---
title: "Transit and Railroad Police"
description: "Protect and police railroad and transit property, employees, or passengers."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/transit-and-railroad-police"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Transit and Railroad Police

**Category:** Protective Service · **SOC code:** 33-3052 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 33-3052.00

Protect and police railroad and transit property, employees, or passengers.

Also advertised as: Law Enforcement Officer; Patrol Man; Patrol Officer; Patrolman; Police Captain; Police Specialist; Railroad Police; Railroad Police Officer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $90,230 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $43.38/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $57,690 to $125,910, with the middle half between $68,990 and $119,290
- **Total US employment:** 4,390
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 300 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 59/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 4,390 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $57,690 |
| 25th | $68,990 |
| 50th (median) | $90,230 |
| 75th | $119,290 |
| 90th | $125,910 |
| Mean (average) | $91,810 |

### Pay by state

The 9 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $109,650 | $99,034 | 100 |
| NJ | $106,290 | $97,689 | 340 |
| MD | $99,420 | $94,723 | Not published by BLS |
| NY | $90,460 | $83,821 | Not published by BLS |
| UT | $87,770 | $88,779 | 80 |
| TX | $78,480 | $80,860 | 80 |
| FL | $69,810 | $67,505 | 40 |
| MO | $67,840 | $74,700 | 90 |
| GA | $57,690 | $59,911 | 240 |

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 4,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 4,500 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 100 jobs, or +3.2%. About as fast as average: 3.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 300 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 28.4% |
| Some College Courses | 25.9% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 20.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 13.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 5.4% |
| Master's Degree | 4.6% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare reports documenting investigation activities and results.
- Enforce traffic laws regarding the transit system and reprimand individuals who violate them.
- Monitor transit areas and conduct security checks to protect railroad properties, patrons, and employees.
- Examine credentials of unauthorized persons attempting to enter secured areas.
- Patrol railroad yards, cars, stations, or other facilities to protect company property or shipments and to maintain order.
- Apprehend or remove trespassers or thieves from railroad property or coordinate with law enforcement agencies in apprehensions and removals.
- Investigate or direct investigations of freight theft, suspicious damage or loss of passengers' valuables, or other crimes on railroad property.
- Direct security activities at derailments, fires, floods, or strikes involving railroad property.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Transportation — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.17 |
| C — Conventional | 4.94 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.21 |
| S — Social | 2.51 |
| I — Investigative | 2.28 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 88.7 |
| ESTJ | 82.3 |
| ISFJ | 77.6 |
| ISTP | 68.9 |
| ESTP | 64.4 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Police Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/police-officer) — median $76,210
- [Security Guard](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-guard) — median $38,020
- [First-Line Supervisor of Police and Detectives](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-police-and-detectives) — median $106,040
- [First-Line Supervisor of Security Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers) — median $55,940
- [Detective and Criminal Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/detective-and-criminal-investigator) — median $93,790
- [Transportation Security Screener](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-security-screener) — median $66,770
- [Custom and Border Protection Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/custom-and-border-protection-officer) — median $76,210
- [Compliance Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/compliance-officer) — median $80,730
- [Private Detective and Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/private-detective-and-investigator) — median $51,220
- [Fire Inspector and Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fire-inspector-and-investigator) — median $75,920

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

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