U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has rejected a proposal by Christopher A. Hart, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board that would have beefed up federal oversight of Washington D.C.’s Metrorail system, subjecting the failure-prone subway to stricter safety regulations and tougher sanctions for violations.
Hart “urgently” recommended that the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) system for monitoring subway safety nationwide has been ineffective in Metro’s case. Hart urged Foxx to shift oversight of Metro from the FTA to the Federal Railroad Administration, a bigger agency with greater enforcement authority. Fox refused.
In a statement made to the Washington Post on behalf of the Transportation Department, Foxx spokeswoman Suzanne Emmerling stated the secretary “does not believe that the NTSB recommendation is either the wisest or fastest way to bring about the necessary safety improvements. While we have made similar findings of oversight and management deficiency in recent inspections and audits, we disagree with their recommendation.”
Emmerling went on to say that Foxx’s plan will focus on reforms to strengthen state oversight of Metro; the details of this plan are as-yet unannounced, despite the secretary’s demonstration of interest in Metrorail. In July, he met privately with the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the D.C. mayor in hopes of crafting a solution for the transit system’s problems.
The Federal Transit Administration has indicated it would gladly keep oversight responsibility. “We take all recommendations of the NTSB seriously, but in this case, the NTSB is recommending shifting safety oversight from one agency to another,” the FTA said in a statement. “And these agencies have different authorities and areas of expertise. The NTSB is not wrong to assert that urgent action is needed; we just believe that there is an even more effective and faster way to achieve the safety goals we all share.”
