Frame damage on railcar 3008, the lead car of the striking train. All images from WMATA via WMSC unless otherwise noted

A train operator is to blame for an incident in which two trains collided in October 2019, says a report adopted by the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission on Thursday, June 18.

The collision of two out-of-service trains caused “extensive damage” and led Metro to scrap six of the 12 railcars involved instead of trying to repair them.

The incident occurred at 12:48 am on October 7, 2019, just outside the Farragut West station as the rail system was closing up for the night after a baseball game. Train 700 was following Train 755 east-bound on the Orange/Silver/Blue lines between Foggy Bottom and Farragut West. Train 755 was stopped, as there was another train ahead of it just on the east side of Farragut West.

The operator of Train 755 was first to call into the Rail Operations Control Center: “Central, this is 755, did something run into the back of me? What’s going on?” After being asked, the operator of the following train 700 replied and acknowledged making contact with the train ahead of them.

Both operators reported injuries to their backs and necks and were taken to GW Hospital and later released. There were no passengers onboard either train.

The rail collision disrupted the next day’s commute; trains on the Orange, Silver, and Blue lines were cut back to running just every 15 minutes all day, when trains ordinarily would have been running every eight minutes during rush hour. Metro’s investigation required single-tracking around the incident location while investigators finished up their work and prepared to move the disabled trains to the Brentwood rail yard for further investigation.

The Metro safety report notes a troubled work history for the operator of Train 700. Hired initially as a bus operator in 1999, the employee moved to working as a train operator in 2005, and was subsequently disqualified from operating trains in 2006 for “several major safety related incidents” including a collision, a red signal violation, and two station overruns.

The employee was reinstated as a train operator in 2010 and subsequently suspended three times: once in 2011 for 12 days for another red signal violation, three days in 2015 for not reporting a station overrun, and three more days in 2015 for talking with a customer with the operator cab door open while operating the train.

The operator was cited for violating a number of rules during and after the October collision, including “writing false statements” in response to investigator questions, failing to get ROCC permission before moving their train without speed commands, and failing to report their train had struck another.

Metro now says the employee no longer works for the agency “and is not eligible for reinstatement in the future.”

Diagram showing where trains 755 and 700 were when Train 700 ran into the back of Train 755. Image from WMSC.

Breaking protocol, the operator moved the train without permission

At the time of the incident, Train 700 was not supposed to have been moving. The automatic train control (ATC) system was presenting “zero speed commands” - sometimes also referred to as “no readouts” - to the train, meaning it should have been moving at no greater than zero miles per hour.

When operating in “manual mode” like trains typically have been since 2009, the operator is allowed to radio in to the ROCC to notify them of the zero speed command condition. In certain cases, the ROCC may allow the operator to move forward, during which the ATC system limits the train to 15 miles per hour. In the case of the collision, the operator never called into the ROCC and yet moved their train without permission.

The Metro safety report says the operator applied power to accelerate the train five times, none of which were authorized by the ROCC. Three of those five times, upon reaching 15mph, the train automatically braked as designed, but the operator tried again. The fifth time the operator moved the train, it accelerated to 11mph and collided with the rear of Train 755.

As part of the investigation, Metro’s Office of Inspector General obtained cell phone records to determine if the operator of Train 700 was on their phone at the time of the collision. While OIG was unable to prove whether the employee was using the device, “the cell phone believed to be [owned by the employee] was in use at and around the time of the coll[i]sion…”

Damage inside a railcar after the collision. Images from WMSC. 

New software being installed to increase safety

The WMSC issued a Corrective Action Plan in November 2019 requiring Metro add a safety feature to keep trains from moving when they shouldn’t. While there’s no guarantee it would have prevented the October collision, it would have been an additional safeguard.

“The collision occurred after the operator of Train No. 700 moved his train without receiving a speed command and without obtaining permission from the Rail Operations Control Center(ROCC), which is contrary to the requirements of Metrorail Safety Rules and Procedures Handbook (MSRPH) Rule 3.79.”

The stop and proceed procedure allows operators to move their trains forward at speeds up to 15 miles per hour even if the ATC system is providing 0mph speed commands. The new “mode awareness tool (MAT),” recommended for install by the WMSC, requires the operator to acknowledge the 0mph indication before they are then allowed to continue moving the train. Metro has already made progress modifying the 7000-series railcars, but says the 2000, 3000, and 6000-series cars will have it by the end of 2020.

Did Metro’s move away from automatic train operations contribute to the collision?

Metro retired the day-to-day use of Automatic Train Operation, where the train would accelerate and decelerate by itself with an operator supervising, after the fatal 2009 Red Line Fort Totten collision. While the ATO subsystem of the ATC system was cleared, it remains mostly out of service to this day. Metro has briefly turned it back on in the past, and uses it occasionally for new railcar testing.

When operating in manual mode as Metro typically does now, all an operator must do to move their train is to move the “master controller” handle forward. If the train enters an area of zero speed commands, the train will automatically brake; the operator can then move the handle back to brake, and then move it forward again, even if the zero speed command condition is still present.

On the other hand, when operating in ATO, a train will not resume movement on its own unless the zero speed command condition goes away (for instance, if the train ahead moves on out making it safe to resume moving again). The operator would have to choose to take action, switch the train into manual, operate it until the speed commands were back, and then switch the train back to automatic.

This action is functionally similar to the new acknowledgement software that Metro is installing in which the operator makes known they are taking action to manually move the train, yet the later comes without the benefits that automatic train operations include.

“The rail system was designed to be operated in automatic mode,” WMSC CEO Dr. David Mayer said in response to a question during Thursday’s meeting. “Stop and proceed mode over the years, for the last 11 years, the system has been operated entirely in manual mode, and the use of stop and proceed mode on mainline tracks has grown more and more common as these areas of zero speed commands have proliferated.”

Metro has put significant time and effort into overhauling its ATC system since 2009 to address underlying electrical issues, yet less-critical ones like zero speed command conditions persist. What once may have had higher maintenance priority - areas of zero speed commands will bring a train to a stop in ATO - has seemingly lessened in importance, as operators can simply receive permission from the ROCC and slowly operate through those areas.

Instead of requiring action from the operator to switch from ATO to manual, work through the area of zero speed commands, and then switch back to ATO as would have been done prior to the 2009 collision, operators now just use the control handle to change the train’s speed to move forward.

For now, Metro says it’s moving forward in implementing the Mode Awareness Tool to satisfy the WMSC’s safety concern. Over the longer term, however, the agency could break completely away from its current ATC system and replace it with a brand new signaling system.

The WMSC’s next meeting is scheduled for August 4.

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Tagged: foggy bottom, metrorail, safety, transit

Stephen Repetski is a Virginia native and has lived in the Fairfax area for over 20 years. He has a BS in Applied Networking and Systems Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology and works in Information Technology. Learning about, discussing, and analyzing transit (especially planes and trains) is a hobby he enjoys.