(Bloomberg) -- New York City’s transit system must improve its safety procedures and state oversight needs to increase to avoid subway trains striking workers, according to the Federal Transit Administration.
The FTA is directing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subway, bus and commuter rail lines, to reassess its roadway worker protection program and develop corrective action plans to reduce the risk of employees being struck by trains when working on the tracks. The FTA is also instructing the state’s Public Transportation Safety Board to boost its oversight of the MTA’s safety programs with additional monitoring and monthly reports to the FTA for review.
“FTA has determined that a combination of unsafe conditions and practices exists such that there is a substantial risk of death or personal injury,” Matthew Welbes, the FTA’s executive director, said in a directive dated Tuesday.
The FTA conducted the audits after an MTA worker was fatally struck in November 2023 and another was critically injured in June 2024. The audits show that potential train contact with employees increased by 65% last year from 2021, but Demetrius Crichlow, interim president of MTA’s subways and buses, responded to the FTA’s directives in a letter dated Wednesday, saying the comparison covers the period during the pandemic when there was little construction work in the subway system.
“It is not an ‘apples to apples’ comparison,” Crichlow said in the letter. “We agree that every incident is worthy of careful study and response but considering the increased volume of work in the subway system compared to prior years, we do not concur that the data supports the suggestion that there’s been some dramatic increase in risk.”
Appeal Plan
The MTA plans to appeal the FTA’s directives, Crichlow said. He also points out that the two train incidents at the center of the directives are still under active investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Of the 38 near-misses of employees in 2023, about half were due to one or more transit workers failing to follow safety procedures while other incidents involved improper communication, lack of supervision and failure to set up protection, according to the FTA directives.
The MTA is a state agency. A spokesman for Governor Kathy Hochul directed questions to the MTA, which provided Crichlow’s letter.
John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, the MTA’s largest union, called on Hochul and Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chief executive officer, to immediately address the FTA’s safety concerns.
“The FTA directives should be a wakeup call for every transit rider in New York,” Samuelsen said. “We demand accountability from Lieber and Hochul in response to these damning safety findings. Lives are at stake.”
(Updates with detail in the 7th paragraph.)
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