All right, new at 5 alarming new details
in the derailment of a metro Blue Line
train last week near Roslyn tonight.
The NTSB says it could have been catastrophic
and we are lucky no one was killed.
Metro is scrambling tonight after the
Metro Rail Safety Commission ordered it
to pull 60% of its fleet out of service.
Bruce Leshan is live at the L'enfant Plaza
metro station with the latest in Bruce.
And when you say
60% right conceptually,
you try to wrap your brain around that.
And that is what riders
had to experience today.
The fallout from it all. Right
in the 6000 series cars,
those ones are already out to being
repaired for another issue entirely.
Besides these 7000 series cars,
but as scary as this derailment
was for the 187 people on board.
The NTSB says this could have been
much worse, even catastrophic.
And it also says that Metro and Kawasaki,
the manufacturer,
were of these $2 million rare
cars have known for years.
That there was a problem
with these wheel assemblies,
and in fact going back to 2017,
they've known there was a problem.
No one killed or critically
injured in the derailment last
Tuesday in the tunnel near Roslyn,
but the NTSB now says that
was just a lucky break.
The safety agency says trained 407
derailed and popped back on the
rail at least twice before that day,
leaving brake parts scattered across
the track as far away as Largo before
finally derailing a third time and
skittering along the ground floor.
1800 feet before stopping.
750 volts of electricity kept
arcing from the third rail
for at least another minute.
We are fortunate that no
fatalities or serious injuries
occurred as an as a result of any
of these derailments but the.
Potential for fatalities
and serious injuries.
Was significant, this could have
resulted in a catastrophic event.
The NTSB says Metro has been aware of
problems with the wheel assemblies on
the 7000 series cars for at least four
years and it says it has been getting
worse with 39 issues this year alone,
so did metro and rail car manufacturer
Kawasaki take appropriate action when
they first learned about the problem
that is. Exactly one of
the questions we have,
the Washington Metro Rail Safety
Commission ordered Metro Sunday
night to pull all of its 7000
Series Rail guards out of service.
That is about 60% of its fleet,
which meant long rush hour delays
for commuters like airport
wheelchair agent Zachary Richardson.
Really, I'm upset about that.
I had to get to work and I looked at
all the way at Dulles and I'm like.
It's not really used for me.
Now there is no solid timeline at
this point for when or how Metro
is going to be able to fix this
problem and get its newest car,
its biggest fleet back on
the rails towing service.
The one thing that just making it
a little bit easier is that metro
ridership has been down about 85%
as much as 85% during the pandemic,
but there's the potential that
this problem could linger after
we finally finally put COVID.
In the rearview mirror, Leslie,
yeah. I mean, there's some real
trust issues that people have to
get through, among other things,
but let's talk about the principal
issue that came out today,
and that is those wheel assemblies.
What's the issue with them?
Yeah, according to the NTSB,
in in their words the wheels are
spreading on the white on the axles and
they're getting too wide on the axles
and that is allowing them to actually
come off the rails at a switch point.
Now each one of those wheels has
a little flange on the wheel that
at the end of this switch has been
able to bring it back on the rail.
The trouble in Roslyn is that it was just
a one way switch onto another track.
There was no.
Back on and no chance for it
to be brought back.
Those wheels to be brought back
onto the rail and so it just kept
going until it came to a stop.
Finally,
I know we got to go Bruce
and after that you know.
Interesting description right
there and it was was quite good.
I have so many other questions
and I will have to get them in at
another time but again our team
is continuing to dig into metro
safety track record so thank
you and thank you again Bruce.
You know how we do things
when there are questions.
And we need to get to the bottom of them.
We verify our sources are metro and the
Washington Metro Rail Safety Commission,
which is an independent
agency that overseas metro.
Now we examined the safety trends
spanning the last three years ending
just days before last week's derailment.
Most of the safety issues
involved maintenance machines,
not actual passenger cars,
but the data does show that there were twelve
derailments over the past three years,
just one of them involved a passenger train,
fortunately.
No one was hurt.