Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) Metro safety committee members are concerned after learning more about about an incident where a train was stopped at a red light for about half an hour without a functioning radio and two passengers got off and walked along the tracks to the nearby Farragut North station Sept. 13.
Metro urges people to never evacuate trains that are stuck between stations because they could get electrocuted by the third rail. Still, frustrated passengers do occasionally decide to get off trains rather than wait. In this case, the Red Line train got stuck just after 10 p.m. and sat there for 32 minutes.
Safety committee member Cathy Porter said passengers aren’t understanding the danger. She blamed Metro for not communicating well enough.
Another troubling finding of the investigation was that the radio on the operator’s cab wasn’t working, and the operator didn’t have a handheld radio as backup as required. A track worker did bring a handheld radio to the scene soon after.
Committee member Robert Lauby wanted to know why a train would be dispatched with a broken radio. Chief Safety Officer Patrick Lavin said from now on the radios in cabs and handheld radios will be checked before trains go into service.
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