NTSB recommends the federal government take over safety oversight of Metro
Photo by Cliff on Flickr.
The National Transportation Safety Board has “urgently” recommended that the Federal Railroad Administration take over safety oversight for WMATA.
FRA already regulates safety for intercity rail, including freight and passenger rail like Amtrak, and commuter rail systems like MARC and VRE. It doesn’t oversee most urban transit systems, except the PATH train between New York and New Jersey.
Since WMATA spans DC, Maryland, and Virginia, the current oversight body is the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC), a team of officials from the three jurisdictions’ departments of transportation who oversee safety.
The current system has failed
The TOC has often not been successful. After the Fort Totten crash, it turned out WMATA had refused to let them access the tracks. But the group could only write more and more exasperated letters to the same people at Metro and apparently had no way to escalate the issue outside the agency. Some higher-ups at the DOTs didn’t even know that TOC members reported to their organizations.
There were efforts to beef up the TOC since 2009-2010, but the NTSB has concluded they have not been successful.
The FRA may have downsides as well
While there’s a lot of reason to support this move, it’s also important to have some caution as well. There are possible drawbacks to federal control of these systems.
The FRA, for its part, has come under criticism in the past for the way it regulates safety. On intercity railroads, for instance, FRA pushed for heavier trains which can survive crashes instead of trains that can stop more quickly to avoid crashes. This forced US rail vehicles to be heavier than European counterparts, making it more expensive to buy them. Problems with cracking in Acela trains a decade ago were blamed, at least in part, on the extra weight because of this rule.
PATH officials have blamed FRA regulations for high operational costs. For example, the FRA required PATH to run more tests, more often, including tests on things not strongly connected to safety such as air conditioning.
If the FRA does take over, it could ensure safety oversight is stronger, which is absolutely necessary. It’s also possible it might raise costs, and the region must be vigilant to ensure that FRA never throws the baby out with the bathwater by hamstringing Metro in some way that degrades service.