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Summary

On June 22, 2009, two transit trains in Washington, DC, collided, resulting in nine deaths and dozens of injuries. It was the worst crash in the history of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's rail transit system. This crash has raised questions about the safety of rail transit and the governments role in ensuring that safety. Nationwide, rail transit is considered one of the safest modes of transportation. Every weekday more than 7 million people board rail transit vehicles in the United States; in the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2007, 188 people died in rail transit incidents. Most of those deaths occurred on commuter rail operations; 32 people were killed in incidents involving heavy rail transit, and another 32 in incidents involving light rail transit. Rail transit operations are an inherently local activity, and the federal government has limited responsibility for the safety of rail transit operations. Congress directed the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to establish the State Safety Oversight Program in 1991; this program went into effect in 1997. Under this program, states are responsible for the safety of the rail transit systems within their borders. States are required to establish a state safety oversight agency which sets requirements for rail transit safety and monitors the performance of rail transit agencies in following those requirements. FTA sets minimum requirements for the safety programs that the state agencies implement, and oversees the efforts of the state agencies in carrying out the program. There are 26 states with oversight agencies overseeing 48 rail transit systems. The level of expertise and resources within the state oversight agencies varies, and is not necessarily correlated with the amount of rail transit activity the agencies are responsible for. Fatal rail transit incidents are sufficiently infrequent that fatality numbers alone may not provide a useful basis for evaluating the performance of this safety oversight program. In a congressional hearing on the program in 2006, and in a related Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the program, representatives of FTA, state safety oversight agencies, and rail transit agencies said they felt the program was effective, though it could be improved. FTA said that it was working on developing alternative measures with which to assess the benefits of the program. At the hearing, and in the GAO report, several issues were mentioned by representatives of FTA and state oversight agencies as offering opportunities to improve the program. These included increasing the level of rail safety expertise and the level of safety resources in the state oversight agencies; providing federal funding to support the work of the oversight agencies; and providing additional enforcement authority to ensure compliance with the requirements of the program. Given that states are responsible for the safety of rail transit operations within their borders, the existence of rail transit systems that operate in more than one state poses a challenge for the program. GAO's study found that the oversight of three multi-state rail transit systems varied; for two of the systems, the respective states appeared to have found ways to collaborate that resulted in effective oversight of the systems, but in the case of the Metrorail system of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates in the District of Columbia and the states of Maryland and Virginia, GAO found several shortcomings in the oversight structure.

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