Senators threaten WMATA takeover; NTSB holding hearing on June crash
Yesterday, the top Senators with oversight over transportation sent a frustrated letter to WMATA Board Chair Peter Benjamin about a “troubling pattern” of safety incidents and threatening “all possible options … including direct federal intervention” if safety does not improve “immediately and comprehensively.”
In the months since the June 22 Metro crash, the NTSB has been investigating the causes of the incident. While the report is still months away, a hearing this week by the NTSB will likely shed some more light on the factors leading to the collision.
The hearing will take place this week over three days at NTSB headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza. The hearing is open to the public and will be webcast live. It will take place today through Thursday, beginning at 9 am.
The hearing will hear testimony from experts in the field and personnel from WMATA. The goal is to determine which factors contributed to the accident, things that hampered the emergency response, and solutions which will prevent recurrence of the event.
To the extent my work schedule allows, I’ll be listening and tweeting live @ggwash.
Here’s the projected schedule for the hearing:
Tuesday
- Introduction of the Board of Inquiry and Technical Panel
- Introduction of parties
- Accident overview
- WMATA’s oversight of safety
- WMATA’s operational actions to address safety issues
- Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC) overview of WMATA
- State safety oversight of rail transit systems
- Federal oversight of rail passenger systems
- High reliability organizations