Yet Kandaras still isn't promising they'd be on every train. "We agree that getting more people out there is a key part of how we prevent incidents and increase the sense of safety," she said, "but in terms of how we specifically deploy TRIP agents, there are parameters."

One of those, she said, is a state law that requires the agents travel in pairs, which would push my back-of-the-envelope calculation above to more than 40 hours per employee. But that's still no excuse. The paired agents could be deployed to ride half or three-quarters of every run, keeping their hours manageable. No matter where a passenger gets on, the trains wouldn't go far before the agents board to ask for their fare slips, finally meaning the end of fare evasion.