Benjamin Kabak

Crews installed speed restriction signs at Metro-North’s Port Chester station on December 12, 2013. Photo: MTA / Patrick Cashin

When the MTA is in crisis mode, it has shown the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to address issues. For an agency not known for finishing projects on time, adapting new technologies within any reasonable timeframe or generally seeing through innovation, time and again, the MTA tackles major problems better than just about any other governmental agency. Most subway service was restored less than a week after Sandy in 2012, and, more recently, Metro-North and the LIRR instituted sweeping safety improvements barely a week after the first crash with passenger fatalities in Metro-North history.

For this, the MTA deserves some praise. The agency has learned how to make the most out of potentially catastrophic scenarios and has become adept at responding. But the speed with which the MTA addressed some major underlying safety concerns over the past few weeks has raised some eyebrows. Why did it take a fatal crash to implement basic safety upgrades? If these problems were so easy to fix, why weren’t they implemented years ago?

WNYC’s Kate Hinds raised this question on her Twitter account last week, and today, Matt Flegenheimer tackles it in The Times. Here’s an excerpt of his story, and it is not particularly kind:

Since a Metro-North Railroad train derailed in the Bronx on Dec. 1, killing four people and injuring more than 70, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has not had to look far for safety remedies that might have prevented the crash. Recently ordered improvements, delivered in response to the derailment, have been borrowed from Metro-North’s sister agency, the Long Island Rail Road, and at times from the Metro-North system itself.

Changes significant enough to have thwarted the crash, according to rail experts, were simple enough to have been completed within days. Others are so straightforward that some of the authority’s board members assumed they had been in place for years. While the authority and federal investigators have cautioned that a full accounting of the derailment is not yet complete, many transit officials have arrived at a troubling conclusion since the crash: The authority could have — and in many cases should have — installed a series of protections long before the train’s operator apparently became dazed at the controls early that Sunday morning, racing into a sharp curve at nearly three times the allowable speed…

Asked why broader changes to Metro-North’s signal system were not made sooner — particularly at well-known curves like the one at Spuyten Duyvil — Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the authority, said it was the job responsibility of train operators to “know all the physical characteristics, including the speed limits” in all areas where they were qualified to work. For more than 30 years, she said, “that system worked fine,” with no accident-related passenger fatalities since Metro-North was created in 1983. The recent changes were “a result of the intense introspection currently underway at Metro-North,” she said.

The bulk of Flegenheimer’s explores the reactions to the MTA’s changes. Board members were surprised by the speed at which Metro-North implemented its fixes and were floored to find out that many were rooted in common sense and parallel best-practices in place at the Long Island Rail Road. “The fact that some of the stuff was done in the rebuilding of track that occurred over a couple of days, it does lead you to believe that it could have been done earlier,” William Henderson, head of the MTA’s Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, said.

Other MTA Board members wondered if an intense focus on on-time performance was to blame while others wondered if the federal government’s singular approach to safety via a federally mandated positive train control system forced the MTA to examine safety issues through a single-lens approach. “I think it may have slowed down the process, actually,” Ira Greenberg said to The Times. “Why put in a system on top of a system that does virtually the same thing, when you can wait for the better one?”

Ultimately, though, the MTA’s response to the crash and the response to the response brings up a tried-and-true problem with the agency — and really any government agency of its size and breadth. The MTA has been essentially reactive for decades now as it has struggled to overcome decades of deferred maintenance and disinvestment in the system. It is not a proactive leader in the global field of transit, and it may never get there. From an area as basic as the fare payment technology to a realm as important as safety, the MTA has not been ahead of the curve, and two weeks ago, it proved quite costly indeed.

Crews installed speed restriction signs at Metro-North’s Port Chester station yesterday. Photo: MTA / Patrick Cashin

Less than two weeks after a fatal crash that killed four people and a few days after the MTA rushed to implement federally mandated safety improvements, the Federal Railroad Administration has announced it will begin an exhaustive review of Metro-North’s “safety culture” over the next two months. The 60-day review will commence on Monday, and this so-called Operation Deep Dive is the first of its kind.

“Safety is our top priority, and this in-depth investigation will help ensure that Metro-North is doing everything possible to improve its safety record,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. “Together with our other recent efforts, Operation Deep Dive will give travelers the peace of mind they deserve when traveling throughout the railroad’s region.”

According to the FRA, the review will be comprehensive and will explore the following factors:

• Track, signal and rolling stock maintenance, inspection and repair practices;
• Protection for employees working on rail infrastructure, locomotives and rail cars;
• Communication between mechanical and transportation departments at maintenance facilities;
• Operation control center procedures and rail traffic controller training;
• Compliance with federal Hours of Service regulations, including fatigue management programs;
• Evaluating results of operational data to measure efficiency of employees’ execution and comprehension of all applicable federal regulations;
• Locomotive engineer oversight;
• Engineer and conductor certification; and
• Operating crew medical requirements.

Once the review wraps in mid-February, the FRA will produce a report with its findings and recommendations. Then agency will assess Metro-North’s compliance with the safety order issued last week and will assess if other actions are necessary. According to various reports, the FRA decision stemmed not only from the fatal crash earlier this month but also from a series of accidents, fatal and non-fatal, over the course of 2013.

For its part, Metro-North has seemingly embraced the review. In comments to The Times, a spokesman said the agency was examining its safety culture and working to assess “whether there are any common factors” to the various accidents this month. Meanwhile, the MTA is hoping that, in light of recent bad press and the perception of the problem, it can find a silver lining in this cloud. Ted Mann of The Wall Street Journal reports on a large fiscal ask:

Also Thursday, the MTA asked the FRA for a new $1 billion loan from a federally controlled program to pay for installation of positive train control, or PTC, a next-generation signal system that is intended to prevent train crashes caused by operator error, including speeding.

The $1 billion loan request comes in addition to the $2.2 billion MTA has already sought to help pay for East Side Access, a massive, subterranean new terminal station for the Long Island Rail Road beneath the streets north of Grand Central Terminal. That loan request has not been approved.

In a letter to Administrator Joseph Szabo, Mr. Prendergast said the federal loan would provide a much needed infusion of cash as the MTA develops PTC systems for Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. The MTA is among a number of large commuter railroads that said they do not expect to meet the December 2015 deadline to install PTC systems on all inter-city passenger and many freight rail lines.

As Mann notes, the $1 billion request is for — surprise! — $300 million more than the MTA originally priced out a PTC installation. It’s unclear why the project is over budget, but the new number comes as no surprise. As Mann notes as well, the MTA does not believe that it will be in compliance with a 2015 deadline for PTC, but New York’s is hardly the only transit agency facing such a problem. Legislation to extend the deadline to 2020 is pending the U.S. Senate.