The Metro Board of Directors could not have done anything differently given the information it had at the time of the June 2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people and injured dozens of others, said board member Jim Graham, chairman at the time of the incident.
Graham made the comment at the close of a Monday afternoon meeting between the Metro board and the National Transportation Safety Board. The two groups met to discuss 16 recommendations the NTSB made to the transit agency last month at the conclusion of its year-long investigation into the deadly crash.
The meeting opened on good terms, with current board Chairman Peter Benjamin saying Metro “lost its innocence” at the moment of the crash.
“No longer could we claim we had the safest system in the world,” Benjamin said. “We had to go back and say we have got to make the system as safe as we can make it.”
But Graham fired back at statements the federal safety board has made, including that the Metro board was “tone deaf” to safety issues before the crash.
“What could I have done differently?” Graham asked rhetorically. “I’ve asked myself that question on a personal level, and I conclude I don’t know what I could have done.”
The NTSB has said Metro turned a blind eye to thousands of alarms a week that informed workers of the same track circuit problems that caused the system not to recognize a stopped train between the Fort Totten and Takoma stations and allowed another to slam into it in June 2009.
Graham said a “technology failure” was at the “core” of the crash and that no one knew about the circuit failure when it happened.
Metro Interim General Manager Richard Sarles said the agency is responding to the NTSB’s recommendations by hiring an independent firm to analyze the automatic train control system, replacing failing circuits and moving to replace Metro’s outdated and dangerous 1000 series cars.
Metro board members also quizzed the NTSB on how they could implement a “safety culture,” one of NTSB’s primary recommendations.
The NTSB suggested the Metro board create top-down policies that make safety a priority and improve employees’ comfort with reporting safety issues by reducing the risk of disciplinary action for those who speak up.
