BOSTON — The new general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority received a sampling of the safety issues that have plagued the transit agency on Thursday, taking part in a meeting that revealed four incidents in the last month in which track workers were nearly struck by subway trains.
CommonWealth Magazine reports General Manager Philip Eng, who began work on Monday, was part of a safety subcommittee meeting that learned of the four near-miss incidents, as well as other problems, such as a train that operated with a hand brake engaged for most of one trip, damaging a wheel.
The nature of the near-miss incidents varied. In two, the track workers failed to get permission to work in a specific area. In another, a train failed to obey a stop signal, while the fourth involved a train that had been delayed and arrived when it was not expected.
Eng said the incidents “are avoidable and should not be happening,” and that addressing such problems “is my top priority.”
The Boston Herald reports that the third of the four incidents led the MBTA to issue a “safety standdown,” prohibiting work along the right-of-way until dispatchers and workers were briefed on proper procedure. The state Department of Public Utilities, which is charged with MBTA safety oversight, also issued a letter requiring immediate corrective action.
The MBTA’s ongoing safety issues led the Federal Transit Administration to issue a series of directives last year; addressing those directives is an ongoing process that the transit agency now tracks online [see “MBTA launches ‘safety dashboard’ …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 27, 2023].
MBTA trivia: That open space on the left is the old incline to the now-gone Washington St. elevated.
It looks like a staged photo. They used available light; the train did not have its headlights on. Maybe it’s the rear of the train?
If you look closely there appears to be a person in the cab of the subway car.
Plz. inform me why the guys in the photos did not wear hard hats and eye protection. Even in 2014, the date of the photo, these were required.
So much for “safety”.
The transit side of things appears to be a different world when it comes to MOW worker safety. The FRA has had some fairly robust roadway worker rules in place since the 1990’s, whereas the FTA only started getting something together in the last decade or so. You are correct that what you see in the photo would bring down a world of hurt based on FRA regulations and most railroad’s rulebooks. I am not sure if that is the case with the FTA, though.
PETER — The fallacy is reliance on federal regulation. With or without federal rules (such as OSHA), any safety officer worth 1/100th of 1% of his salary would mandate eye protection.
Before I retired, the safty officers in my workplace tended not to use the word “OSHA”, and never at all invoked “Federal Highway Adminstration”. The words they used were “safety”, “hard hat”, “hi-viz”, “ANSI eye protection”, “tetanus shot”, “drug test”, “ladder safety”, “tie-off” and “zero tolerance of injury”. Anyone caught on the highway without eye protection would be sent home.