Metrorail control center faulted in low-speed close call
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Version 0 of 1. Two Metro employees have been suspended after two trains wound up perilously close to each other on the same track last week, a mishap that was partly the fault of the transit agency’s troubled Rail Operations Control Center, officials said Thursday. During the incident, near the Smithsonian station, a train operator drove past a red stop signal at 10 mph, officials said. They said the blunder was precipitated by other safety lapses moments earlier in which the operator misunderstood a train controller’s command and the controller failed to correct the error. The train, with no passengers, came to a stop only when the operator realized that he was on a low-speed crash course with another train, which was pointed in the opposite direction 189 feet away, officials said. They said the second train, with riders aboard, was stopped along a platform at the Smithsonian station. In detailing the mishap Thursday for members of Metro’s governing board, top officials of the agency said the operator of the train that passed the red signal was not the only person at fault. One official called it “a sort of two-way” safety breakdown that also involved the control center in Landover, Md., where workers monitor train movements throughout the subway system in real time. The center has come under sharp criticism since the Jan. 12, 2015, calamity in which an electrical malfunction in a Metro tunnel engulfed a stalled train in smoke, killing one passenger and sickening scores of others. The center has been implicated by federal safety investigators in several subway operational failures before and during the fatal incident. In a June report that followed a weeks-long review of the control center, the Federal Transit Administration cited numerous problems, including excessive noise and distractions, which the FTA said could contribute to dangerous mistakes. [Control center failures contributed to Metro’s Jan. 12, 2015, smoke crisis.] As for the misunderstanding between the train operator and controller in last week’s incident, Rob Troup, Metro’s deputy general manager, said: “Were there distractions that may have caused that incorrect [communication], either from the operator’s standpoint or from the controller’s standpoint? That’s all currently under investigation.” The operator and the controller have been suspended without pay and will be required to undergo job retraining, officials said. At Thursday’s briefing, several board members voiced frustration over another black eye for the beleaguered transit agency. “It’s clearly an inexcusable situation,” board Chairman Jack Evans told reporters. The incident began shortly before midnight Feb. 2, when Orange Line train No. 904, bound for Vienna, was halted at the McPherson Square station because of a track problem farther along the line, officials said. They said trains traveling behind No. 904 also were halted. After passengers were off-loaded from No. 904 at McPherson, the operator was told by the control center to reverse direction and go back to the Federal Triangle station. Louis Brown, Metro’s acting chief safety officer, said the operator “misunderstood the command from the control center, and thought he had . . . clearance to go all the way to the Smithsonian station,” which is one station beyond Federal Triangle. [“Overrunning” stop signals is a chronic Metro subway problem.] “We’ve actually reviewed the audio,” Brown said. “The directions that were given by the controller were clear, that he was only to go to Federal Triangle. For whatever reason, he didn’t hear that. He thought he was clear to go to Smithsonian. He repeated back, which is the protocol, to the controller, and said, ‘I have [clearance] to Smithsonian.’ And then the next breakdown was, the controller said, ‘Correct.’ ” The train (six cars totaling about 450 feet in length and weighing roughly 200 tons without passengers) rolled through Federal Triangle at 10 mph before reaching a trackside red signal between Federal Triangle and Smithsonian, Brown said. Troup said that even if the operator had been instructed to go to Smithsonian, he should have stopped at the red signal and asked the control center for permission to proceed. But the operator kept going, which damaged a track switch near the signal. “Unbeknownst to him,” Brown said, “there was Train 992 that had been instructed to stop at the platform at Smithsonian and sit there with its doors open until the situation had remedied itself.” He said the moving train came to a “controlled stop” 189 feet from where six-car train No. 992, with passengers, was waiting. Troup said: “I want to stress, in no uncertain terms, red-signal overruns are unacceptable, and operators know this. It’s the human element that we wrestle with.” Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said that after the incident, a new safety-monitoring procedure was immediately put in place: Now, Wiedefeld said, a supervisor at the control center is supposed to stand behind a train controller, watching over the controller’s shoulder during unusual train movements such as the one that went awry last week. Thursday night, hours after Troup briefed the board, Wiedefeld announced that Troup has resigned as the transit agency’s No. 2 official. Wiedefeld, who took charge of Metro in late November, said Troup’s departure was “a mutual decision” by the men. Wiedefeld said he wanted to install “my own team” in top management positions. |