Photo by philliefan99

We didn’t get this quote down during this morning’s press conference, but City Desk provides:

NTSB’s Debbie Hersman this morning confirms that the the striking train was a 1000-series car and that the struck train was a mix of 3000- and 5000-series. She notes that the NTSB has “long been on record” about the crashworthiness of the 1000 series. “We recommended to WMATA to either retrofit those cars or phase them out of service,” she says. “Those concerns were not addressed.”

Pretty damning. The NTSB has not determined nor even speculated at this point what caused Tuesday’s crash, but as far as its degree of deadliness, they are rather clearly blaming Metro’s inaction on its recommendations.

City Desk also has excerpts from NTSB’s 2006 report in response to the 2004 Woodley Park crash, which outlines how the NTSB strongly recommended that WMATA either retrofit or accelerate its phase out of the 1000-series cars due to the possibility of telescoping crashes like yesterday’s, while WMATA responded that it would continue to use the 1000-series cars until 2014 due to “tax advantage leases.” After WMATA refused to comply with NTSB’s recommendations, the transportation board responded with this: “In view of WMATA’s response to the Board’s recommendation, it appears that further dialogue on this issue would prove futile. Consequently, we have no choice but to classify Safety Recommendation R-06-2 Closed Unacceptable Action.”