Maybe Metro’s new door closing announcements should have come with a sterner warning. It turns out that swiftly closing doors cause most of the injury and property damage claims filed against Metro each year. As a result, WMATA expects to spend $31 million on legal settlements, many for such injury claims.

“If there is one thing that can quickly bankrupt us, it’s this,” Metro board member Bill Euille told the Examiner. “We need to find a way to cut this down.”

If Metro’s managers really want to cut down on these settlements, maybe they should discourage notoriously impatient train operators from slamming the doors on passengers trying to get on or off. We certainly don’t recommend waiting for every laggard running to catch a train, but closing the doors on the middle of a line of passengers is (clearly) going a little far, dontcha think?

Picture by Flickr user Rory