Federal transit officials find significant flaws in Metro’s system for ensuring safety
Federal transit officials have found significant flaws in Metro’s system for ensuring that trains and buses operate safely, members of Congress said Tuesday.
At a Capitol Hill news conference, four members of the Washington area’s congressional delegation said that a report by the Federal Transit Administration, set to be released Wednesday, cites major problems with safety management at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
“Metro still needs to make significant progress,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said after she and others in the delegation were briefed on the FTA’s findings.
“This FTA safety inspection confirms what many of us have feared — that Metro continues to lack a top-to-bottom culture of safety,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said in a statement after the news conference.
Mikulski — joined by her Maryland colleague, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D), and Virginia Sens. Mark R. Warner (D) and Timothy M. Kaine (D) — said the FTA report will offer Metro a road map for restoring confidence in the safety of the troubled system.
Although members of the delegation, among others, had been briefed on the report, they provided few specifics on its recommendations.
“Metro is critical to our capital’s future and our nation’s future,” Warner told reporters. “This FTA report is one indication that what we have had at Metro is a failure of leadership.” He said the report shows “a gap between Metro’s own standards and [its] ability to achieve them.”
Mortimer L. Downey, chairman of Metro’s board of directors, said the agency would not comment on the report in detail until it becomes public.
“The staff, I think, was briefed a few days ago, but we have not received any of the report material,” Downey said. “We’re told it contains a lot of recommendations for things we should be doing, although I have not seen the list. We’re told it’s all kinds of things, from soup to nuts, with respect to both rail and bus.”
The report, as described at the news conference, is another black eye for the beleaguered transit agency, which has been under near-constant criticism for six months over its performance problems and financial woes. The report is “going to be very detailed, very specific and, in many instances, troubling,” Kaine said.
The FTA’s “safety management inspection” of the agency is one of several outside inquiries into WMATA that are expected to produce reports in coming weeks, offering a closer look at Metro’s myriad troubles.
The four members of the delegation urged others in Congress not to react to critical reports about Metro by reducing federal support for the agency. “Cutting funding will not solve [Metro’s] problems,” Cardin said. “Don’t make it more difficult for Metro to do its work.”
Mikulski promised, “We will put Metro on a short leash.”
The Democratic senators face a difficult task. They must show that they are holding Metro responsible for its shortcomings while making the case that a funding cut would be counterproductive. Republicans control both chambers of Congress and already have moved to significantly reduce Metro’s federal funding.
After the fatal calamity Jan. 12, in which a meltdown of track-based electrical components filled a Yellow Line tunnel with smoke just south of the L’Enfant Plaza station — sickening more than 80 riders and ending with one woman’s death — the FTA announced its inquiry into the transit agency’s processes for making sure trains and buses operate safely. The three-month review concluded in late May, officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the Jan. 12 tunnel incident, is scheduled to hold public hearings next Tuesday and Wednesday. The NTSB said it expects to issue its final report on the L’Enfant incident early next year.
The FTA’s review, strictly speaking, was not an assessment of whether Metro trains and buses are in safe operating condition. Rather, it sought to learn whether WMATA has an adequate “safety management system” in place.
A safety management system involves “organization-wide safety policy, proactive hazard management, strong safety communication between workers and management, targeted safety training, and clear responsibilities for critical safety activities,” the FTA said last winter in announcing the planned review.
Connolly urged Metro’s board to finish its protracted search for a new general manager, a process that has dragged on since former general manager Richard Sarles announced his impending retirement last September.
Since Sarles’s departure in January, board members have disagreed over which skills to emphasize in the search for a replacement — whether Metro’s next chief executive should be more grounded in engineering to deal with the agency’s performance problems or more experienced in financial management to fix Metro’s money troubles.
“It’s time for the Metro Board to bring on new leadership to get the system back on track,” Connolly said in a statement. “Restoring rider confidence in the system will require tougher oversight and new resources from all partners at the local, state, federal levels.”
Meanwhile, at the behest of Congress, the Government Accountability Office has been reviewing Metro’s progress in improving safety since the 2009 Red Line train crash, which killed nine people. The GAO, which is also reviewing Metro’s financial management, has said it expects to issue its report by early August.
Also, a group of outside experts, assembled by the American Public Transportation Association, has been studying Metro’s Rail Operations Control Center, where train controllers monitor the subway in real time. The performance of the control center during the January incident has been called into question.
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