Metro's Next Challenge: Reining In Overtime

THE SIGHT OF DESTROYED train cars from the November 2004 crash at the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station on the Red Line is still shocking years later. For those who don't remember, a train that was not in service rolled backwards into the station where another train was servicing the platform. The second train's operator moved quickly, evacuating passengers just seconds before impact. It is thought that if the accident happened during rush hour, scores of commuters could have been killed.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the operator of the train that rolled backward had likely fallen asleep. He hadn't gotten a full night's rest the night before and, as The Post's Lena H. Sun reports, "was finishing an overtime shift when the accident occurred and had worked overtime shifts on nine of the 19 days in the month before the accident, according to the NTSB."

The issue of overtime is a growing concern at Metro, with costs for extra hours jumping 56 percent since 2002, according to the transit agency. In fiscal 2006, Metro paid nearly $91 million in overtime to workers.

Sun reports new information from the NTSB about two fatal accidents involving track workers and trains from last year underscores the dangers of too much overtime:

Previously undisclosed information about two fatal train accidents raises questions about allowing long work weeks. The operator of a train that struck and killed two track workers last year had worked 10 days in a row before the accident, a Metro spokeswoman said. Six months earlier, the operator of a Red Line train that hit and killed a track worker had been on the job each of the four previous days, including 15 hours the day before the accident.

Metro's new general manager, John Catoe, is currently in a cost-cutting push to close a budget gap, and the overtime issue is moving front and center just as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering a broad federal funding package.

A union contract expires next year, and currently, Metro and the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 689 have not come to an agreement on how to cap overtime.

» "20 Injured in Crash of 2 Red Line Trains" [WaPo]
» "Metro Costs For Overtime Are Up 56% Since 2002" [WaPo]

Photo by Gerald Martineau/The Washington Post

Posted By Michael Grass at 1:59 PM on June 5, 2007 Tagged in Free Ride , News , The District , Top Stories , Transit , Woodley Park

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