Two veteran Metro track workers were killed early Tuesday when a piece of track equipment driving backward struck them on the Red Line outside of the Rockville station, the latest in a series of deadly accidents for the transit agency that declared a war on safety problems last month.
It occurred less than two weeks after the agency held a three-day workshop with national transit experts on how to improve Metro’s track safety.
Outgoing Metro Chairman Jim Graham said he expects the board to announce an interim leader on Thursday to take the place of General Manager John Catoe, who is resigning April 2. Catoe did not attend the press conference, but his Chief of Staff Shiva Pant stood at the podium with Graham and acting Chief Safety Officer Michael Taborn, signaling a possible internal pick. Deputy General Manager Gerald Francis, who was a victim of Catoe’s December management shake-up, was also standing behind a throng of reporters. It was his first appearance at a public Metro event since the shake-up, although his departure isn’t slated until March. – Kytja Weir
Acting Chief Safety Officer Michael Taborn said Metro is taking immediate action and planned to respond Wednesday to recommendations made by a local safety oversight group last month. He mentioned no other action.
Metro has racked up an unusually deadly record, with eight of the 19 fatalities of transit workers on rail tracks nationwide in the past nine years, according to Federal Transit Administration data. All eight have occurred since the beginning of 2005, the most in the nation over that period. Metro is topped for the past nine years only by New York’s subway system, which has logged no track fatalities since 2007.
Officials did not say what failure caused Tuesday’s accident — or what Metro could do to prevent more deaths. Chairman Jim Graham blamed “human error” but declined to elaborate, saying only federal investigators may discuss the case.
Jeff Garrard, 49, and Sung Oh, 68, both of Montgomery County had been replacing the same type of faulty track equipment at the center of the deadly June 22 crash, which ensures trains’ safety. But at 1:45 a.m., a high-rail truck equipped to travel on tracks struck the two automatic train control technicians in the work zone, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The truck contained four other track workers who were assigned to another project.
It is not uncommon for such trucks to work backward as they cannot turn around on tracks, but federal investigators declined to say what safety measures were in place or what the driver could have seen behind him.
NTSB lead investigator Stephen Klejst also declined to say whether the truck beeped when backing up. Earlier in the day, a Metro official told reporters that the truck only beeped when operating in reverse on the road, not on train tracks.
A Metro safety handbook obtained by The Examiner says work vehicles are supposed to travel only in what’s called an “absolute block,” meaning they can run only in set blocks of track, then must contact a control center for permission to continue. Zones where track crews are working are supposed to be protected by reflective rubber mats lying across the track bed. It was not clear if those or other safety precautions were followed.
The four surviving workers were tested for drugs and alcohol, as is standard. Toxicology tests on the deceased are likely, said Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
The accident was the latest in a series of deadly safety failures that prompted Metro to shake up its top leadership team last month and General Manager John Catoe to announce his resignation on Jan. 14.
Two workers were killed in separate track accidents last year. Three workers were injured in a rail yard crash in late November.
In December, a team of safety inspectors on a scheduled review of Metro safety policies was nearly struck by a speeding train. The inspectors issued a damning report showing multiple failures of the agency’s track safety policies, including track workers using the wrong hand signals and trains failing to slow down for track teams.
Tuesday deaths seriously delayed morning commuters but also worried them.
“It’s clearly troubling,” said Ben Ross, a Montgomery County riders’ advocate with the Transit First coalition. “They’ve got to stop this.”
He said he found the worker deaths more disconcerting than even the June train crash that killed nine and injured dozens more. “It was a one-off event in what otherwise is a very good safety record for passengers,” he said. “But with this, the same stuff keeps happening.”
