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Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "Hi, how may I help you?"
It's a phrase station agent Perrissa Young-Flagg uses dozens of times each hour of her night
shift at Embarcadero Station.
Frustrated with a ticket vending machine that wasn't working, a customer asks for help.
Ticket problems are probably the single most frequent issue she deals with in helping customers,
and there are many factors involved. The BART system is 40 years old, and many of its parts
are showing their age, something BART is working to address with increased focus on efforts
to maintain a state of good repair.
One thing that jams ticket machines is altered tickets, the work of scammers who try to con
victims into buying fake tickets. Sometimes, the scammers try their cons right in front
of the machines as customers are trying to buy legitimate tickets- prompting agents to
call in BART Police and make warning announcements over their public address systems.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "Attention BART customers, always purchase your tickets
from the machines and the machines only. Do not purchase tickets from individuals selling
unauthorized tickets by the machines."
Now remember, if the deal sounds too good to be true - it probably is.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "This is an altered ticket and it jams up our machines.
Nine times out of ten, if a machine is out of service it's because we have these in here."
Besides ticket issues, she helps customers needing to find elevators, gives directions,
explains the difference between BART and Muni and - a very important duty for customers
- makes regular checks of elevators to ensure they are free of waste and debris.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "That's for safety and to be courteous to our customers
who are in wheelchairs and the babies in strollers. So we try to make sure that we do checks.
If there is waste or debris, we call our system service workers and they try to come and clean
it right away."
You might not realize that when the agent is away from their booth, it may be for an
elevator cleanliness check, to put up a gate for safety if an escalator must be taken out
of service, or to handle an emergency situation.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "We got a call that there?s an unattended backpack
in the middle of the station."
In that case, it was just a bag of gym clothes left behind, but every suspicious situation
must be checked out.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: " So it was a false alarm. Somebody already took
the backpack."
For agents who close stations, at the end of the night there are particular tasks to
be done.
Perrissa Young-Flagg/BART Station Agent: "We have to empty the gates so the capture bin
doesn?t overflow."
And there is the unfortunate but necessary task, not unique to BART but common across
all transit systems in large cities, of moving along people who may be sleeping in a station
for warmth or lack of another place to go.
When the last train of the night leaves, there are more checks, then the gates come down.
Another day is over for one station agent.
Cheryl Stalter,for BARTtv.