Subway Controls To Get Check

Similar System In D.c. Metro Might Have Led To Fatal Crash

A Maryland Transit Administration official said Wednesday that the state plans to check the electronic system controlling Baltimore's subway trains after federal safety officials warned that glitches with a similar control system for Washington's Metro might have caused a fatal crash there in June.

Vern Hartsock, MTA's deputy director for engineering and construction, said he expects to meet today with a team of experts in response to a call by the National Transportation Safety Board to examine similar train control systems for problems or weaknesses.

While it has yet to determine why two Red Line trains collided near the Fort Totten station on June 22, the NTSB said its investigation has discovered that a failure occurred in the train control system just before the crash. A false signal was transmitted to the automated collision avoidance system indicating the track was clear, when in fact another train was idling unseen around a bend. Nine people died and 80 were injured.

Hartsock said that while MTA's control system operates in a similar fashion to the one run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, it was designed and manufactured by a different company, Ansaldo STS, based in Italy. The similarity is "very limited," he said, and previous safety checks, including "integrity tests" involving late-night runs of empty trains, found no anomalies in the control and collision prevention system.

But he said that in response to the safety concerns raised by the Washington Metro crash, MTA would do "additional confidence tests of our system, taking rail vehicles out and observing similar events ... and making sure it is behaving properly."

Hartsock said the state also would ask the manufacturer of its control system to review it for any possible defects in light of the safety board's preliminary findings. He said he hopes to get more information from the federal agency to assist that review.