Photo by sally henny penny.

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.

TOC monitors safety at Metro, and the study was an effort to better understand how Metro manages fatigue among its employees. The results will be presented Thursday to Metro’s board of directors. Metro spokesman Dan Stessel indicated that changes could still be made, and didn’t want to comment on the report until it was discussed at Thursday’s safety and security committee meeting.

Metro employees in safety-critical jobs work a “de facto” 16-hour day maximum, and there are no restrictions on the number of days in a row that an employee works.

In some rare cases, train operators worked over 80 hours a week — one worked 95 hours in July.

The report found two reasons that Metrorail employees work long hours: Workers want to earn overtime and Metro is struggling to fix its failing rail system as quickly as possible.

Part of the challenge seems to be that there are no federal rules limiting the number of hours transit employees can work. The Post reports:

The study revealed that workers in Metro’s automated train control division, which is responsible for inspecting and running the signal system that moves trains, “expressed some of the highest degrees of concern about fatigue.”

Metro has mandatory computer-based fatigue training for “all safety-sensitive [rail] employees,” but the study discovered that “most employees . . . were not aware that such a program existed or that its completion was required of them.”

Solving the fatigue problem, Downey said, will require hiring more people. On Monday, Metro is holding a recruitment effort to attract former and current military personnel for positions. Already, 500 people have registered for the event.

“It will require having more people on the payroll if you’re going to have less hours of work from people when they shouldn’t be working,” Downey said.

Where will the cash-strapped agency find the money for new hires?

“We’ll figure it out,” Downey said.