Jason's Homepage

[J Dogg]

A copy of a letter I wrote to Caltrain:

I have been a regular passenger on Caltrain Since April 2006 to commute between Sunnyvale, Hillsdale, and San Francisco. I would like to express grievances over my experience on Southbound Baby Bullet train #372 from SF 4th and King at 5:14 PM on January 12, 2007.

On January 12, I arrived at the SF station and attempted to use one of the 10-ride validation machines. Unfortunately, it did not work, so I walked to the train and notified the conductor. Much to my surprise, the conductor refused to validate my ticket and told me that I would have to go back to the station and try each validator before re-boarding the train. I started to walk back to the station when I noticed the station doors were being closed. It was the final call.

Because the station doors were closing, I walked back to the train and asked if they would wait for me to validate my ticket prior to boarding. The conductor said “no” and that there were plenty of later trains to take. At this point, I knew that the next train would be at 5:20 PM and it was not a Baby Bullet, so I boarded anyway and again asked for validation. The conductor threatened me with a citation and even attempted to prevent me from boarding by blocking the steps. He said it is not their policy to validate tickets from San Francisco, and that it is my responsibility to try each validator before boarding. The other ticket enforcement officer also did not believe me that the validator was broken. When I offered to take him to the broken validator, he refused. After much arguing and more threats of citation, the conductor finally took out a pen and validated my ticket.

This was my far the most demeaning experience I have encountered on Caltrain. Common knowledge among frequent Caltrain riders is that 10-ride validators are frequently out of order, and it is necessary to ask a conductor to manually validate the ticket (this is also mentioned on the Caltrain website: http://www.caltrain.com/caltrain_ticket_validators.html). The arrogance of the ticket enforcement officer to assume that all validators work is wrong and is bad customer service.

Furthermore, it is also well known that Baby Bullet trains are few and far between, and the statement of “there are plenty of later trains” is inaccurate. One missed train can easily double the total transit time for a passenger, and it is unreasonable to ask a passenger to leave the train and board a new one simply because a validator broke.

Until the 10-ride ticket validators have been made to work consistently and more trains are added, this supposed “policy” of not validating tickets or reluctance to manually validate tickets must be changed. I request a formal apology or explanation regarding the way I was treated by the Caltrain staff, and assurance it will not happen again.