A team of federal safety inspectors began a 60-day probe of Metro-North on Monday, while MTA officials discussed a safety action plan for its railroads in the first board meeting since the horrific Bronx derailment.
The Federal Railroad Administration inspectors are part of a team called Operation Deep Dive that will examine the Dec. 1 tragedy and three other Metro-North mishaps that have occurred since May.
“It’s the first time ever they’re doing this, they’re bringing in people from all over the region and examining the safety plans and responsibilities of employees,” said MTA Chairamn Thomas Prendergast.
Metro-North president Howard Pernut described at the meeting the safety upgrades that are being added to the railroad, such as speed limit signs and alerters that will be added to all cars.
Currently, engineers are required to know the speed limits of their routes by heart, but signs will be added by the end of Monday to remind them on their trips.
Two-thirds of Metro North’s fleets have alerters, which monitor the controls in train cars. If an engineer is cruising and doesn’t make a move within 25 seconds, the alerter sounds an alarm. The engineer then has 15 seconds to hit a button before the brakes kick in.
Older cars have dead man’s pedals, which halt the train if an engineer lifts his foot from the pedal.
The MTA said they will retrofit all cars and install alerters by the end of 2014. A second crew member will accompany engineers who don’t have alerters in their cars.
Prendergast said the MTA would do the best it could to meet the 2015 deadline for positive train control, a system that can reduce a train’s speed through a computer in an emergency situation. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said it may have prevented the derailment.
The chairman said that getting the radio spectrum would be a challenge to install positive train control on its railroads, and the authority was talking to the FCC about getting more spectrum.
“These are not excuses, they are realities, but we will overcome them,” he said.
MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said the meeting comes after deep soul-searching through the authority about its safety practices. He said there was no common factor in the tragedies at Metro-North this year “but the sheer number of incidents is too many.”