Metro experienced another near miss Wednesday morning when one Red Line train operator had to push his emergency brake to avoiding hitting another train ahead of it.
The incident is ringing alarm bells for how the agency’s safety system failed to stop the trains from getting so close again, but also why the agency did not notify its oversight group or begin investigating until Thursday.
“We have some concerns about the amount of time it took them to notify us,” Tri-State Oversight Committee Chairman Matt Bassett told the Washington Examiner. “Even though it didn’t cause an accident, it had the potential to cause a serious one.”
The incident occurred about 9 a.m. in the tunnel near the Wheaton station as one train operator spotted another train at the platform ahead, said spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
The operator pushed the emergency brake known as the “mushroom,” spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said, “because he thought that his train may have been too close.”
The trains did not crash, and no one was hurt. Metro could not say how close the trains came, as officials were still conducting their investigation, which they did not begin until Thursday.
But Bassett said, “It was close enough it raised alarms and it was closer than it should have been.”
Metro is investigating to determine the distance between the trains, plus why the agency’s automatic train safety system failed to stop the trains from getting so close.
Interim General Manager Richard Sarles sent a memo to his new safety director on Thursday saying that Metro needs to both notify regulators and begin investigating immediately after incidents.
The incident harkens back to the deadly accident on June 22 outside Fort Totten, when one train crashed into another, killing nine and injuring dozens more. In that case, the train operator running in automatic mode engaged the brake when she saw a stopped train in front of her but could not stop her train in time.
This time, the train was in manual mode — as have been all trains since the crash. The train safety system is supposed to prevent trains from getting too close, whether running manually or automatically.
It is not the first time such near misses have occurred. As the Examiner reported in July, a near miss involving three trains in the tunnel under the Potomac River occurred in 2005, with trains stopping about 35 and 12 feet apart, according to one of the operators involved. Other near misses also have occurred. Following Wednesday’s near miss, riders will notice a slowdown in the area. Metro is running trains there in what’s known as an “absolute block,” which requires operators to get verbal permission from operations officials to travel through the area, Taubenkibel said.
