Warning signs on rail

For $2.69 billion — the value of its contract with the MBTA — one would assume private rail operator Keolis could be counted on to perform bare minimum tasks after a safety-related failure. A Herald report indicates that may not be a reasonable assumption.

“Our investigation revealed that Keolis has serious issues in incident preservation and incident investigation capability,” wrote Steven Adkins, the T’s director of maintenance for railroad operations, in a Sept. 22 email, the Herald reported yesterday.

That email was sent two weeks after an incident in which a car broke free from a moving train carrying 250 passengers on the Newburyport line.

“The lack of critical information like witness statements, photographs of the scene and records from maintenance and transportation departments severely limited the identification of a root cause,” Adkins wrote.

It’s one more knock against the company whose 2014 pact with the MBTA has been problematic from the outset. Not all of the problems have been of the contractor’s making, but the T has given Keolis miles of rope to improve performance. The T has also decided it needs a top executive whose sole responsibility is managing commuter rail, a position being filled at the moment by consultant (and former T general manager) Dan Grabauskas.

Keolis denies that it failed to take proper investigative actions after the Sept. 6 detachment, noting the T took over the investigation the day after the incident and Keolis provided requested material in a timely way. But the Federal Railroad Administration was sufficiently unhappy that it considered imposing a fine because Keolis moved defective equipment before it could be inspected. This is really basic stuff.

Keolis plans to bid for the next contract again when this one expires in 2022. For it to be considered would require a positively miraculous turnaround.