing an “ongoing investigation.”

(Though a comparison may not be entirely fair, it’s worth noting the lack of a description of the transit gunman vs. New York authorities’ bombardment of the media with any scintilla of information about the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer.)

We’ll leave the discussion of the value of two human lives for another day. Right now, the question for Twin Cities transit users is: Will anyone of authority be on your train if something happens?

In transit agencies around the country, there used to be. For decades, conductors were a mainstay of public transit. They opened doors, announced stops, sometimes collected fares and most importantly enforced a code of conduct. The same is true today on the Northstar commuter rail, as well as on Amtrak — carry-overs from the age of rail travel where, for better or worse, conductors in some states had police powers.

With the advent of automatic stop announcements and reassigning door-opening to motorpersons, cities like Boston and Chicago got rid of their conductors. That meant a huge savings in salaries, but at the cost of safety. One analysis shows crime on Chicago’s system has doubled since conductors were dismissed in 2000.

I experienced a possible result of Chicago’s lack of attention to what’s going on in the cars earlier this year. Entering the middle of a six-car L train, I found myself in a mobile homeless encampment. I immediately switched cars at the next stop.

Back in St. Paul not long after, a group of teens accosted me on the Green Line, asking uncomfortable questions. Again, no one of authority was within sight and I got off at the first opportunity before anything escalated.

I swore off the system after that, but gave it another chance when the added TRIP agents, who are unarmed and carry radios for assistance, were announced. “They serve as additional eyes and ears that allow us to respond more quickly to incidents,” Metro Transit General Manager Lesley Kandaras told me. “Hopefully, [they’re] leading to people feeling more comfortable when riding.”

Maybe, but not if they’re riding three trains behind you. An agency statement says there are “close to 60 TRIP agents working on the Green and Blue lines every day from 5 a.m. to midnight.” The agency is requesting 40 more Wednesday night at a budget meeting of the Metropolitan Council, its parent body.

That would bring the number to 100, which should be enough for every train. There are about 162 Green Line trips daily and 172 on the Blue Line. Rounding each trip off to an hour totals 2,338 per week, or 23.4 hours per agent, easily covering lunches, time off and vacations.

Yet Kandaras still isn’t promising they’d be on every train. “We agree that getting more people out there is a key part of how we prevent incidents and increase the sense of safety,” she said, “but in terms of how we specifically deploy TRIP agents, there are parameters.”

One of those, she said, is a state law that requires the agents travel in pairs, which would push my back-of-the-envelope calculation above to more than 40 hours per employee. But that’s still no excuse. The paired agents could be deployed to ride half or three-quarters of every run, keeping their hours manageable. No matter where a passenger gets on, the trains wouldn’t go far before the agents board to ask for their fare slips, finally meaning the end of fare evasion.

Most importantly, it would set the standard that, once and for all, someone of authority will be there.

Will it cost more money? Yes, though if executed smartly, efficiencies would keep costs down.

But even if it isn’t cheap, it’s still worth it. Because a man’s life wasn’t cheap either.

The sister of Sharif Darryl Walker-El, Jr. has established a GoFundMe drive for his family.

Robin Washington is a producer-host for Wisconsin Public Radio and a former editor-in-chief of the Duluth News Tribune. He lives in Duluth and St. Paul and can be reached at robin@robinwashington.com.