WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Railroad Administration has instituted a special safety watch on the financially ailing Amtrak, and Amtrak operating officials have begun a series of “safety blitzes” to caution all train crews, maintenance forces and shop workers to remain alert on the job, according to the Washington Post.
No recent major accidents or passenger injuries have been attributed to Amtrak employees distracted by the company’s financial problems or their own job prospects. The number of serious rule violations, however, has spiked upward this month, and the 20 violations so far in April tie the worst month in recent years.
All the violations have been in stations and yards rather than out on main lines.
Safety watches are rare and, FRA spokesman Robert L. Gould said, “are seldom done on this grand a scale.” Gould said he did not mean to suggest that Amtrak was being declared unsafe, but that Amtrak’s financial and operational situation warrants a major effort. Amtrak has done several safety blitzes in the past, usually when operating officials see a pattern of rules violations or accidents.
The safety concerns grow out of Amtrak’s deteriorating financial and physical condition, complicated by a confused political situation. Amtrak is facing a severe cash crunch and the Transportation Department inspector general, Kenneth M. Mead, has testified that Amtrak would have to shut down its entire system if it received only the $521 million in President Bush’s budget.
The Bush administration has so far not reached agreement on any Amtrak resuscitation proposal, canceling congressional testimony at the last moment on April 11. And while Congress seems sympathetic to giving the system more money, agreement on any Amtrak reform or bailout plan has been elusive.
Even emergency money that Amtrak thought it had received in a supplemental appropriation — $100 million for safety and rescue improvements to the tunnels under the Hudson River into New York Penn Station — has been held up by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
To conserve cash, Amtrak has laid off several hundred station agents, mechanics and other employees. This has lead to dislocations for surviving employees as laid-off employees with higher seniority “bump” junior employees in other cities. Amtrak is also arranging crew schedules to allow more runs with only one engineer in the locomotive cab, saving money but also leading to dislocations.
Similar dislocations in the past have led to safety problems unless management worked vigorously to enforce rules. Amtrak officials said they understand that dynamic and are dedicated to hammering the safety message into employees.
Not only has morale suffered among employees, but also among managers, some of whom have resigned abruptly or have been laid off. Complaints are rising that it is growing more difficult to work with Amtrak.
“There’s no juices flowing within Amtrak,” said an official with a commuter rail agency that contracts with Amtrak to operate its service.”
The commuter official, who requested anonymity, added, “We can’t get them to make a decision. We can’t get them to put anything on a fast track.”
Other companies have experienced safety problems while undergoing financial turmoil, most notably the defunct Eastern Airlines. Union Pacific Railroad had several major wrecks when it experienced serious operating problems after merging with Southern Pacific in 1996. Jerry Davis, then president of Union Pacific, later told a National Transportation Safety Board panel that railroad officials and employees “took our eye off the ball” on safety during the troubles.
“Simply put, safety cannot be compromised,” FRA spokesman Gould said in a statement. “FRA continues to monitor Amtrak’s safety performance in light of its current operational and financial challenges. Where issues affecting safety arise, we review them with Amtrak to ensure that there is no territory-specific or systemic degradation of safety.
“This becomes even more important given recent service and staff reductions. During the latest round of cuts, Amtrak identified specific actions they were going to take to preserve safety and we continue to follow up on that information, paying particular attention to the areas affected by recent cuts.”
The FRA is the federal agency that sets and enforces safety standards for freight, intercity passenger and tourist railroads.
Amtrak Executive Vice President Stan Bagley said he takes all rules violations seriously, and “we saw a few things in April that shouldn’t happen.”
A major rules violation may or may not involve damage, but it always involves serious situations such as running a red signal or failing to follow safety-critical instructions.
Bagley said that in May, June and July, Amtrak will go into the field for 48-hour safety blitzes in which they will attempt to talk to every safety-critical Amtrak employee, beginning with engineers and conductors.
“Whenever you have incidents and you see a pattern or trend to them, you step up work in that area,” Bagley said.
Both Amtrak and the major freight railroads with tracks that are used by Amtrak trains outside the Washington-Boston northeast corridor are stepping up what is euphemistically called “efficiency testing.” This usually involves such tests as deliberately giving a train a red signal and seeing if the engineer stops properly. Officials also often hide near tracks with a speed radar gun and check that engineers are obeying speed limits.
Regional Amtrak officials have also begun their own safety programs. J.S. Tainow, vice president for operations in the northeast corridor, posted a “rules alert” on all bulletin boards earlier this month detailing four serious violations, three of them on April 1 alone, and two of them leading to damage.
“In each of these violations, it appears that employees were either not properly focused on the safety-critical functions at hand, or they made improper assumptions based on preconceived notions,” the bulletin said.
The FRA’s safety watch, which began quietly in late February, involves specific programs in each of the seven FRA regions nationwide. All regional programs include increased surveillance and inspections, plus regular meetings with Amtrak officials and unions.
Some Amtrak engineers and union officials have expressed concern that Amtrak is increasing the number of single-engineer runs. Under collective bargaining agreements, a train may be run with only one engineer if the engineer is not continuously running the train more than six hours. Any run over that length of time, up to the federal 12-hour duty limit, must be made with two crew members in the cab.
By juggling the length of crew runs, Amtrak can often save money by running with only one engineer. For example, the Washington-Chicago Capitol Limited used to run with one two-person locomotive crew from Washington to Pittsburgh. Now, one engineer runs the train from each city to Rockwood, Pa., which is not an Amtrak passenger stop, where crews are driven to a nearby hotel and then return running the next day’s train.
Amtrak agreed several months ago to put two crew members in the locomotive on a number of short runs that operated between midnight and dawn, pending fatigue studies. Now, Amtrak officials have decided that sufficient fatigue countermeasures have been taken to allow single-engineer operation in the overnight hours again.