(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Candace Smith on November 22.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal investigators looking into the crash of two Metro trains told the transit agency Monday to change the way subway drivers handle a train rolling backward.
Twenty people were hurt on Nov. 3 when an out-of-control train with just the driver aboard rolled backward and slammed into a passenger train at the Woodley Park Red Line station in Northwest Washington.
The chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board wrote to Metro CEO Richard White: “Immediately revise the directions to train operators contained in your memorandums of November 7 and 9, 2004, to include specific written instructions for identifying and responding to an emergency rollback situation, and provide training to operators on the procedures to follow if such a rollback event occurs.”
Metro sent memos to drivers just days after the crash. But NTSB Chairwoman Ellen Engleman Conners believes the instructions in those notes may be “too broad to prepare train operators to respond appropriately to this type of emergency.”
According to the NTSB, Metro trains operated in automatic mode have a rollback protection feature that automatically applies the brakes. But only 70 upgraded cars in Metro’s fleet have that feature in manual mode, and investigators said once the rollback speed is beyond 2 mph, applying power will not correct the situation. The out of control train was going more than 30 mph.
“In that case, either the service or emergency brakes must be used,” Conners wrote. But that was apparently news to many Metro employees.
“The train operators, the training instructor for train operations, and the operations control center supervisors interviewed by investigators all said they believed that the rollback protection feature would automatically prevent excessive rollback,” Conners wrote.
The transit agency has said it lacks enough money to maintain its existing rail and bus fleet, and has put off repairs and upgrades.
Metro said it did not immediately have a response to the NTSB letter.