Clock ticking on safety fixes
MBTA has until Monday to revamp policies
A track worker was hospitalized after being struck by a 2000—pound counterweight on the Blue Line in April, one of the more egregious safety failures outlined in new documents released by the MBTA.
The redacted documents, shared with the Herald yesterday, provide a closer look at the six workplace incidents that prompted such concern from federal officials that they ordered the MBTA to completely revamp its policies and procedures around employee right-of-way access. The T’s plan is due on Monday.
Five of these violations involved employees who were nearly struck by trains. These so-called “nearmisses,” along with the injury on the Blue Line, all occurred within the span of a month, from March 13 to April 14.
While MBTA officials had previously provided details on the near-miss events, and the breakdown in safety communication that prompted them, little had been shared about the incident that left an employee seriously injured until this week.
According to the documents, Transit Police notified the T’s Operations Control Center of an employee who was hurt on the westbound track at Revere Beach on April 13, at approximately 12:43 a.m.
An electrical lineman had been making adjustments to a 2000-pound counterweight, an object that is part of electrified railway lines, “when a bolt snapped,” causing it to fall on the worker, whose name was redacted.
The lineman was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, and shuttle buses were deployed between the Blue Line stations of Orient Heights and Wonderland Station “because of the injury and the damage to the overhead catenary system,” the documents state.
The other incidents fall in line with prior updates from MBTA officials, who stated that they largely occurred in areas where right-of-way access was not granted.
For instance, on the morning of March 21, an “instructor” was cleared by dispatchers in the operations control center to work in the right-of-way in three areas, but was nearly hit by a train in a fourth area where this instructor had not been cleared to work, the documents state.
The instructor had “used a flashlight to signal” for the Green Line train to stop, but this was not seen by the train operator, the documents state.
In an April letter to MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng, the Federal Transit Administration had stated that “a combination of unsafe conditions and practices exist such that there is a substantial risk of death or personal injury.”
As part of that immediate action letter, the FTA ordered the MBTA to submit a work plan that addresses these right-of-way violations and revamps existing policies in a way that prevents recurrence. The T has until Monday to submit a new work plan that implements these changes within a 60day period.
The agency’s initial plan had put those deadlines into late 2023 and 2024, which the FTA rejected last month for being “insufficient,” given the “immediate risk to worker safety” on the rightof-way, the feds stated in a May 19 letter to Eng.
The initial eight-page plan, included as part of Friday’s documents release, includes measures to notify train operators in advance of workers being stationed on the right-of-way; perform an analysis of radio communication; and assess the effectiveness of OCC documentation, in terms of its visual awareness of when workers are on the right-of-way.
“We will have a revised work plan by Monday,” MBTA spokesperson Lisa Battiston said in a Friday statement, adding that the T also plans to meet with the federal officials that same day to review the submission.
Katie Choe, chief of quality, compliance and oversight, said at a board meeting last month that all 10,000 MBTA employees and contractors with access to the right-of-way will be retrained.
This training started on May 15, and was enhanced from a prior classroom-only model to include a practical component on the tracks.