Metro has isolated and fixed a computer glitch that halted trains twice over the weekend, the agency said Wednesday.
The problem in the advanced information management system that is used to electronically track the system’s trains, called AIMS, was a failed module about the size of a pizza box, Metro said. It was replaced early Wednesday.
“While we have confidence that the immediate issue has been resolved, our work must and will continue to make this system more robust and to improve its reliability for our customers,” said Metro Deputy General Manager for Operations Dave Kubicek.
That means the system does not have redundancy, so it could go down again if a part fails on the five-year-old system. The failed module was less than two years old, spokesman Dan Stessel said.
Metro did not provide estimates on how much the three-day investigation and repairs cost, but Stessel said it should be “incidental,” because while some Metro technicians earned overtime, the assistance from the manufacturer, Arinc, was covered under existing maintenance contracts.
The mapping tool allows the main operations control center to see the entire rail system. It is not the same system that senses trains and keeps them from crashing, nor does it affect the radio or communications system.
During the failures, which occurred early Saturday afternoon and for about an hour starting 12:30 a.m. Sunday, officials stopped trains as a precaution, then relied on radio and land-line calls to coordinate which trains should go where.
