Capital Priorities - Greater Greater Washington

Examining Metro's capital budget

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:40:00 EDT

In the next few years WMATA will make some big ticket capital purchases, but the capital budget is also peppered with many small yet vital items, as well as some more questionable ones. (Examiner)

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What should we expect from elevators and escalators?

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 10:57:00 EDT

by Ken Archer and David Alpert

An audit confirmed what most riders already knew: Metro's escalators and elevators are not working like they should. The audit identified a number of places where maintenance processes and training could do a better job for maintainance and repair of escalators and elevators.

Photo by afagen on Flickr.

The audit itself hasn't been released, but according to Assistant General Manager Dave Kubicek's summary of the audit the major issues are an unbalanced preventative maintenance schedule, a shortage of supervisors, water intrusion, and insufficient training of workers on the Maintenance Management System (Maximo).

But let's not jump to the conclusion that the Post's headline writer originally did, who labeled Ann Scott Tyson's writeup, "Report says Metro failing on escalator repairs" before changing it to the more sensible "Escalator audit highlights deficiencies."

It's not the scandal of the year that the escalator maintenance program isn't perfect. In fact, riders all pretty much could tell that already. Any big organization has flaws like this. A good one tries to root out and address those flaws, and now that Richard Sarles is running WMATA (for the time being), the organization is making strides in this area.

Just identifying the problems is the first step. Now, the Board and riders need to measure whether they are being addressed and whether such steps are actually improving escalator and elevator performance.

Thanks to Metro now releasing a Vital Signs Report each month, we know that escalator availability has been hovering around 90% and elevator availability around 96%.

What level of availability should riders reasonably expect once these maintenance procedures are fixed? Are the targets set in the Vital Signs report of 93% escalator and 97.5% elevator availability the right targets, and will these changes get us to these targets?

1 out of 14 escalators out of service may be a significant shift in expectations for riders. And the target for elevator availability would actually mean Metrorail availability of 90% for riders with wheelchairs and strollers, since each trip requires 4 elevators and these riders can't take escalators or stairs.

Once targets are agreed upon, there needs to be a clear link between these targets and the investments required to meet them. There's lots of good ideas for improving availability, like the "team-building initiative to enhance communications among staff and improve the team's effectiveness" that the current Vital Signs report commits to.

But we need more than good ideas. What will it take to actually reach availability targets? And how do we know?

The main proposal put forward by the audit requires increasing scheduled maintenance intervals. But maintenance requires taking escalators out of service, and Kubicek says in Vital Signs that this is the cause of some lack of availability. At what point does the downtime of increased maintenance outweigh the unscheduled downtime that this maintenance prevents? Can any of the inspections conducted during routine maintenance be done with remote sensors (detecting water, vibration, heat, etc)?

Also, as David pointed out in an interview on Fox 5 (embedded below), there's another factor behind escalator problems: resources. The system was new in the 1970s and 1980s, and escalators and elevators needed little repair. Now they need more repair, but budgets still are underfunding ongoing maintenance like this. And at least so far, the Board has been showing an unlimited willingness to spend money on safety fixes without regard to cost, but may continue to shortchange other needs.

A smart General Manager would announce to the Board and, by extension, to the media: We're at 90% now. We've found these internal issues and will fix them. These contribute to (say) 20% of downtime so that will get us to 92%. If we allocate some of our capital dollars to escalator repair, we can get to (say) 96% by addressing additional causes of 40% of downtime.

Soon, the public will be invited to comment on WMATA's Capital Improvement Plan, a multi-year priority list of where to spend limited capital dollars. Much of that rightly ought to go to safety, but there will be a danger of putting too many eggs in that one basket. If we really want escalators to be working, which by the way has safety implications of its own, we will need to send a message to the Board to be sure to allocate some capital dollars to repairing and replacing escalators.

47 comments

It's not the (escalator) crime, Metro, it's the cover-up (Nov 9, 2010)
Metro's escalator repairs are unlikely to work, part 2: The news cycle is driving maintenance (Dec 13, 2010)
Metro escalator repairs are unlikely to work, part 1: We still don't know why they're breaking (Dec 9, 2010)
Sarles talks safety, escalators, bag searches, funding & more (Feb 3, 2011)
Mapping Metro's escalators (Aug 20, 2010)

Should NTSB recommendations get a blank check?

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:31:00 EDT

by Ken Archer

Following the June 2009 Red Line crash that killed 9 people, the NTSB made several recommendations to Metro based on the causes of the crash. While these recommendations are obviously important, Metro has an obligation to riders, and to the families of the victims, to ask what safety trade-offs would be made by implementing them.

What safety trade-offs could NTSB recommendations possibly have? There are several potential causes of fatality and injury in the Metro system, and saying 'Yes' to the NTSB recommendations means saying 'No' to addressing other safety risks.

Based on the most recent WMATA Safety and Security Committee meeting, however, the WMATA Board appears poised to hand out blank checks for implementing any NTSB recommendations, without even inquiring into trade-offs. If that happens, the result for riders will be more budget shortfalls, leading to bigger fare increases, and unnecessary safety risks.

Here's what has happened so far. Metro announced in July that it has set aside $30 million over three years to implement any NTSB and FTA recommendations following the June 2009 red line crash that killed 9 people.

However, when Senator Mikulski (D-MD) asked in August for cost estimates of each recommendation, the total provided by Board chair Peter Benjamin was $100 million. And that's just for recommendations for which Metro has cost estimates.

When Chief Safety Officer Jim Dougherty met with the Metro Board on Sept 16, not a single question was asked about the skyrocketing costs and trade-offs of implementing federal recommendations.

Actually, not a single question was asked about the details or trade-offs of any of the recommendations, from the $55 million replacement of Gen 2 track circuit modules to the $25 million safety analysis of the automated train control system.

The oversight meeting with Dougherty lasted for only 45 minutes, and consisted primarily of a self-congratulatory presentation on the progress made by WMATA, which included the new logo seen here.

To exercise safety oversight, the Metro Board must ask about safety trade-offs in every meeting: Why are the current safety actions, whether they originate from the NTSB or not, the highest safety priorities?

The FTA asked this question during their audit and was told that no prioritized list of safety actions exists. The answer to the Board should look something like the table below. In fact, this should just be added to the monthly Vital Signs report.

Hazard Tracking Log (HTL) Should be Added to Vital Signs.

This table is a Hazard Tracking Log (HTL). It's based on a similar table from a booklet called Hazard Analysis Guidelines for Transit Projects, published 10 years ago by the FTA. Lots of safety actions are prioritized based on the severity and likelihood of the identified hazard causing injury or fatality. Hazards and their corresponding safety actions are generated by 2 types of hazard analysis, reactive and proactive, which I describe elsewhere.

The non-NTSB recommendations in the table are empty because the Metro Safety Office has yet to conduct proactive hazard analysis for any critical system, as I've discussed elsewhere, and integrate the resulting safety actions into a prioritized list.

Most of the FTA's recommendations are focused on putting a Hazard Management System in place (basically, doing what the aforementioned booklet says to do) that consists of hazard analyses that continuously update the prioritized Hazard Tracking Log table. Metro's responses to FTA and NTSB recommendations, however, raise two serious concerns about its ability to put this System in place.

Metro is outsourcing hazard analysis of the Automatic Train Control system.

This $25 million, 3-year project, which is in response to an NTSB recommendation, was announced by Benjamin in his August letter to the Congressional delegation. That's a lot of money. $25 million would employ 75-100 engineers and analysts full-time for 3 years. One wonders what the WMATA safety office does if we are paying $25 million to contractors to do hazard analysis.

And what happens when the analysis ends, and we upgrade the automated train control system? Do we pay several million dollars again to a contractor to conduct another safety analysis? It seems like a good idea for the contractor to train and transition the safety analysis to WMATA's own safety office.

However, when asked if this would happen, a WMATA spokesperson responded, "The task will not specifically train Metro employees in how to conduct safety analysis, but will identify proper response and prioritization to safety concerns, particularly in an integrated environment."

Metro touts Hazard Management success without actually doing hazard analysis.

In Metro's August reply to the FTA audit, Metro merely copied the FTA recommendations (e.g. identify skills required for hazard analysis; train employees in these skills; etc) and pasted them into the HTL table shown above as a demonstration of progress.

Metro then announced triumphantly, "By evaluating the FTA recommendations in this manner, WMATA demonstrates that it has established a true hazard management program that incorporates a risk-based approach to evaluate and mitigate hazards".

This misplaced concern for the presentation of the results of hazard analysis, over the actual analysis itself, is even aired by WMATA's own IT department in the very same letter to the FTA. After discussing changes to the IT architecture being made to support hazard analysis, the following concern is said to be a "threat" to the entire project:

The System Safety and Environmental Management Department is awed by product suite success stories, dynamite product demonstrations and industry colleagues' evaluation of technology.

The FTA should not accept the responses of WMATA to its recommendations until WMATA has demonstrated its ability to actually do a hazard analysis of a complex system, which would enable it to then prioritize hazards in a system. It doesn't really matter which system it is—the elevators, the train doors, even the payroll system would be fine.

Metro can do this. It's my hope that, when the FTA begins regulating transit agencies, they will hold up Metro as an example for the rest of the country of world-class safety management.

But Metro can't do this and hand out blank checks for responding to NTSB recommendations regardless of the safety trade-offs. They are simply incompatible approaches to safety. The latter, reactive approach leads to budget shortfalls requiring fare increases, and to injuries and fatalities. The former, systematic approach leads to improved safety at the most efficient and rapid pace possible.

But Metro can only do this with leadership in oversight, particularly from Board chair Benjamin and Safety & Security Committee chair Mort Downey.

Kenneth Hawkins, brother of one of the killed passengers from the Red Line crash, asked following the NTSB hearing, "Who's going to hold WMATA accountable?" I still have the same question.

11 comments

Metro workers afraid to report hazards, Board unfazed (Oct 12, 2010)
WMATA Board not at fault for crash, but needs to step up (Jul 27, 2010)
Metro needs calm, proactive hazard analysis (Aug 4, 2010)
Senators threaten WMATA takeover; NTSB holding hearing on June crash (Feb 23, 2010)
NTSB blames track circuits, safety culture for Red Line crash (Jul 27, 2010)