After repeated safety incidents, Metro replaces its rail operations control director

WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld has reassigned the leader of the agency’s rail control center and is beginning an external search for a new one, according to a staff notice issued on Monday and obtained by GGWash.

Another Metro director, with past experience in management and consulting, is being brought in to recommend changes to several aspects of the organization including its structure, training, processes, safety, and communication.

Metro’s shakeup at the Rail Operations Control Center, the rail equivalent of an air traffic control facility, comes just over a month after the independent Metrorail safety oversight commission (WMSC) issued a scathing document in which rail controllers told them management disregarded safety and even interfered with rail operations.

“We appreciate Metrorail’s step in the right direction,” said WMSC spokesperson Max Smith, “following our findings over the last seven months, to replace part of the management team with responsibilities for the Rail Operations Control Center.”

Before their latest report, the WMSC issued another back in December which found a “chaotic atmosphere in the ROCC” with “frequent yelling by personnel and conflicting instructions” as controllers tried to reverse a train away from a track fire and ended up restoring power to the tracks while firefighters were still on them.

Wiedefeld named Alison Hall-King, who oversees station and train staff on the Orange and Silver lines, as acting director of the ROCC while the agency performs a nation-wide search to fill the position.

Metro’s ROCC problems are long-running

Problems at Metro’s ROCC aren’t new and the department has faced scrutiny under the oversight of both the WMSC and the Federal Transit Administration. Missteps at the ROCC were at the center of the January 2015 incident where a train with passengers onboard was stuck outside L’Enfant Plaza near an active fire, unable to return to the station. Ninety-one passengers were injured, and one died.

Metro at the time replaced the long-time director of the ROCC, Hercules Ballard, who led the department since September 2008, with another manager inside the ROCC, Lisa Woodruff.

When Woodruff was later promoted in June 2017 to run all of rail operations inside Metro, she was replaced by then-ROCC Assistant Director Deltrin Harris. Woodruff later briefly left Metro to take a position in LA but returned last year as Metro’s Senior Vice President of Rail.

Dysfunction in the ROCC was chronicled by an infamous 2015 Washingtonian piece which detailed testing material “riddled with errors,” incomplete certifications, an “insular culture,” personality differences that pitted senior rail controllers against novices and against train operators, and more.

More recently, the latest WMSC’s report included interviews with rail controllers who told investigators that ROCC leaders, including the ROCC Director, “continue to direct controllers to violate safety rules or procedures.” The report details specific instances of safety violations:

“These incidents included the ROCC Director instructing a controller to direct a train operator to operate past a red signal at a pocket track without first ensuring that the associated switches were clamped as required by Rule 3.67. This rule is designed to prevent derailments due to switch movement during occupancy. Another controller described an event in which the ROCC Director ordered them to instruct a train operator to move a disabled train without verifying that all doors were closed and no customers were on the tracks, as required by Rule 3.37.”

In another instance, the ROCC Director, Harris, told WMSC staff that directions on how to use emergency ventilation fans were available on all controllers’ desks, but controllers themselves said “many…had not seen the document.”

In yet another case, Harris defended ROCC management who remotely manipulated rail controllers’ consoles without notification. Each pair of rail controllers manages their section of the railroad on computers where they align routes for trains to move and set up indications of where workers may be on the tracks. Controllers told the WMSC that ROCC management were known to make changes unknowingly.

WMSC’s report says Harris viewed the remote manipulation “as management taking control to reduce incidents, and suggested it is controllers’ responsibility to be alert for unexpected remote manipulation. “They can see what they did not do,” the Director said.”

WMSC calls for more action, Wiedefeld brings in “outside” help

In a statement from the WMSC, the oversight body said they appreciate the steps Metro leadership took to replace part of the ROCC’s management team but pressed the agency to do more:

“Our findings have identified significant safety problems with management, training and certain other aspects of the ROCC, and we are still looking forward to final, formal Corrective Action Plan proposals that provide specifics on how required improvements will be implemented and sustained. This must include substantial changes to the culture and operations in the ROCC.

We are more optimistic now that our latest findings and the follow up discussions we have had with the highest levels of WMATA leadership have led to a commitment and, now, initial action to address crucial long-running safety issues like the managerial culture in the control center without the need for the WMSC to resort to enforcement action. We are hopeful that these new assignments, reviews and reporting structures will provide a basis for the positive changes we are requiring.”

The WMSC lists 56 open Corrective Action Plans which require work from WMATA to address, as of May 15. At least seven of them relate directly to the ROCC.

Jayme Johnson, listed on LinkedIn as a Director of Strategic Initiatives at Metro, is being brought into the ROCC by Wiedefeld to advise on changes needed to turn the organization into a safer one. “Jayme will make recommendations about organizational structure, management coaching/training, process changes, controller engagement, internal communication tools, and other strategies to strengthen the safety and leadership culture.”

Johnson, a fairly recent hire to Metro from the UK who joined the agency in 2017, has been involved in several recent agency initiatives. Featured in Mass Transit Magazine’s 2019 “40 under 40,” Johnson’s profile notes the group he’s built has been involved in increasing overnight work productivity (“wrench time’) and prototyping a new way to safely turn off third rail power.

A Fulbright Scholar, Johnson worked for a decade at London’s Metropolitan Police and Booz Allen Hamilton before joining Metro. He serves also as an adjunct professor at American University. At Metro, “Jayme’s team collaborates across departments…to deliver significant improvements in safety, efficiency and operational delivery for the DC region’s transit system.”

As an additional immediate step to address WMSC concerns, Wiedefeld says Andy Off, who recently returned to Metro as VP of Project Implementation, has been tasked to “improve the ROCC’s processes and technology for de-energizing third rail power.”