Four times in 2017, Metro rail workers have been put in danger by trains entering work areas at speed with unauthorized workers on the tracks, federal regulators said Monday.
As a result, the Federal Transit Administration ordered Metro on Monday to beef up worker safety immediately, including using redundant procedures to make sure workers are safe.
And the regulators asked Metro to send them a plan to permanently improve worker safety and fix staffing shortages at rail and maintenance operations centers.
If that doesn't happen, the regulators are threatening to withhold 25 percent of some of Metro's federal money.
"I find that unsafe conditions and practices exist that present a substantial risk of death or personal injury to roadway workers at WMATA," the letter from Thomas Littleton of the Federal Transit Administration reads.
Last year, a Metro train almost ran over two federal safety inspectors, WTOP has reported. In that case, the train operator misheard a radio announcement about where work crews were located -- and the rail operations center never corrected the operator when he repeated the bad information.
The letter is a follow-up to a similar letter from Littleton in April 2016, which also addressed critical safety issues for riders.
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The Federal Transit Administration has had oversight of Metro safety since October 2015. In January of that year, a woman died inside a smoke-filled train near the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station.
In a statement, Metro said:
"We share the FTA’s concerns and are working closely together on roadway worker protections. For example, we have strengthened procedures in our Rail Control Center, requiring controllers to document the signals they are canceling to protect workers, as well as to record specific trains alerted to personnel on the right of way during track closures. This procedure is being routinely audited by management to ensure compliance.
"Other corrective actions mentioned in the FTA letter are also underway and we have begun to implement the Protran technology warning system as a secondary measure for roadway protection, which is funded through an FTA grant. We will provide a full and timely response to all of the recommendations in the FTA’s letter."
