D.C. Metro can’t automate more trains because some aren’t stopping in time

By Rachel Weiner | Washington Post

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Metro cannot expand automated trains beyond the Red Line because they too often overshoot stations, the agency’s safety watchdog declared Tuesday. But Metro leaders say the automated trains are actually safer than those operated by drivers.

It’s a setback the agency argues is out of line with federal safety regulations and other rail systems, setting the stage for another clash between the transit agency and the watchdog overseeing its rail operations since 2019.

Since trains began running in automatic mode on the Red Line in December, 217 overran stations, 10 times as many as those operated by drivers. Paul Smith, director of systems engineering with the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, called it an “unacceptable level” at a virtual meeting Tuesday.

“Based on these continued overruns just on the Red Line, Metrorail’s automatic train system cannot be relied upon to make station stops at fixed locations, which is the whole point of ATO,” Smith said, using shorthand for automatic train operations. About 38 percent of overruns are by three or more cars, he added.

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Hundreds of trains run the Red Line every day. Metro says that since December only 3 out of every 10,000 trains stops were in the wrong spot; 674,249 trains were in the right place. Sixty thousand more Red Line customers were on time in March than in prior months. The more important metric, the agency argues, is that no train running in automatic mode has gone through a red signal, while human operators have three times in that period.

“ATO has been a safety and efficiency success demonstrated by zero red signal violations on the Red Line,” a Metro spokesperson said. “Metro is prepared to move into ATO operations on Green Line now and other lines by this summer.” The Federal Transit Administration doesn’t consider station overruns a safety issue, Metro says, and neither do other transit agencies.

Automatic train operations will also save the agency $7 million a year and have cut four minutes off each end-to-end Red Line train run, the agency said.

Metro was built in the 1960s as an automated system, and automation generally results in a smoother and safer ride. Every train still has a conductor on board. Some of the overruns are caused by human error, Smith said, with operators accidentally pressing a button that cancels a station stop. Metro plans to disable that feature. But other overruns appear to be caused by electromagnetic interference from outside stations, particularly at Judiciary Square, that Metro is still working on fixing.

Even within the safety commission, there was disagreement over how serious an issue the overruns are. “We’re seeing improvement” from automatic operations on the “more critical” red-signal compliance, Commissioner Christopher Conklin said at the meeting.

“This is the third month we’re talking about this,” added Commissioner Devin Rouse. “We don’t want to get lost in the trees and not see the whole forest.” He highlighted close calls between trains that have occurred with human operators, saying, “We can’t pretend there’s a magical fix from the manual perspective.”

At the same meeting, commissioners discussed an incident from July in which two trains in manual operation came within 420 feet of a head-on collision.

On the other side was Christopher Hart, commission chair, who suggested bringing in the National Transportation Safety Board “to get to the bottom of this.” Smith argued station overruns are a safety concern if the train hits something or someone on the track just outside the station, and passengers could be injured trying to exit in an emergency. (Generally, when a train goes too far for all passengers to exit through the doors, the stop is skipped.)

A WMSC spokeswoman said that it was a “varied discussion,” not a disagreement, and that “all agreed that WMATA has not used safety management and engineering principles to determine reasons for the station stopping failures in ATO.”

Automatic train operation was turned off after a train collision in 2009 that killed nine people. Even though the blame was ultimately attributed to faulty signals in the tracks, not the train cars, attempts to revert to automation were delayed repeatedly as the agency struggled to solve the infrastructure and maintenance issues exposed by the crash.

But it was an earlier collision on the minds of commissioners — a 1996 crash at Shady Grove, when a train in automatic mode collided with another on an icy track and an operator was killed. After that crash, the FTA recommended a comprehensive safety analysis of the causes of station overruns.

“The problem of the 1990s still exists today,” commission CEO Dave Mayer said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Metro says it has already addressed that concern by telling operators to turn off the ATO system and slow down in inclement weather; the 1996 crash followed multiple warnings from operators about the slippery conditions that supervisors ignored.

Metro is in a unique position among transit agencies due to years of dysfunction and crises that culminated in the creation of the WMSC by Congress. Along with the two deadly crashes, a tunnel fire in 2015 that killed a passenger led to the creation of the commission, which has power over operational decisions such as the use of automation.

In recent years Metro invested heavily in safety improvements and improved performance. Both the agency’s board and General Manager Randy Clarke have bristled at some of the safety commission’s interventions as overreach. Tensions came to a head in 2022, after the WMSC pulled half the system’s cars out of operation for months over a wheel defect.

There is one point of agreement between the WMSC and Metro — the automated system, designed in the 1960s, deserves an upgrade. Metro is lobbying regional leaders to invest in an advanced signaling system that would be precise enough to line up with platform screen doors protecting riders from falling on the tracks.

And the safety commission is not asking Metro to turn off ATO on the Red Line. Instead, it said, it’s a chance to study the issue and do the assessment the commissioners are seeking.

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