On April 24, 2009, a Metro Orange Line operator filled out an incident report and gave it to Metro’s chief operations officer, telling him that the “lunar” signal directing the train to proceed on Track 1 near the Capitol South station had suddenly turned red without notice, leaving the operator just 100 feet to stop a train full of passengers. It happened again that same day on Track 2 near Eastern Market, and three previous times that same month.
Less than two months after the April 24 incident report was filed, Red Line operator Jeanice McMillan and eight of her passengers were killed near the Fort Totten station when McMillan’s train ran into the back of another train she didn’t know was there.
Spooked by the deadly crash — the worst in Metro’s history — the Orange Line operator’s fears soon turned into “anxiety/panic attacks … as a result of her work environment,” according to an Inova Fairfax Hospital psychologist treating her.
On July 27, the National Transportation Safety Board said the Red Line crash was caused by “a failure of the track circuit modules” that are supposed to keep trains a safe distance apart. But Metro knew about problems with track circuits before — and after — the crash.
In sworn testimony during an Aug. 26 deposition in the Orange Line operator’s ongoing workman’s comp case, retired former chief operations officer Marshall Ruffner admitted that he had not personally investigated the numerous dropped-signal incident reports that he had signed off on. He also admitted that he didn’t give the critical information on the dropped signals to track maintenance crews for follow-up.
In fact, more than a dozen instances of dropped signals were reported at Ballston, McPherson Square, Federal Triangle, Stadium Armory and other stations before June 2009, according to a May 24, 2010, report by former assistant chief engineer Harry Heilmann, Metro’s lead investigator into the fatal crash.
But instead of investigating the dropped signals, telling train operators to slow down and use increased vigilance in these areas, Metro did nothing. Even after the fatal crash, Metro continued to dismiss dropped-signal reports, and told the operator’s attorney that it “denies that any signals were dropped on claimant either as a result of system malfunction or harassment by WMATA employees.”
For example, Automatic Track Control engineer Thomas Shaw insisted that everything was operating normally on Aug. 17, 2009 — two months after the fatal Red Line crash. But Heilmann, Shaw’s former boss, contradicted him, based on a second-by-second time/distance analysis of Metro’s Computer Information System logs, which were obtained by Rep. Frank Wolf’s office.
The logs confirmed the operator’s reports of signal malfunctions: “There are several track circuit sequence and timing instances in the data that clearly validate your reported observation. … Cab is approximately 150 feet from signal when it turns red.”
The all-clear-ahead signal was dropped at 16:09:24 and again at 16:14:43, the Heilmann report noted. “Signal D98-36 drops to red 4 seconds ahead of train; caused by one second failure of 9AAT track circuit.”
The same report said that three days later, on Aug. 21, 2009, “the signal was set to STOP at 08:24:44 and then CLEARED again four seconds later for no apparent reason.” Other Metro employees reported other safety concerns, such as missing third-rail covers, unsafe overcrowding of platforms at high-volume stations, and repairs made with old, uncalibrated parts from Spain that operate differently than those here in the United States — an issue brought up by the signal manufacturer at the NTSB hearings.
Meanwhile, a Metrorail manager told The Examiner that all trains have been running on manual mode ever since the Red Line crash, increasing the risk of human error in what was designed as a computerized, “fail safe” system.
If “lunar” signals are still being dropped without warning, train operators have literally seconds to stop. And if the ATC system is so unreliable that it can’t be trusted, train operators — and Metro passengers — have an even scarier dilemma to ponder.
What if same signal system that mistakenly told McMillan it was safe to go forward on June 9, 2009, is wrong again?
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
