The safety oversight panel monitoring Metro’s rail system said in the first 10 days of automated train operation on the Green and Yellow Lines, there have been significantly less station overruns than when the system was implemented earlier on the Red Line.
A Washington Metrorail Safety Commission engineer said that drop is partially due to better reductions in managing human error.
Safety commission engineer Paul Smith said in the first 10 days of automated train operation on the Green and Yellow lines there were 25 station overruns, compared with 40 overruns during the first 10 days the system was put into place on the Red Line, a more than 37% decrease.
“Some of the lessons learned during the activation of ATO on passenger service on the Red Line have been applied to the activation on the Green and Yellow lines and this seems to have had a positive impact,” Smith told the WMSC, which met virtually Tuesday.
Automatic train operations were standard on Metro until a 2009 deadly Red Line crash near Fort Totten.
A National Transportation Safety Board report in 2010 found a faulty track circuit that was part of the automated traffic control system was responsible for the crash.
The transit agency has been bringing automated trains back with new safety guidelines.
Smith told the safety oversight panel the improvement he is seeing opens the door for future expanding the automatic train operations system wide.
“We have asked for and received all results of the rules and compliance and indicated that with this information we will be evaluating further expansion of ATO,” he said.
Officials said they intend to go slowly and work out the safety concerns before implementing it on the rail systems addition lines. Smith said they did find there is one specific type of human error, where a train operator would press what’s called a “station stop cancel button,” which overrides the automatic system, and in some cases could cause the train to overrun the station.
Members of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission said Green and Yellow line trains have been running smoothly on automatic train operation, but more studies are needed before re-implementing the technology across the system.
Last December, WMATA took the first step to reinstate automatic trains, however the system was found not to be entirely reliable.
“Based on these continuing overruns, just on the Red Line, Metrorail’s automated train control system cannot be relied upon to make station stops at fixed locations, which is the purpose of ATO,” the safety commission said in April.
But one month later, in May, the oversight committee gave the OK to begin automatic train operation on the Yellow and Green Lines, because officials said their implementation showed it was more efficient and safer than operating trains manually.
Smith said part of the problem, especially on the Red Line, is that much of the system is at least 50 years old.
In the case of the Red Line trains, Smith said 1960s’ technology was “reactivated” in 2025 or 2024.
“It is very much antiquated technology and is not an elegant solution to stopping trains at a position that is in, in any way accurate,” he said.
During automated operations, a human operator is still in the cabin and automation is not used during bad weather, when there is single tracking or when track work is being performed.
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