Is Metrorail’s safety commission ready to stop holding trains hostage?

Washington-area rail riders need, want, and deserve more trains on Metro’s tracks. In recent months, running those trains has been most greatly stymied by the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission (WMSC), the independent regulatory body that holds WMATA services accountable for safety. Though WMSC ostensibly has the public’s interest in mind, the commission has not clearly communicated to the public what its precise goals are, and what costs it is willing to exact to reach them. On Thursday, WMSC announced that WMATA submitted a new plan for a phased Return to Service; accepting it would be a huge step forward for the region.

For more than a year after WMATA pulled its 7000 series trains under previous General Manager Paul Wiedefeld due to wheel alignment issues, the agency has worked to fix the operational, management, and technical processes that led to the derailment of one (1) train car. WMATA and WMSC should be partners in achieving a safe and functional transit system, but they’re not: At each sign of restored service, bad news seems to follow shortly after. There’s a now-familiar pattern of WMATA working to bring trains back only to have the leash pulled by WMSC because the standards the commission developed were not met, or there was confusion over requirements.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that WMATA’s plans to restore service were yet again been denied by WMSC. At issue, chiefly, is the frequency of inspections of the train cars between runs, with each inspection introducing costly time and process, and the configuration of axles each train may have. Repeatedly denying WMATA’s proposals has forced riders to crowd on trains, drive (putting them at 17 times the risk of death as on a train), or be stranded, and may upend plans to run the Silver Line to Dulles by Thanksgiving this year, a meaningful step for WMATA’s recovery.

There’s still hope: Jordan Pascale of WAMU/DCist shared details Thursday of WMATA’s revised plan that allows the agency to run trains with fewer of the time-intensive inspections, freeing up more trains for service over the next 30 days. WMSC will soon decide whether to let the Washington region move again.

What’s the safety commission’s responsibility to riders?

By now, it should be clear that the WMSC has no mandate or active interest in the public’s overall safety. While to WMSC that may mean WMATA’s operations only, in practice it includes how safe any resident of or visitor to the region is without WMATA as a realistic option. So, WMSC has not been not promoting safety, per se, but insisting that trains themselves reach its increasingly obscure threshold of “safety.” If we don’t have a rail system that the public can realistically ride and rely on, we are leaving our economic recovery on the table as much as we are putting former riders who are now driving at greater risk.

Sure, the negative externalities—like fatal and injurious crashes increasing because people are more enticed to drive when transit is not frequent or reliable—of keeping trains out of service might be outside WMSC’s purview. But as more trips shift from rail to car, possibly enabling yearslong habits, how much greater risk on the region’s roads is it acceptable to in pursuit of a precise (and, apparently, hardly attainable) state of a train car?

Forty-seven years to the week after the NY Daily News condemned Gerald Ford’s disinterest in the plight of New York City, Washington region riders could be forgiven for wondering if they’ve been getting the same message: “Safety council to Metrorail riders: Drop dead.”

The safest train is still a train, not a car

The Post quoted an assortment of Virginia-based national legislators offering both-sidesist, vague exhortations to both WMATA and WMSC to “get this done,” refrain from “turf battles,” and “[resolve] these issues.” If Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (who later reportedly held a conciliation meeting between the two agencies) and Representative Gerry Connolly are inclined to treat this situation as marital counseling where everyone agrees to do better for the sake of the children, they will do well to recall that the children in this case are six million people in the greater Washington region.

Whether individuals take Metro or not, our economy and access to services of any kind—education, commercial, medical, religious, entertainment—depends fundamentally on a significant number of those people taking transit. The power to kneecap Metro’s ability to serve the public just as the system is emerging from its Covid battles must not be in the hands of a commission that is explicitly considering safety in a vacuum.

In the real world, where DC, Virginia, and Maryland constituents tend to reside, trains take people from one place to another. If the train is not there or full, a person either cannot move, or they choose a worse option (driving). The National Safety Council, which has a more holistic concept of transportation safety than WMSC, calculates that driving will kill one in a hundred of us in our lifetimes, whereas the odds of dying on transit are the same as being struck by lightning: too small to calculate. That comparison holds out on a per-mile basis, too.

Congress’ expectation of WMSC seems to be that it ensures no one dies or is hurt on a train, regardless of how many deaths or how many injuries or how high the economic cost incurred. Given that, federal legislators should dictate that WMSC make that standard plain. As it is, constituents have no idea what “safety” means, or what it looks like, or when it will be achieved—and their elected representatives don’t appear to be pressing for any specifics.

If WMSC is unable, under its current remit, to account for the danger it puts riders in by forcing some to drive, its decisions will not be in the best interests of the region. While WMATA’s revised plan is an opportunity for the commission to let the region get moving again, questions remain about the premise that it’s OK for riders to be put at higher risk as long as that risk isn’t on a train.

The public should hear the truth clearly, and often, and whenever the topic comes up: every restored train makes the public safer.