‘137/365’
courtesy of ‘brianmka’
The National Transportation Safety Board has announced a Board meeting on July 27th to share findings related to the Red Line crash in June 2009. You may recall that Metro has been operating trains manually (and therefore at lower speed) since the incident nearly a year ago, pending the outcome of NTSB’s investigation. So it’ll be nice to get final recommendations from NTSB for Metro to follow up on so that factor contributing to system unreliability can finally be eliminated.
Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.
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We continue to work closely with the NTSB on its number one priority of safety. We are committed to following through on the NTSB’s final recommendations, and have already started making improvements as part of our Safety Action Plan.
The actions taken to date include:
1. We changed our mode of operating trains from automatic to manual and we will continue to do so until the NTSB has issued its final report, and any necessary modifications are completed;
2. We increased the frequency of computerized testing of track circuits to twice daily.
3. We developed a real-time circuit monitoring and tracking system and we are currently testing that system to ensure its reliability.
4. We drafted a Roadway Worker Protection Program and submitted it to the Tri-State Oversight Committee for their review and recommendations.
5. We assigned safety officers to our bus and rail divisions.
6. We appointed a new Chief Safety Officer and hired six new staff members in the Safety Office and we are currently in the process of bringing six additional staffers on board in our Safety Office.
Other actions that are being initiated include:
1. We are developing an incident management system to analyze trends and spot issues in advance to minimize the possibility of incidents occurring.
2. We are starting Transportation Safety Institute training.
3. We are establishing cross-departmental Safety Action Teams throughout the organization.
Our Safety Action Plan also calls for equipment improvements. A contract is expected to be awarded in the near future to begin to build rail cars and replace the 1000 series cars; and
1. Rollback protection is being added to rail equipment.
These are among the many actions that we have planned and are working on to continually improve safety for our customers and employees.