5 days ago
Sacramento brings back light rail elevator operators to cut crime and damage
Being a bus driver can be challenging at times, but there's another transit job in Sacramento that really has its ups and downs.
Earleen Pringle is a SacRT elevator attendant. She operates the two-story lift at the Watt Avenue and Interstate 80 light rail station, keeping an eye out for trouble.
In the mid-1900s, there were 90,000 elevator operators across the nation. Today, the job's virtually extinct, along with telephone operators, one-hour photo workers, video store clerks and other positions replaced with modern technology.
Now, SacRT is bringing them back. The transit company's security chief says crime and intentional damage to the elevators had been a real problem in the past.
"Obviously, there's graffiti and vandalism and lights broken and trash," said Lisa Hinz, SacRT's vice president of safety and security. "Sometimes, people would sleep in the elevators and they wouldn't allow the doors to be opened."
Hinz said the elevator attendants are making a difference.
"The amount of vandalism inside the elevators has dropped down to almost zero," she said.
If the elevators are broken, SacRT has to activate a bus bridge to drive customers between the bottom level and the top.
"Since October 2024, our elevators have been down so few times, we have not done one bus bridge," Hinz said.
The attendant program doesn't cost SacRT any extra money because it uses existing employees assigned to light-duty jobs.
"Maybe they perhaps can't drive a bus on that particular day, but they can stand in an elevator," Hinz said.
Some customers do a double-take seeing an employee manning the elevator controls. They no longer have to press the button and can just enjoy the 30-second ride.
Watt Avenue is the only light rail station with an elevator. Since the program began, there have been more than 100 employees that have been assigned to elevator duty.
