As the train stopped, the conductor motioned for them to board.

"Sorry for the ticket problems," a man announced a minute or two later on the train's public-address system. "You can either buy a ticket when you get to your destination or buy a ticket when you get back.

"Or," he quipped, "if you don't want to buy a ticket, call the mayor and say, 'Thanks for the free ride.'"

In the year since service was extended to downtown Fort Worth, ticketing glitches have been one of several problems on the commuter-rail line, which links Fort Worth and Dallas.

For the most part, transportation officials consider the Trinity Railway Express a success. About 7,500 people a day are riding the rails, 50 percent more than originally projected for 2002. And passengers say they are pleased with the cleanliness of the rail cars and the reliability of service.

But some aspects fall short of riders' expectations. Most of the stations lack on-site security and restrooms, and the ticket machines are difficult for inexperienced riders to use. In parts of Tarrant County, there are long waits.

How the railway responds to these concerns -- as well as to criticisms from executives who believe that the railway could generate more revenue if it did a better job of making sure fares are paid -- may determine whether the line continues to grow.

Overall, fares collected amount to 83 cents per passenger. The cost of running the railway works out to $7.77 per passenger, based on the current annual operating budget of $17.1 million and a projected 2.2 million riders.

"Not only is it a system in its infancy, there's a lot of inconsistencies to iron out," said John Bartosiewicz, chief executive of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, also known as the T, which created the railway in a partnership with Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Transportation officials expected some flaws in the early years. And they are confident that the problems will be corrected and that the railway will smash its goal of having 11,000 riders a day by 2011, Bartosiewicz said.

The focus in the first year has been getting people in the habit of riding, officials said.

"Our big push is for rail as a reliable form of transportation, a system that runs on schedule, which you can't always count on when you're in traffic," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "Over the next 30 years, we hope the Trinity Railway Express is just one example of 10."

Rail service was established to help reduce air pollution and unclog freeways jammed with commuters.

The Trinity Railway Express, which uses diesel engines, offers 15 trains each weekday from Fort Worth to Dallas and 10 trains on Saturday. Trains run more frequently on the eastern half of the rails between Union Station in Dallas and the CentrePort-DFW Airport Station.

Many passengers use the train to get to work, avoiding freeway traffic and saving money. Fares are $1 each way within one county or $2 each way when trains cross the Tarrant-Dallas county line.

"It's the best 20-minute nap I get all day," said Corrine Wentworth, 34, a physicians assistant who rides the train to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "I save so much on gas. I took my gas bill from $90 a month to $12."

Several riders said their first experience on the train was not to get to work, but to get to a Dallas Mavericks basketball game or a Dallas Stars hockey game. On most game nights, the railway operates a platform at Victory Station next to the American Airlines Center.

The railway offers an alternative to crowded, expensive parking lots around the arena, riders said.

Gary Page, 57, a software engineer who lives in Grand Prairie, often rides the train with his family for leisure trips to events like the Stock Show in Fort Worth or to dinner with friends in Dallas.

"It was really fun for special occasions or something different to do, and you see a lot of different parts of the town you wouldn't normally see," Page said.

Until recently, the trains also offered another benefit: free rides for scofflaws.

In the past two months, the Star-Telegram sent seven staff members to ride the train at various times and on different days. They bought tickets each time, but their tickets were checked only five times in 17 trips.

Hundreds of riders have boarded without buying tickets in the past year, officials acknowledged. What's more, those caught without tickets were rarely punished, though they could have been cited and fined up to $200 for theft of service.

A check of the T's records showed no evidence that any citations had been written for fare evasion this year. The T depends on Fort Worth police to enforce laws on the tracks, although city officers rarely ride the trains.

Stopping fare evaders is a bit easier in Dallas County, where DART transit police officers patrol stations and often ride trains.

Even so, of the 2,000 citations issued to train riders in Dallas County from January to July, only 21 were issued at Trinity Railway Express stations. The rest were issued at light-rail stations, which are more thoroughly patrolled.

The T, which this year approved a budget with a projected $2.2 million deficit, now wants to ensure that the railway system collects every possible dollar.

"Times are tough," said Paul Geisel, a member of the T's executive committee. "We need every penny we can get. There was a concern that more needed to be done. For me, it's just a psychological thing. It's a cheap service, and everyone should pay their fair share."

In Tarrant County, a crackdown on fare evaders began about a month ago. Attendants were asked to check tickets on almost every train.

The fare problems were mostly blamed on a set of malfunctioning ticket machines that the railway began replacing last summer, said Bonnie Duhr-Murphy, the railway's executive director. All the machines should be replaced by year's end, she said.

But she acknowledged that until recent weeks, train crews often did not check tickets because ensuring that all riders had paid was not a priority.

"We were kind of being lax about it ... when it rained, when it was cold outside, when it was hot outside," she said.

Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said that if ticket machines are inadequate, it is not fair to crack down on riders who haven't paid.

"You're going to infuriate people," he said.

On the other hand, he said, allowing some riders to board for free is not fair to paying customers.

Officials from the T and DART said they want ticket sales to cover more of the railway's costs. But they don't expect the service to ever be self-sufficient.

Ticket sales generate about $1.2 million a year for the railway, which covers only about 7 percent of its $17.1 million operating cost. Sales taxes collected in cities that are members of the T and DART cover $13.2 million of the cost. The remainder comes from freight railroads that rent the tracks.

Railway officials say they do not know what the per-passenger cost ought to be, but they are studying the issue.

The per-passenger cost is difficult to determine because an estimated 44 percent of riders use monthly passes and the amount they pay per ride depends on how often they use the service, said Wendy Raffaeli, the T's chief financial officer.

The fare issue aside, transportation experts say the long-term success of the Trinity Railway Express -- or any form of transit -- rides on two factors: safety and ease of use.

Generally, the railway has seen few crimes.

A few weeks ago, panhandlers boarded the Trinity Railway Express in Dallas and asked riders for spare change, Duhr-Murphy said.

DART transit police escorted the panhandlers off the train, she said. Other than that, Duhr-Murphy could recall no onboard problems in the past year.

But the lack of on-site security at platforms can lead to concerns about crime, many passengers said.

The platforms are monitored by security cameras, but five of the nine full-time stations are not staffed by security guards. And because the T does not have transit police, it relies on Fort Worth police for law enforcement on the western half of the line.

Fort Worth police do not staff the stations, but patrol cars regularly drive by, a police spokesman said.

At night, the lighting is generally good around the platforms and in the parking lots. But the surrounding streets are often dark, and the railroad tracks are not well-lighted outside the stations.

Duhr-Murphy said most riders feel safe in crowds.

"When the trains come, people usually start arriving at the same time," she said. "There's generally five to seven people arriving."

A glance at police 911 calls at a sampling of Trinity Railway Express stations shows no unusual crime trends.

At the South Irving Station there have been 88 police calls in the past 12 months, according to Irving police records. Most calls resulted in no police reports.

There were three assaults, three auto thefts, two unspecified thefts, two vehicle burglaries, a bomb-threat arrest, a trespassing arrest, two disturbance arrests, a suspicious-person arrest and a drug violation.

The reports do not necessarily mean that a crime occurred, an Irving spokesman said. For example, a motorist might file an auto-theft report, then find out that the vehicle was towed.

The incidents in the reports also might not have occurred on train-station property, the spokesman said. The officer filing the report may use the address of a station simply because it is the closest landmark to where the 911 call was made.

At the West Irving Station there were 67 calls in 12 months. They included a traffic accident, an attempted-suicide arrest, six auto thefts, two vehicle burglaries and one unspecified theft.

Many commuter-rail stations in the United States are not staffed by security, especially in suburbs and rural communities near metropolitan areas, railroad experts say. Crime isn't even a concern in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where the Virginia Railway Express has operated for 10 years, said Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, a pro-commuter-rail group.

"I imagine [passengers] wouldn't ride it if it was an issue," he said.

But the Trinity Railway Express runs through mostly industrialized areas that connect the urban cores of Fort Worth, Dallas and south Irving.

Because of geographic and financial restrictions, the railway has done about all it can to improve security for passengers, Raffaeli said.

Putting security guards at all nine full-time platforms would be too expensive, she said.

The T hopes the areas around the stations will develop and have services that appeal to commuters, such as restaurants and newsstands, creating more pedestrian traffic and making first-time users feel safer, she said.

In time, the railway may also overcome service problems that can intimidate first-time users.

The ticket machines are a common source of complaints by riders. The machines take only cash, and only one ticket can be bought at a time. What's more, the on-screen instructions can be difficult to understand.

Irving resident Debra Lewis, who regularly commutes by rail to Fort Worth, said that once, when she was first trying the railway, her train pulled out while she was fiddling with a ticket machine.

"The machine kept spitting out my money," she said.

"If it's your first time, it will take a minute for you to figure out," she said. "I had to call somebody and get them to take me to Fort Worth."

Railway officials say they plan to offer credit-card service, but probably not for at least a year.

In some areas, there are few amenities for riders. Six of the railway's 10 stations lack restrooms, and there are no plans to install them. About half the trains have restrooms.

Getting used to schedules can also be tricky. During peak travel periods, the trains run every 40 to 50 minutes. But in off-peak periods, such as early evening, catching a train can require a 2 1/2-hour wait in parts of Tarrant County. That probably won't change for many years, because parts of the rail line do not have enough tracks for trains to run in both directions simultaneously. Adding tracks, at a cost of millions of dollars per mile, is part of the railway's long-term plans.

The short-term goal is to educate new riders about how best to use the system.

"A lot of people who don't ride public transportation are very intimidated about it -- the machines, the schedules, the conductors," Raffaeli said. "Once you get used to it, it's really not scary."

Such complications may limit the growth potential of the Trinity Railway Express, said Chase, the president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.

But that's not necessarily bad, he said.

"Commuter rail is not flexible. Its use is still very limited," Chase said. "It provides a specific function of getting people from Point A to Point B at a specific time and date. But most people don't travel only from Point A to Point B."

In the end, it may be up to the riders to make adjustments, the National Association of Railroad Passengers said.

They may have to learn to arrive 15 minutes before their train's scheduled departure so they can have time to buy tickets. Or they must use monthly passes so they can avoid the machines altogether.

"You can't assume there's no line at the ticket window," said Capon, the association's executive director.

It may be somewhat confusing, but that's nothing compared with the tangled traffic on the freeways, especially during bad weather, passengers say.

Renee Sharpe, a legal secretary who commutes from the West Irving Station to the Dallas Union Station, first tried the train when she locked her keys in her car. In the 11 months since then, she has become a regular.

Sharpe's train ride takes about 45 minutes, longer than the 30-minute car ride she used to take. But she uses the time to read, put on makeup or do needlework.

She said she rejoices at what she has gained by not driving.

"I'm not thinking about air pollution," she said. "I'm thinking of wear and tear on the car, the cost of parking and stress."

The Trinity Railway Express has been operating in Dallas County since 1996 and in Northeast Tarrant County since 2000. Service to downtown Fort Worth began about a year ago with the opening of the Intermodal Transportation Center and the Texas & Pacific Station.

The railway roughly follows the path of the West Fork of the Trinity River, connecting downtown Fort Worth to Richland Hills, south Hurst, the southern edge of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, Irving and downtown Dallas.

Fort Worth and Dallas had not been connected by commuter rail since 1934, when the Interurban trolley line shut down.

The trains are operated under contract by Herzog Transit Services of Missouri. Attendants on the trains are Herzog employees.