Examiner Local Editorial: Metro won't be able to ignore the feds

Metro’s horrific June 2009 Red Line crash, which killed nine people and injured dozens more, provided the final impetus for Congress to change a 1965 law prohibiting the U.S. Department of Transportation from regulating subway and light-rail systems nationwide, even those that do not cross state lines. Federal officials are now in the process of drafting minimal uniform safety standards for all U.S. transit agencies.

Metrorail serves Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, so not only is federal oversight over this interstate authority justified, it is sorely needed in an agency characterized by National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman as having “inadequate” safety procedures and “an anemic safety culture.”