A tragedy waiting to happen

June 25, 2009

Renee Collins describes the background to the deadly crash on the Washington, D.C., train line she rides to work every day--a series of missed signals and neglected warnings of a disaster in the making.

I RETURNED to work Wednesday morning, two days after a deadly collision on the Red Line in Washington, D.C., killed nine people, hospitalized 80 and shut down a section of track I travel every workday.

Like many of my fellow commuters, I braved the Wednesday journey out of neither courage nor denial, but necessity. I have no car or bike, and the same commute by bus would take twice as long.

So from where I get on the Red Line, we rode in a free shuttle bus past the twisted wreckage and an army of media satellite vans, rushed into any but the first and last cars on the train waiting at the station, and settled in to read free Washington Post Express papers with the headline "NTSB: Train Was Unsafe."

This much I already knew before Monday's carnage. It's the reason I was horrified but not surprised when eight fellow passengers and an operator rolled the dice and lost their lives--regular commuters know that it wasn't a question of if such an accident would happen, but when.

What does surprise me is that just two days after the crash, we're already learning that the situation was even worse than we thought.

Scene of the Washington, D.C. train collision
Scene of the Washington, D.C. train collision

The "communications malfunction" that slowed the Red Line and made me late for work earlier this month involved the crucial automatic operations system that should have prevented Monday's crash from happening at all. It was engaged at the time of the crash and is supposed to have fail-safes to keep trains apart.

Metro employees told the Washington Post that the first two cars of the striking train were two months overdue for maintenance on "braking components." Only further investigation will tell if this is why the trains collided even after operator Jeanice McMillan applied the emergency brakes.

Despite the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) checkered past in rider safety, the media first settled on "operator error"--in particular, McMillan, who died in the crash. One example, according to Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy--"Someone asked a Metro official whether the crash had been caused by the 'inexperienced woman driver.'"

Never mind that the amount and quality of McMillan's training was entirely up to her bosses. Never mind that the system required her to place her and her passengers' lives in the hands of an automatic system that needs the driver's input only to close the doors before leaving the station.

When offered the choice between blaming a Black, working-class, single mom who was proud to help so many people get to work, and a multimillion-dollar bureaucracy more obsessed with arresting riders who sully its carpeted cars with forbidden food and drink than making sure train cars will withstand a collision, the sharks circled around Jeanice McMillan. Dead women file no libel lawsuits.

The blame should be directed at Mayor Adrian Fenty and the WMATA board. Their negligence is criminal, and the families of Jeanice McMillan, David and Ann Wherley, Mary Doolittle, Lavanda King, Veronica Dubose, Cameron Williams, Dennis Hawkins and Ana Fernandez are testament to their guilt. They were the ones who died, but it could have been any of us.


WMATA USERS are well versed in riding on, despite the dangers. Most working-class people in the D.C. area couldn't work, go to school or seek medical care without using a transit system that is over capacity and under-funded.

We are reminded repeatedly--as service is cut and fares increase--that WMATA is the only major transit system without a dedicated source of income. Mismanagement--waste and outright theft--takes a heavy price. None of us know exactly how the surviving funds are spent--we only know that we don't see any sign of them on our daily trips.

The first signals of distress are the constant breakdowns of escalators and elevators at Metro stations. Riders physically unable to use stairs are often forced to go several stops out of their way just to be able to reach the surface. Slowdowns, breakdowns, station fires and other "system malfunctions" are system-wide, but the most heavily utilized Red Line suffers the most.

Metro employees have voiced concerns about the safety of the system and its workers. A train operator died in 1996 when his train slid too far on icy tracks; four rail maintenance workers were killed in three separate accidents in 2005 and 2006; and in 2006, an empty train rolled backwards after losing power and crashed into another behind it--most experts agree that if that malfunctioning train had been full, passengers would have died, perhaps an even greater number than on Monday.

The only fatality from the 2006 crash was the empty train's operator. He didn't die in the crash. Instead, he committed suicide after being fired and losing his pension.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), firing the operator seems to be the only action WMATA took in response to the near-disaster in 2006. NTSB officials said they were alarmed by how easily the older "1000 Series" car at the back of the train had split open on impact. But without regulatory power, it could only "recommend" to WMATA that the 30-plus-year-old cars be replaced--or at the very least, reinforced to better protect passengers.

WMATA dismissed both suggestions as too expensive and continued to use the cars for 25 percent of its fleet. Metro management also cried poverty when it ignored recommendations to retrofit all cars with "black box" data recorders and update the software of the computer system that controls train operations.

Another fact already in the public record is that most WMATA board members don't actually use the system on a regular basis. (One board member haughtily told a Washington Post reporter that her schedule was far too important to be delayed, so she chose to drive instead.)

I guess that's why they're the only ones who seem surprised by this tragedy.

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