Why didn’t the Board find out about Metro’s denial to Tri-State Oversight?

We know that Metro refused to let a safety oversight board access live tracks. So why didn’t anyone tell the General Manager or the Board?

Metro originally denied this request in May. After that, there was a major crash, followed by the deaths of several track workers. All along, the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC) was writing increasingly frustrated letters to Metro safety officer Alexa Dupigny-Samuels and getting rejected. But neither Dupigny-Samuels, her supervisor Emeka Moneme, or anyone on the TOC saw fit to tell the Board about this issue.

This morning, the Metro Board interviewed members of the Tri-State Oversight Committee and discussed the recent problems. Many Board members zeroed in on the clear communication failure here. Why, asked Jim Graham, didn’t they go to the Board once they received the denial?

One of the TOC members replied that that they didn’t have a relationship with the Board at the time, and now they are considering what communication process to establish, such as a quarterly report to the Board or annual meeting with the Board. That’s a fairly bureaucratic answer. This could have been better: “Mr. Chairman, you’re right. In the future, we will not let any process or bureaucracy get in the way of our mission to ensure safety. If we think there’s a problem, we will come to you right away.”

The TOC also didn’t communicate the problems to their bosses, such as the Virginia Secretary of Transportation, who could have passed along issues to the Virginia representatives on the Metro Board.

Alternate board member Gordon Linton noted that Metro might have had some reasons for denying TOC’s request. While they got the blame for rejecting the request, if a TOC member had died on the tracks, the Metro safety personnel would have taken the blame as well. Dupigny-Samuels also said that the refusal was meant to keep the TOC members safe, not to shut down their efforts. She said Metro was trying to work with them to find ways for them to meet their needs, such as observing from the cabs of working trains or monitoring during existing work zones.

Whether Metro was right or TOC was right, this decision clearly shouldn’t have been confined to TOC, Dupigny-Smauels, and Moneme. Even John Catoe didn’t hear about this until the recent firestorm, he told the Board. Someone at TOC or at Metro, or both, should have realized that this was important enough to pass up the chain.

The Board established a new policy that staff should bring to the Board any letters between themselves and TOC where Metro is denying a TOC request. But this is a broader problem. Whether on SmarTrip or safety, the prevailing culture within these organizations is to undercommunicate instead of overcommunicate. That’s a recipe for disaster when, as in these cases, the far-reaching and important decision reached without communication or input turns out to be a really poor one.