Metro Makes safety Suggestions

Metro responded to a Federal Transit Administration deadline concerning 10 FTA safety recommendations with a few of their own. Number one appears to be hiring new safety officers, number two beefing up whistleblower protections and three to improve communications between safety officials, management and employees in the field.

Will this help make Metro safer you ask? Probably not. The F.T.A. audit blasted metro suggesting that safety was marginalized  noting the deaths of eight Metro employees on the job since 2005. http://www.maryland-law.com/library/metro-crash-safety-will-catoes-departure-portend-a-new-era.cfm

Metro allegedly has a backlog of more than 80 earlier corrective-action plans which remain to be implemented.  

The F.T.A. focused on understaffing, bad communication, insufficient expertise and an inability on the part of Metro to foresee problems stemming from identifiable dangerous conditions.

Somehow it is hard to imagine that hiring six more safety officers and enabling anonymous reporting of potentially hazardous conditions will correct years of neglect, underfunding and incompetence.