Feds called for agency to upgrade testing
Metro is working with an Annapolis company to build a real-time alert system ordered by federal safety officials to help catch the problems that may have led to last month’s deadly train crash.
The company, ARINC, began work last week, said Metro spokeswoman Candace Smith. The firm has an existing contract with Metro for $15 million to upgrade Metro’s operations control center, she said, but it was not clear Wednesday how the company would be paid for the work.
Metro General Manager John Catoe said Wednesday on WAMU’s “Kojo Nnamdi Show” that the agency didn’t receive competitive bids. He likened the process, though, to getting initial emergency room treatment. “When we go to the hospital, then we will go out to bid,” he said.
“I don’t have time to wait to go through a process or talk to 15 people about which design is better.”
The upgrade is especially important after Metro revealed it had found other problems in at least five areas of the rail system’s train sensors beyond the crash site.
Transit system officials were working on four track circuits in the area of Grosvenor to Medical Center on the Red Line, Foggy Bottom to Rosslyn on the Orange and Blue lines, Courthouse to Clarendon on the Orange Line, and between Takoma and Fort Totten on the Red Line at the crash site as of Wednesday, according to Smith.
A fifth track circuit that wasn’t working properly near Greenbelt on the Green Line has been fixed, she said.
Such problems mean trains must run at 15 mph or slower in those areas as a safety precaution, creating potential bottlenecks. The slowdowns are on top of the delays already felt on the Red Line since the crash. It is not clear when normal service will resume permanently.
Metro officials have not specified how many circuits have been adjusted since the crash. Last week, Metro said three circuits had been adjusted.
However, Catoe has said the problems are not “remotely close” to the problems experienced on the equipment near the June 22 crash site, where it appears the sensors failed to warn a train traveling automatically that another train was stopped ahead on the tracks. Nine people were killed, and more than 70 were injured.
Catoe said Wednesday that the failures found in the other circuits so far were “blips” that lasted “a second or less.” Trains run at least two minutes apart, he said, implying that such blips would not lead trains to crash.
Metro is reviewing computer data twice a day to find those blips, whereas it had run such tests monthly before the crash and daily in the days immediately following it.
But the National Transportation Safety Board has labeled the transit agency’s testing inadequate and called for a continuous testing system that would alert officials in real time as soon as a system falters. Metro has said those systems do not exist for its trains and would have to hire a company to build one.
