Metra throws student short 75 cents off train; was race involved?
By MARY MITCHELL mmitchell@suntimes.com February 10, 2012 6:42PM
Aronzo Traylor II, 19, was kicked off a Metra Commuter Train for not having 75 cents extra to complete his fare from Naperville to Union Station. February 10, 2012. | Scott Stewart~Sun-Times
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Updated: March 13, 2012 10:33AM
Aronzo Traylor II found out the hard way that Metra had a hefty fare increase.
Two days after the increase took effect, a conductor working the Burlington Northern kicked Traylor off the 10:33 p.m. train because the college student was short 75 cents.
“I tried searching throughout my bag. I took everything out. I was really trying hard to find the 75 cents because I didn’t want to say
I didn’t have it,” Traylor told me.
On Friday, a spokesman for Metra acknowledged that the conductor “could have handled things differently and been more sensitive.”
“During the initial period following our fare increase, we have asked train crews to be more sensitive to these types of situations,” Michael Gillis said.
“We apologize for the unfortunate events that occurred.”
Traylor was used to paying $5 to catch the Metra from Naperville, where he attends North Central College. His father, also named Aronzo, would scoop him up from Union Station and drive him to the family’s home in the Beverly neighborhood.
Traylor didn’t know the fare had increased by 75 cents. The average fare increase systemwide was just over 25 percent.
“I am sorry I don’t have 75 cents,” Traylor said he told the white conductor. Traylor said the conductor told him he couldn’t let him go to Union Station.
“I’m like, what am I supposed to do, get off at the next stop?
“It was dark and raining. I’m thinking [the conductor] wouldn’t have that kind of heart,” he said.
The conductor told him to get off at the next stop and find an ATM and wait for the next train, Traylor said.
“I rolled my bag off the train and he didn’t say a word. Not good day or good luck. It was like I didn’t even exist. The train starts to leave. It was dark and starting to rain. The station was closed so I couldn’t go inside. I had prepared to get into the car so I had on a light coat and I was freezing,” Traylor said.
“It was pretty sad, and yes, I was sobbing,” he confessed. “I was scared and I didn’t know where I was.”
Traylor called his father, and the father contacted the Metra police, and promised to pay the 75 cents at Union Station. An officer alerted the crew on the 11:33 train about Aronzo’s predicament.
Later, the father complained about his son’s treatment to a manager at Metra, but wasn’t satisfied with the response. Last week, he sent a letter to Metra’s board of directors.
“I truly believe it was easy for this conductor to put my son off the train because he was a young black male,” the father said in the letter.
“If my son had been a young white female or male, would he have been asked to leave the train to be left on a cold, dark, rainy platform alone over seventy-five cents?”
Metra did not respond to those allegations.
But it is not all that unusual for a conductor to put someone off a train for a variety of infractions. It happens to white as well as black passengers.
Still, race has a way of complicating things.
When Aronzo looks at his son, he sees a young black man he has raised well, and sheltered from the dangerous situations that have killed too many other black males.
He would no sooner want his son to be stranded at a desolate train station in Lisle any more than he would want to see the young man stranded on a street corner in a unfamiliar Chicago neighborhood.
This father knows that when some people look at his son, they don’t see his good upbringing. Some will only see the color of his skin.
And because too often the bad behavior of a few young black males influences how the entire group is perceived, it is not very often that young black males are given the benefit of the doubt.
Surely, the conductor could have cut this young man some slack. But he didn’t, which raises some valid concerns.
After all, we are talking about only 75 cents.
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