You know all of that track work that has been happening in recent weeks and shut down entire stations and segments of various lines? It's linked to federal recommendations on necessary safety improvements in the region's transit system, and despite past concerns over a lack of enforcement mechanisms on safety standards, Metro has been improving in its work with federal and local regulators. more ›

There have long been concerns over health and sanitation at the Occupy D.C. encampment at McPherson Square, but how bad are things really? Pretty awful, according to a D.C. health official. more ›

The Washington Post’s Dana Hedgpeth reports that a five-year study by the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC) and Metro found that Metrorail employees in safety-critical jobs are working longer hours than allowed, which could lead to fatigue and accidents. more ›

Shortly after the Metrorail crash near Fort Totten that killed nine people on June 22, 2009, WMATA decided to switch its trains to manual mode, which would give its operators more control to stop and control the speed of trains. Almost two years later though, the agency's hardly close to returning to automatic operation. more ›

According to WTOP's Adam Tuss, WMATA has instituted a "safety stand down" -- in which the transit agency will require "all operating personnel participate in a safety briefing" -- after two more train operators ran red light signals. more ›

Okay, let's just get this out of the way: the National Zoo is a really safe place. You should definitely bring your children there. (Please go to the Zoo.) Now, with that said: today, the Zoo's director, Dennis Kelly, said that the facility needs "to reevaluate for the future" when it comes to maintaining the safety of people who attend popular events where the lion cubs roam. more ›

Of all the things required to operate an airport safely and efficiency, a competent air traffic controller ranks right up there with a high concentration of Cinnabons inside each terminal. (After all, when you're charging so much for checked luggage, it's vital that irate passengers be satiated with melty frosting and cinnamon, lest an uprising take place.) But having someone to tell pilots when and where they can land planes is very important indeed. That's why Reagan National Airport will install a second controller during overnight hours, after the first one apparently went missing from the post early Wednesday morning. more ›

Last Friday's D.C. Council hearing on pedestrian and bicycle safety was certainly one of the more emotional in recent memory, featuring several stories about cyclists and pedestrians who were killed or severely injured in incidents with vehicles. more ›

In 2007, Martha Schoenborn and Sally McGhee were killed after being run over by a Metrobus as they crossed Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Later that year, a Rockville man was killed after a Metrobus struck him while he was in a crosswalk. In October 2009, a woman was exiting a D8 Metrobus when another bus struck her as she attempted to cross the street. more ›

Sure, WMATA has decided to inspect all 588 Metrorail escalators after two recent incidents where escalators malfunctioned and injured a few people at the L'Enfant Plaza and Gallery Place-Chinatown stations. But based on information revealed today, Metro appears to have known about the brake failures which were the root cause of those accidents for some time. Unsuck DC Metro got its hands on an audit produced by a third-party consulting firm for WMATA and delivered on September 30 -- the report noted "obvious signs of conditions requiring immediate maintenance/service address," including escalator "brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop" and other massive safety oversights. The brake issue was not mentioned in any of WMATA's official communications about the audit, which was discussed during Metro's board meeting on September 14. Metro spokesperson Lisa Farbstein told WTOP today that the report was not released publicly because it had "not been finalized." more ›

Results from a safety survey of 10,000 Metro employees were officially released this morning at a meeting of the WMATA Board's safety and security committee, and the news is not good. According to the results, nearly 2 out of every 3 of Metro workers said they had witnessed a safety violation in the past year -- but thirty percent of those violations went unreported for various reasons. When it comes to violations which were reported, alcohol and drug use on the job (37 percent of reported violations) was the most frequently named. Metrobus drivers not wearing a seatbelt or texting while driving were also big problems -- combined, those two complaints represented more than half of all violations reported by Metrobus employees to management. Even more unsettling: the 21 percent of Metro employees who indicated that they had reported a violation in the past year, but nothing was done about it. more ›

The Post relays that the safety fixes recommended to WMATA by the National Transportation Safety Board this summer will cost the agency quite the chunk of change. The Post trots out a "billion dollars" figure in their headline, though the actual cost will run about $935 million. (Hey, when you're running so far in the red like WMATA is, a difference of 65 million bucks is nothing to sneeze at.) The complete replacement of all the 1000 Series railcars makes up a hefty bulk of that pricetag, estimated at approximately $835 million. It's kind of a wild number, considering that WMATA only brought in about $820 million in total revenue during fiscal year 2009. The good news is that the upgrades will apparently be easily covered by the $300 million per year that the transit agency will receive in local-federal match funding. more ›

NTSB board member Robert Zumwalt, though, has made perhaps the most interesting observation we've heard in some time about Metro: "There's no mention of safety in Metro's charter," he noted. more ›

Photos released earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board reveal that Metro's series 1000 rail cars experience significant damage even when placed in the middle of a train. The photos were taken following a crash at the West Falls Church rail yard last November, when two six-car trains collided. The trains were both out-of-service, but three Metro employees, including the train operator, were injured. more ›

Interim Metro General Manager Richard Sarles has come under fire for the slow and inaccurate manner in which WMATA reported a near-incident on Wednesday to the Tri-State Oversight Committee, the organization which is responsible for monitoring safety on Metrorail. The Committee, represented by District Director of Transportation Gabe Klein, Maryland Secretary of Transportation Beverley K. Swaim-Staley and Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton, penned a letter to Sarles that calls Metro's confused response to the incident "inexcusable," and damns the agency's "apparent internal and external communications breakdown." more ›

Meeting Tuesday in Virgina, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (D), Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and Md. Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) pledged to work together on ways to strengthen safety on the region's embattled Metrorail system. more ›

John Catoe's last day on the job as Metro General Manager is this Friday, and incoming Interim GM Richard Sarles has pledged to make safety his number one priority. Looks like Sarles has already got one issue to address: a train operator accidentally took off with a 14-car train on the Orange Line this morning, pulling into the New Carrollton station before noticing the mistake. The extra-long train was the result of an 8-car train having been coupled with a 6-car train that had been stored closely behind it in the New Carrollton Rail Yard, according to Metro. From the release:

The train pulled into the station at about 5:40 a.m. and opened its doors. The few customers who boarded the train were immediately asked to disembark. They boarded another train. more ›

Metro Transit Police say they will conduct random station and rail yard sweeps throughout the day Monday as part of heightened security protocols established after this morning's terrorist attacks in Moscow. more ›

WMATA has purchased 26 new light-weight, battery operated carts to help ferry first responders to subway accidents and evacuate passengers from danger. The transit agency unveiled the vehicles on Wednesday. more ›

DCist reader Aaron W. sends in the following account along with the above photo:

Seen on Saturday in Dupont Circle: A cop, in his SUV, entering Dupont Circle, LOUDLY talking on his cell phone as 10-15 people on both sides of the street watch/listen as he speaks with his wife. As long as this city continues to enforce the hands-free law, shouldn't those who are trusted to enforce it also abide by the same laws?

James Dougherty, the chief safety officer for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, is WMATA's top choice to replace Alexa Dupigny-Samuels as Chief Safety Officer, WTOP's Adam Tuss reports. A deal is not yet in place, but Metro officials have apparently zeroed in on Dougherty, who has been with SFMTA for about a year, as their top candidate. Dougherty was awarded the National Safety Council's Distinguished Service to Safety Award in 2009. Before joining SFMTA, he spent five years as General Manager of Safety and Security for the Charlotte Area Transit System in Charlotte, North Carolina. more ›

WMATA on Wednesday let the public in on a project it's been working on for a few months now -- replacing each rail car identification number with a larger, more visible version. more ›

We're now into day two of the NTSB's public hearing on the deadly June 22 Red Line crash (you can watch the hearing live online), and while the safety board has yet to release its formal conclusions on the cause of the accident, hundreds of pages of documents released to the public on Tuesday provide details on their findings. more ›

No! more ›

Metro General Manager John Catoe has released this lengthy statement on the future of the transit agency's safety standards, which he delivered to the WMATA board of directors today. In it, he declares a "war" to make sure the transit system is as safe as it can possibly be. more ›

Yesterday was Friday, so it's probably safe to assume that once 5 p.m. rolled around without any sign of the "very substantial management changes at Metro" promised by Metro Board Chairman Jim Graham, you all thought it was safe to take off, grab a beer, and deal with it on Monday. more ›

After Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) went off on WMATA for lax safety standards and endless excuses at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Thursday (C-SPAN's got the video here, Mikulski shows up around the 40-minute mark), suddenly Metro Board Chairman Jim Graham is talking about firing some people. The Washington Post reports this morning that Graham claims that "very substantial management changes at Metro" were already in the works before Mikulski spoke her mind, and that the changes are going to happen soon and quickly. more ›

When it comes to deciphering news about Metro -- or pretty much of anything in this crazy town -- I've found that it helps to simply boil things down to real-life versions of popular Simpsons gags. (But, you know, nothing after season eight.) Take, for instance, this morning's Washington Post report about a kinda-sorta shake-up involving WMATA safety chief Alexa Dupigny-Samuels, which is a lot more digestible through the lens of a classic bit from "Treehouse of Horror III." Observe: more ›

The authors (and dare we say, the readers) of this web site often get pretty exercised over pedestrian and cyclist safety issues, especially when so many of these kinds of accidents seem to involve city bus drivers. But a new study of relative pedestrian safety finds that D.C. is actually one of the safer cities in the country to be traveling through without an automobile. According to Transportation for America, a transportation advocacy group, walking in Washington is less dangerous than in 31 other metro areas in the U.S. more ›

Members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 are encouraging their members who operate Metrobuses to do every single little thing by the book this week. The push comes in the wake of two recent incidents which saw bus drivers plow down pedestrians in the District. Unsuck DC Metro got the ball rolling on this story yesterday, and the Post's Lena Sun later followed up with a story of her own. more ›