Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is having a disastrous summer after a train derailment, three scathing reports blasting its safety culture and repeated repair failures, and the problems continue to mount.
Metro Board of Directors Chairman Jack Evans called an emergency meeting after a number of safety failures for the transit agency produced three critical reports from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in August. Investigations reveal supervisors and their employees regularly ignore safety policy and fail to conduct proper track inspections. Train operators blow through red signals — almost causing a head-on collision in July — and ridership is crashing amid SafeTrack repairs.
In a shocking twist to the usual news to come out of the agency, authorities arrested a Metro Transit Police officer Aug. 3 for trying to aid Islamic State terrorists. All this as Evans attempts to secure $300 million in funding from Congress and $1 billion annually from local governments.
“It’s very hard for me to go out and try to get more money for this system when we have these crazy antics happening,” Evans lamented to NBC4 after the July 29 train derailment. “As the chairman of the board, I feel a little disconnected from what’s happening, because there seems to be something happening every day.”
The latest headache for officials stems from the Silver Line derailment outside the East Falls Church station in Virginia, and a possibly falsified inspection report. An initial investigation showed WMATA officials were only conducting track inspections in the area of the accident roughly once a month, despite rules mandating inspections every two weeks. (RELATED: DC Metro Chair Furious After Derailment, Calls For Heads To Roll)
Evans and other officials wondered at the meeting Thursday whether inspections are being conducted at all. Investigators are still trying to determine if a Metro employee falsified the last track inspection conducted before the derailment.
“I don’t know what, if any, crime was committed,” Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said at the meeting. “But we’re going to get to the root of these issues.”
Two scathing reports from the FTA in the wake of the derailment blasted safety deficiencies in the SafeTrack repair plan and forced officials to revise their 10-month repair overhaul last week. Investigators said WMATA officials failed to heed warnings made in the spring, pointing out deficiencies on the tracks between the Ballston and East Falls Church stations where the derailment occurred. FTA investigators told Metro officials to prioritize maintenance on the section of track in question, but were ignored. (RELATED: DC Metro Just Almost Electrocuted A Train Full Of Terrified Passengers After ‘Near Miss’ Collision)
“It is appalling to hear more bad news regarding the ongoing safety struggles at Metro,” Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement earlier this month. “It is damning that the FTA had already identified track problems and highlighted their concerns to Metro about the area outside the East Falls Church station prior to the July 29th derailment.”
The latest report from the FTA released Wednesday criticizes the safety culture of WMATA and the ongoing issue of officials and supervisors encouraging workers to flout safety procedures. The report focuses on train car storage, prompted by several incidents between 2014 and 2015 where train cars unintentionally rolled. (RELATED: Inspectors Rip DC Metro’s ‘Appalling’ Safety Standards, Order Litany Of Urgent Fixes)
Wiedefeld says he takes safety culture seriously, telling his employs in a July letter that it must always trump convenience. Wiedefeld announced in late June that 500 WMATA employees would be laid off over a several-month period.
Wiedefeld met with 650 managers May 10, after a rash of track fires and one track explosion, to discuss the various safety failures. Wiedefeld cleaned house 10 days later, firing 20 station managers.
He also axed a train operator who put the lives of passengers and WMATA workers at risk when he ran a red signal July 5. After blowing through the stop signal the train entered a switch, which placed it on the same track as an oncoming train. The train almost hit two maintenance workers in the tunnel who jumped out of the way. The maintenance workers eventually got the attention of the operator who finally stopped the train.
“We need to step back in this moment and understand what a fundamental change in safety culture requires of all of us,” Wiedefeld said in a July letter to employees, following the near miss collision, obtain by WAMU. “Safety is not a slogan. We hold the lives of people in our hands. Making a choice to ignore safety rules puts those lives at risk.”
The D.C. Metro Board of Directors is scheduled to meet again Sept. 6 to address the continued safety threats plaguing the system.
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