Photo by T.D. Ford.

Although the National Transportation Safety Board’s two-day hearing on the January smoke incident isn’t scheduled to take place until June, Metro announced plans today for four additional four additional “early-action” measures.

The steps are intended to make the system safer in the wake of an “electrical arcing event” on the third rail that caused billowing smoke, trapping scores of passengers on trains and leaving one woman dead.

Metro said in a release that the new safety measures—which include replacing all of the lights in Metro tunnels and creating a dedicated maintenance crew to clear tunnel passages of debris and equipment—were identified as part of Metro’s collaborative review with the NTSB, but they aren’t the safety board’s formal recommendations. The NTSB investigation is still ongoing and hasn’t yet released findings or a cause of the incident.

“While we remain committed to taking any actions recommended by the NTSB in their final investigation report, we are not waiting to make safety improvements where we see opportunities,” Metro deputy general manager Rob Troup said.

The four new measures are:

• Initiating a multiyear maintenance program to replace or rehabilitate all 88,044 lights in Metro tunnels beginning next month.
• Creating a dedicated maintenance crew to continuously clear tunnel passageways of debris, equipment or other potential obstructions across Metro’s 100 miles of tunnel segments.
• Beginning this summer, review protocols of the alarms in the Rail Operations Control Center (ROCC) with the goal of separating critical alarms from non-critical notifications.
• Establishing a quality audit process for ventilation system testing to ensure compliance with established maintenance and testing practices.