Metro has told its train operators to manually open car doors because its automatic system sometimes opens the doors on the wrong side.
Doors have opened on the side without a platform at least four times this year, officials said — a tiny number for a system that opens doors 216,000 times a day, but pose a serious safety risk because a rider who accidentally exits the wrong way could plummet onto the tracks.
Train operators now are manually pushing a button to open and close the doors each time a train pulls into a station until the transit agency can correct the problem, Metro’s assistant rail chief Dave Kubicek said. The automatic system has been disabled.
To fix the problem, Metro will have to order circuit boards and install them on each of the agency’s 1,066 railcars — an item that cash-strapped Metro has not budgeted.
Kubicek said agency staff are still working to estimate the cost of the project, which he estimates will be completed in a year and a half.
Kubicek said the snag is tied to power upgrades the agency is completing to allow the system to run more eight-car trains instead of six-car trains.
“It does have something to do with the added power,” he said. “We also have aged equipment, connection points that are older and railcars that are older that were calibrated with a certain configuration.”
Metro has been overhauling its power substations with the goal of providing eight-car trains for half of all rush-hour trains by the end of the year. The door issue is not limited to a specific type of railcar and has occurred on both older and newer models, Kubicek said.
Metro officials are closely monitoring service and equipment snags this year in an effort to improve the on-time performance of the rail system.
Kubicek said his increased scrutiny of Metro’s service and equipment data helped him identify the problem.
