By Marie Szaniszlo, Boston Herald

9/23/07 - MBTA workers are being pummeled, spit on and even beaten unconscious at a soaring rate, making the basic job of working for public transit an increasingly risky one.

The number of MBTA employees assaulted over the past three years has risen 48 percent, from 119 in 2004 to 176 last year, according to agency statistics.

"It's incredible that people trying to serve the public should be threatened with violence," said state Sen. Mark C. Montigny (D-New Bedford), a member of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation. "It's pretty sad when your life's in jeopardy for trying to collect a fare."

Because T employees are prohibited from speaking to the media without permission, most of those interviewed declined to give their names. But some of their stories of violence are harrowing.

"It's hard to even express how on edge you are all the time," said a driver who asked to be identified only by his first initial, J.

In one instance, he said, he was kicked so badly by an irate passenger, he was out of work for three weeks. Last January, he said, a rider whose pass he had asked to look at spit on him, regurgitating the food from his mouth.

One bus driver told of a co-worker who was punched by a woman who refused to pay her fare and, when he protested, was dragged off the bus, beaten unconscious and left lying in the street by the men she was with.

In another instance, the first driver was himself threatened by a passenger who pulled a knife because another rider bumped into his nephew. The driver pulled the bus over and called police, he said, who arrived 27 minutes later, after the knife-wielding man had fled.

The delay may have been because the MBTA has just 257 officers to deal with 1.3 million riders daily. That's a ratio of one cop for every 5,058 passengers, said Detective Michael Flanagan, president of the MBTA Police Patrolman's Association. The national ratio, he said, is one officer per 1,759 passengers.

Transit cops themselves are among the most common victims, data show. "We're called to the scene when someone is already hostile, and from there it often escalates," said Flanagan, who said he has been assaulted "20 or 30" times in seven years on the force.

Bus drivers were also among the most frequent targets. Although they carry about half as many riders as subway trains - 387,550 vs. 604,450 - buses make 18,460 separate trips per day. That's nearly seven times the 2,689 trips that subway trains make, according to T statistics.

Unlike subway train operators, bus drivers do not work in locked cubicles, and they have to collect fares, which have doubled in the past seven years, raising public ire.

"We're basically sitting ducks," said one Orange Line motorperson who considers herself "lucky" because she has "only" been verbally abused in the nine years she has worked for the T. "We're easy targets because a lot of people know we can get fired if we try to defend ourselves and fight back."