So Now What, Mr. Sarles?

UPDATE:

From Metro: "WMATA has found that this [issue] is one of improving communications, not discipline."

Metro's top management was caught with their pants down Monday over the escalator cover up. It probably would have remained whitewashed had there not been an incident at L'Enfant.

Here's what Metro itself had to say Wednesday about its escalator/elevator operation:

VTX's findings, combined with Metro's own inspections, affirm that one of the major factors of the state of Metro's escalators and elevators is a result of many years during which there has been a lack of adherence to Metro's own maintenance standards. Metro will continue its focused work until all 588 of the system's escalators and 275 elevators meet the agency's maintenance standards.

The report identifies escalator brake issues among several maintenance issues to be addressed by the agency. Mr. Sarles acknowledged today (Nov. 10) that, while escalator brakes were being addressed as a maintenance issue, greater emphasis should have been placed on brakes as a safety matter and elevated to the Board's attention sooner.

But the question remains who will be held accountable for this abject lack of leadership and utter incompetence, both of which again drew blood from the riding public.

Metro can't seem to permanently fire texting bus drivers and train operators, McGruff-punching employees, sleeping train operators ... the list goes on and on and on, but what about the bigwigs who hold the lives of millions in their hands? They're not protected by a union.

Can Metro fire the management responsible for covering up major escalator problems that led to 18 seconds of terror at L'Enfant?

Will the guy in charge of escalators, David Lacosse, stay on in that role? Will the assistant general manager, David Kubicek, who basically lied to the Board of Directors on Oct. 14, keep his job?

Back in 2008, Lacosse was suspended for a week because one of the people who worked for him made some off-color jokes at a dinner.

Lacosse's response?

“I guess I am the head of the department,” Lacosse told The Examiner. “Ultimately, I’m responsible."

What about now, Metro? Seems like this is considerably more serious. Is he responsible?

We want to know.

The many injured at L'Enfant, as well as the rest of us who now view all escalators as suspect, deserve to know that someone at Metro is held accountable so that years of neglect won't happen again. A frenzied inspection after the fact, a torrent of tweets and the release of a report aren't enough.

There hasn't even been an apology from anyone at Metro!

Metro has many problems, and accountability is, in this blog's opinion, the biggest.

So, here's a chance for you, pro tem GM Sarles, to show that you're not an escalefter blocking progress, that you really meant all those things you said when you took the helm.

What are you going to do?

If you have an opinion about what he should do, email Mr. Sarles and let him know your thoughts: rsarles(at)wmata.com. CC Unsuck (unsuckdcmetro(at)yahoo.com).

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Fed Board member gets vote (WaPo)

If you Received the "Two Suspicious Guys" Memo

Several Unsuck readers received a memo about two suspicious looking men filming in the Metro. Below is part of the memo:

The subjects were observed at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station, Orange Line platform videotaping features of the station and operations of the train. Once aboard an Orange Line train to Vienna they videotaped how patrons oriented themselves within the metro rail car.
The subjects were attempting to videotape inconspicuously, by holding the camera at their side, between their chest and waist. If you come into contact with these individuals, please stop and identify, and call the Metro Transit Police Department Communications Division at (202) 962-2121

Here's what Metro has to say about it:

The Metro Transit Police are following up on a report of suspicious behavior reported by a Metro rider last week. As part of the routine follow-up, Transit Police issued a notice to all of its officers to be on the lookout for two individuals who were observed videotaping in Metrorail stations and on trains.

The rider observed the men filming portions of the stations and trains, as well as riders at the L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station platform and on an Orange Line train to Vienna last week. The men, according to the citizen report, were trying to be inconspicuous, holding the cameras at their sides. The rider was able to photograph the men who were videotaping and sent the photo to the Transit Police.

Based on the photograph and the information received by the citizen, the Transit Police have no reason to suspect the individuals in question about anything specific. The Metro Transit Police did, however, issue the “be on the lookout for” notice, a standard tactic used by police departments to share information with their officers. The notice advises officers to call the Metro Transit Police Communications or Criminal Investigation divisions if they see the individuals.

The Transit Police notice was meant for an internal audience only and was not intended to be a public notice. The incident was not meant to be elevated to a public alert level and was not meant to alarm anyone.

We applaud our customer’s efforts in bringing this matter to our attention and we encourage all customers to report anything suspicious to the Metro Transit Police Department.

Metro Tweets Response to Escalator Issues

Order is reversed to read more easily:

• metroopensdoors Metro posted the unabridged 308-page escalator/elevator report on its website at: http://www.wmata.com/vtx/
• metroopensdoors Metro report: major factor of the state of escalators/elevators is result of years of lack of adherence to Metro's maintenance standards
• metroopensdoors Report identifies escalator brakes among several issues to be addressed. Greater emphasis should have been placed on brakes as safety issue
• metroopensdoors Metro has inspected 405 units; replaced 25 brakes & taken 47 units out of service for brake pad replacement or oil contamination remediation
• metroopensdoors Any Metro escalator inspection that reveals a potential safety hazard results in that escalator immediately being removed from service
• metroopensdoors Metro is on schedule to complete all brake inspections this week

Please. No.

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Track the Circulator online (Examiner)
Metrobus driver ticketed in Arlington crackdown (Arlnowdotcom)

Increased Safety or Nuisance?

Video and text from Phil:

Have any of your readers mentioned that the buses are now screaming “PEDESTRIANS, BUS IS TURNING” and then again in Spanish? It’s so loud it wakes me at night and can be heard for blocks and blocks around.

Why not just put a continuous fire siren on top of them?

Here’s a video of the X8 bus. Note how you can hear it even on a cell phone video from before you can see it to over a block away. I actually followed this bus around Stanton Park and up Maryland Avenue NE until it got to the H Street intersection. It blasts this annoying message at every corner of the park, every time it turns and every time it stops to pick up/let off passengers. This in a somewhat quiet neighborhood. All night.

Metro confirms this is part of a pilot program.

Other items:
Metrobus impostor gets probation (WUSA)
Dulles stop could ruin view, group says (WaPo)

Metro Knew of Escalator Brake Issues

An internal document obtained by Unsuck DC Metro appears to reveal that Metro was warned by its own outside contractor of serious escalator brake problems at least a month before a major escalator brake failure at L'Enfant Plaza on Oct. 30 that injured more than a dozen, one seriously, and a similar incident at Gallery Place last Wednesday.

Metro appears to have done nothing with that knowledge.

In an internal audit of Metro's escalator problems conducted by outside consulting firm Vertical Transportation Excellence (VTX), numerous issues were addressed and made public, including dirty escalator switches, accumulation of garbage and water, and a shortage of workers.

But that wasn't the complete list. Below is a complete list of maintenance issues cited by VTX during its assessment of escalators and elevators at Woodley Park, Dupont Circle, Bethesda and Foggy Bottom:

Obvious signs of conditions requiring immediate maintenance/service address are being overlooked. Some examples witnessed during our assessments of the elevators and escalators include but are not limited to the following:

• Major amounts of oil and lubricant on step treads and risers. Symptomatic of major leak at drive motor / reducer coupling. (scary)
  
• Significant accumulation of metal shavings around hand rail newel areas from worn newel wheels.
• Brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop.
• Numerous switches in safety circuits were dirty, out of adjustment, and ineffective. (scary)
  
• Skirt panels were adjusted too tightly to the steps, creating metal shavings along the step roller tracks in the interior of the unit.
• Hoist ropes severely rouged [corroded] and worn beyond acceptable life expectancy. (scary)
• Sheet plastic being used to protect equipment from water intrusion. This is a critical life safety issue.

The draft document, which was accepted as the final, according to a Metro source, is dated Sept. 30, a full month before the L'Enfant incident.

Of course, in typical Metro style, the authority began "precautionary" inspections of all 588 escalator units in the system last Thursday night, almost a week after the L'Enfant incident and more than a month after being warned of the problem.*

"In light of recent incidents, [Assistant General Manager Dave Kubicek] decided that a proactive precautionary measure would be in the best interest of safety, keeping in mind we have a strong safety culture that we are growing here," Metro spokesman Lisa Farbstein told the Washington Post Nov. 5.

Proactive? Best interest of safety? Utter BS!

The transit authority has had two previous chances to come clean with riders about what they knew, once at an Oct. 14 Board meeting where the audit was discussed and again immediately after the L'Enfant incident. More importantly, they had over a month to do something about it.

They passed, and even said all safety issues were addressed "immediately."

Here's what Metro released publicly about the audit, and here's what Metro announced they were going to do in response to the audit.

Nothing about brakes.

Instead, Metro appears to have waited until more riders ended up in the hospital--again--before taking any substantive action.

One has to wonder what the point of spending our money on outside contractors if Metro is going to hide the findings from us. More importantly, what's the point of having an audit done if no action is taken on the findings until after an incident in which people are injured?

At this point, it's really hard not to think WMATA executive management is more concerned with keeping their jobs than the safety of the riding public.

David Lacosse, director of Metro's Office of Elevators and Escalators, and his boss Kubicek need to go--now.

* Brake issues date back almost two years

Other items:
Judge limits Metro liability for Red Line crash (WaPo)
WMATA seeks input on new railcars (WMATA)

The Two Types of Metro Eaters

Secret EaterPhoto courtesy bclinesmith

Not-so-secret Eater

Original pic

Other items:

• For the first 3 months of the fiscal year, rail passenger revenue has been 4 percent below projections" Higher fares likely. http://bit.ly/9PmDkn (pdf) (WMATA)
• Days after incident, Metro can't answer how many escalators in the system are the same as the one that failed at L'Enfant. More from TBD
• Metro to enhance security protection against improvised explosive devices (WMATA)
• Passengers saved life of man who fell onto tracks in wheelchair (We Love DC)
• Catoe's baaaack (WTOP)
• Metro's optimal operating season (Oct. 25-Nov. 1) is over (WMATA)

Bad News for Bikers

Do you bike to Metro? What could be done to improve the experience? If you don't bike, what, if anything, could Metro do to encourage you to?

From Andrew:

I'd say once every ten days, I see a bike that has had parts stolen. Sometimes, there will just be a broken lock where a bike used to be at the New York Ave./Florida Ave. Metro. In the above photo, someone had their back wheel stolen.

I lock my bike up here every day with two locks. Still, I feel lucky when I see it in place each day.

It's even more concerning because the station manager is about 30 feet from the bike racks.

And a tweet from yesterday:

@IMGoph multiple bikes had parts stolen at the NY ave station tonight (including mine) IT IS NOT SAFE TO PARK THERE. #WMATA DOES NOT CARE

Take a look at recent vandalism at the Anacostia station bike lockers.

Perhaps Metro should consider selling bike racks inside stations where possible.

Other items:
Weekend delays and closures (WMATA)
Another escalator goes Metro (TBD)

Metro, Home Depot Co-Branding Scheme goes Horribly Wrong

@hmabb So #wmata can't afford barriers and steals Home Depot carts to use instead? http://plixi.com/p/54396450



From Toni:

Nice shopping cart. I wonder where Metro got it? Just because the Home Depot is convenient to the Rhode Island Avenue Metro doesn't mean it's OK to "borrow" their shopping carts. Also, one of those employees was smoking on the platform prior to beginning their work (after 11:30 AM).

Other items:
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Metro police fail to take sexual harassment victim seriously (Holla Back)

The "Authority" Does as the "Authority" Wants

From contributor CS:

The most critical thing for rebuilding the dismal state of Metrorail service – not to mention something that ought to prevent people from getting killed, too – is restoring automatic train control in conjunction with introducing a real-time collision-avoidance system.

Metro is working on the new system right now. Yet everything is a secret – the agency doesn’t want to say anything about the absolutely critical collision-avoidance system until the whole thing is a done deal, and it’s too late to think about possible improvements or alternatives, or to see what kind of quality Metro put into the effort.

It’s an astonishing position to take for an agency that purports to have a commitment to openness and transparency, and which could clearly stand a little scrutiny given its recent record of killing people.

Readers may recall that Unsuck has filed three public record requests with WMATA – on the lowly reliability of railcar doors; on safety and other issues associated with “bellying” 1000-series cars in the middle of trains; and on automatic train control and the collision-avoidance system.

We’ve already been haggling for months with Metro about the first two requests. Now, in a response that was 76 days late – the transparency-obsessed agency took nearly nine times the required response period – Metro has finally responded to our third request. The response is a beauty.

Metro has declined to release any records about the collision-avoidance system on the grounds that any records that exist are “pre-decisional.” As long as things are in development, nothing will be released.

As seasoned Washington hands know, “pre-decisional” has become a weapon of choice for bureaucrats who just don’t want to release anything. It’s true that some precedent allows withholding of records created prior to a final decision on a matter. But since virtually anything can be considered pre-decisional in some way, this exemption has become a leading way for officials to choke off access to just about everything. Officials even routinely stamp records “pre-decisional” even as they create them, just in case someone might ask for them later.

So, even though release of collision-avoidance system records might have provided an opportunity for some welcome review by third parties, forget it. Even though Metrorail riders – routinely delayed and nauseated by life under manual control – might have a keen interest in knowing what’s going on with the new system, don’t even think about it. And even though taxpayers who fund the system might be curious what their dollars are paying for, it’s not gonna happen.

Thus, a clean sweep: Metro is now three-for-three in deflecting our requests for records in which the public and riders have a clear and compelling interest.

So much for that commitment to transparency bunk.

There’s always going to be tussling between agencies and the public over access to records. But overall, bureaucrats’ attitude toward transparency is like the possession arrow in basketball – at any given time, it’s pointing a particular way. Some agencies, or administrations, have more enlightened attitudes, and are willing to provide access to most things, with some battling at the margins. Many others have a scorched earth policy, where the imperative is NO, no matter what. Even if they’re wrong legally, they just withhold, withhold, withhold, if only to tie things up for months or years.

Metro has now pretty clearly shown which way it has its arrow set. In handling our requests, the agency didn’t have to set up all the barriers it did.

It just wanted to.

• Related post

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