Salary and housing cost may be part of why SMART is having trouble hiring crews, but it is more than that. The pay isn't the worst and not every rail has or wants a family, plenty could live on that money and in a small apartment.

But SMART, ACE, and Caltrain will only hire engineers that are already certified with a minimum of several years of experience. That narrows down the field a whole lot. Some other commuter rail operations, including some Herzog properties, do hire freight conductors and immediately put them in engineer training. While it makes sense why agencies would try to avoid the extra cost and only hire experienced engineers, if after all this time they still can't get enough qualified applicants then maybe it is time for a change in strategy.

A huge hurdle for current engineers is that none of the Bay Area commuter rail ops participate in Railroad Retirement. So that's going to be an effective pay cut. Any new hire would be wise to plan on the assumption that the CalPERS pension SMART uses will likely include future cuts in promised payouts.

And then with the title of "Engineer Conductor" it sounds like they could be forced to work as CO's. A lot of engineers wouldn't want to work as a CO dealing with the general public.

Going to give up whatever seniority they had. Does SMART employees even have a union? If so, how strong are they and their protection?

Put it all together and there's a lot of disincentives for any current engineers to take the leap of faith.

I'm an experienced freight conductor and could afford to move out there, looked into ACE yesterday. But why would I want to be stuck as a commuter CO dealing with potentially rowdy or worse passengers when I can hire on elsewhere as a passenger engineer trainee?