Metro operators have opened the doors before the trains have fully reached the platform at least 13 times this year, including five times since operators began a new policy of opening the doors manually 16 days ago, Metro officials acknowledged.
The number of incidents call into question the agency’s April 14 decision to disable the automatic door system because of four incidents of doors opening on the wrong side this year.
The incidents comprise some of Metro’s most serious safety violations because passengers who are leaning on the car doors or who accidentally exit the cars when the doors are opened could fall onto the tracks.
The door errors occur when operators forget they are driving eight-car trains instead of six-car trains, and leave the back two railcars waiting in the tunnel, officials said.
Metro officials said last month that they disabled the system’s automatic door feature April 14 because it had erroneously opened the doors on the wrong side of the train four times in 100 days.
Operators must now manually press a button to open the train doors at each station.
But since the 16-day-old policy change, operators have opened the doors off-platform five times, including once Wednesday morning on an Orange Line train at the Rosslyn station, sources within the agency said. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said operators have opened the doors off-platform or on the wrong side of the train 33 times this year.
Metro rail chief Dave Kubicek said he found 13 recorded incidents.
“I’m very upset about this,” Metro General Manager John Catoe said.
“I have told our management team I don’t want excuses, I just want you to figure out how we get our operators to understand when they have an eight-car train and when they have a six-car train.
“This is a new requirement for our operators, but it’s not a very difficult requirement that we’re asking for,” he said.
Catoe said it is a training issue and could be as simple as putting a sticker on the operator’s windshield that says “six” or “eight.”
Operators said they can become confused because they often switch between eight- and six-car trains several times in one shift.
“There’s no set pattern,” one operator said. “It’s very confusing, and we’re humans. We’re trying to meet an on-the-minute schedule.”
Catoe said he believes the agency made the right decision in disabling the automatic feature because he thinks the number of door errors due to human error will decrease as the operators become used to the policy, but that the mechanical errors would have worsened with time.
The automatic door system should be fixed by the end of the year, he said. Operators who open the doors off-platform receive 12-day, unpaid suspensions for the first violation, the same suspension and an 18-month demotion for the second violation, and are permanently barredfrom operating trains after three violations.
Operators in other transit agencies routinely open train doors manually.
