DC Metro Crash: The Real Tragedy
[img_assist|nid=293|title=2009 DC Metro Accident|desc=Originally from the AP (via Google)
District of Columbia Fire and Emergency workers remove a victim from the site of a rush-hour collision between two Metro transit trains in northeast Washington, D.C. Monday, June 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)|link=node|align=right|width=250|height=246]
If you're in the DC area, this news has been unavoidable the last couple of days.
If you're a commuter in the DC area who uses the Red Line of the Metro system, you're struggling through one of the worst times the system's seen. At least the worst time that's not related to tourists and security scares.
I worked from home on Tuesday so I wouldn't have to deal with the crazy problems caused by this terribly accident. Getting home Monday night, just a few hours after it happened, was a challenge. Not as much a challenge as it was for people actually on the trains involved... and far from as bad as those nine who didn't make it out alive.
That's a bunch of bad stuff right there. People dead. Transit disrupted. Expensive bit of commuter equipment destroyed.
The worst thing is that it's starting to look like this could have all been prevented.
I've held off commenting on all this until there was some small amount of actual fact coming through in the news reports. Some bit of investigation that pointed toward an actual cause. There were suppositions and insinuations of mechanical problems and driver error all over the place Monday night. People all up in arms over all sorts of things that had little basis in any facts connected with this particular DC Metro accident.
Now there are some facts and I'm rightly pissed off.
From the LA Times:
Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said the emergency brake was depressed, and the steel rails showed evidence that the brakes were engaged. Investigators also said the moving train had been in automatic mode, which means onboard computers should have controlled its speed and stopped it before it got too close to the stationary train.
This is a system failure. This crash should not have happened.
Back in 2004, there was a similar accident at the Woodley Park metro station, also on the Red Line. One train rolled backward down the track, building up enough speed to end up sitting on top of the front of the train that had stopped at the platform. Thankfully, the trains weren't full of people. But the main train involved in that accident was also one of these 1000 series trains--some of the oldest equipment in use in the DC Metro system.
That 2004 accident prompted a lot of attention from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
From The Roanoke Times:
Hersman told The Associated Press that the NTSB had warned in 2006 that the old fleet should be replaced or retrofitted to make it better able to survive a crash.
Neither was done, she said, which the NTSB considered "unacceptable."
"Unacceptable," indeed.
Metro (and the officials who fund it) knew this could happen--that it already had happened--and the major source of the problem wasn't dealt with.
From CNN.com:
There should be nine data recorders aboard the first train, which will aid the investigation a great deal if they aren't damaged, Hersman said. The recorders provide data on such things as speed, braking and emergency applications. She said there were no recorders on the rear train.
"We've recommended for years that WMATA either retrofit those cars or phase them out of the fleet. They have not been able to do that. And our recommendation was not addressed, so it has been closed in an unacceptable status," she said.
The facts, as they stand now, are these:
- The train was in auotmatic mode
- Auotmatic mode is supposed to keep trains a certain distance apart
- The driver tried to apply the brakes
- The structure of the old cars can not handle a collision without massive internal structural failure
- Nine people are dead
This is nothing short of some sort of negligent homicide.
Unfortunately, since there were no "black box" type recording devices in the 1000-Series cars, we may never know exactly what happened.
All we know for sure, right now, is that this a tragedy that could have been prevented--if Metro had listened to the NTSB, if funding had been there to upgrade the cars, if those upgrade happened in a timely manner, if... if... if...
