Metro's problems go deeper than one faulty track circuit
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
July 13, 2009
Metro riders like me who depend upon the transit system to get to work are disturbed by the spectacular failure of Metro's highly automated "fail-safe" system.
But news that Metro is planning to spend $177 million next year on a major overhaul of the Red Line is not very reassuring. To me, the scariest thing about the fatal crash on June 22 that killed nine people and injured 80 was not that both the computerized system and the human operator failed to avoid a collision, which is scary enough, but the fact that the accident occurred just five days after a Metro crew "fixed" that particular section of track.__
Shortly after the accident, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board announced that they had found "anomalies" in the replaced track circuit that are believed to be responsible for the worst crash in Metro's history.__
I was reminded of an outside study commissioned under former General Manger Richard White a few years back that found that Metro escalators actually broke down more frequently after they were repaired by Metro employees. Commuters who were already leery of riding Metro because of a long list of deferred maintenance issues now have reason to worry when the work finally gets done.__
If NTSB investigators were able to identify "intermittent failures" in the failed circuitry after the crash, why didn't Metro maintenance workers find them before or after it was installed? Metro officials claim the most crucial safety device in the entire system was tested beforehand, so how did they miss the problem?__
Whatever the NTSB's final determination of the cause of the accident, it is beyond dispute that Metro replaced a functioning part (no crashes) with a defective one. If this is what happens when Metro "fixes" things, maybe we should all be thankful that so often, it doesn't.__
To make matters worse, The Washington Post reported that San Franciso's Bay Area Rapid Transit system installed a backup system to guard against circuit failure more than three decades ago. Metro rail chief Dave Kubicek told Metro Board members that Metro doesn't have a similar system, only "diagnostic tools". But the Operations Center didn't even know it was losing track of trains between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations where the crash occurred.__
Everybody who uses computerized electronics - and that's practically everybody in our wired society - knows that they are subject to sudden failure for no apparent reason. Computers crash, cell phones die, email gets lost. Most of the time, it's nothing more than an annoying inconvenience. But how many passengers realize that they're betting their lives that a single track circuit doesn't fail every time they get on a Metro train?__
Metro's decision to require all trains on all tracks to be operated manually ever since the Red Line accident indicates that this may not have been such an anomaly after all.__
Barbara F. Hollingworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor.
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