Metrolink peer review report - Ventura County Star

METROLINK COMMUTER RAIL SAFETY PEER REVIEW PANEL
Final Report – January 5, 2009
Issue Papers
iv. Provide training for en-route vehicle troubleshooting for train and engine crews. This may be done by
the mechanical contractor or by the transportation contractor’s properly trained staff or
subcontractor. At a minimum this training must include recognition of and procedures to follow
when encountering en-route running gear defects.
Background
When Metrolink service began, there was a single contractor with comprehensive responsibility for dispatching,
operations, maintenance of way and vehicle maintenance. That contractor dispatched and operated the trains,
provided customer service and maintained the vehicles, track, right of way and systems. The contractor was also
responsible for coordinating these activities and responding to incidents. Metrolink’s role was confined to
contract oversight.
Over time, SCRRA has divided up the work within the scope of the original contract, taking dispatching and
customer service in-house and executing separate contracts for transportation, vehicle maintenance, maintenance
of way and signal maintenance. A side effect of ”unbundling” the scope of work appears to have made the
responsibility for coordinating some activities and for managing interdisciplinary tasks more difficult.
In interviews with SCRRA operations managers, the Panel learned that oversight of rules compliance has been
executed in different manners between operational departments. In some cases, SCRRA personnel perform
efficiency tests directly. This task may detract from the main function of oversight to ensure contractor
compliance with approved operational testing plans. Conducting efficiency tests on contractor employees is a
secondary function and should be structured as an evaluation of the quality of the contractors program.
Interdisciplinary Tasks
The Panel identified examples of areas in which the definition of responsibility for inter-disciplinary tasks could
and should be sharpened. These were: testing; incident response and vehicle-troubleshooting training.
Testing: It is essential to test whether employees are complying with the operating rules and are proficient in
applying the rules. This process is referred to as Efficiency Testing. SCRRA must test its own dispatchers while
the operations and maintenance contractors should have complete responsibility for testing their employees and
for analyzing the results.
SCRRA’s role in testing contractors’ personnel should be limited to oversight and auditing to make sure the
testing is taking place by qualified testing officers, the testing is performed properly, and that appropriate
corrective action is taking place. The distinction between testing, oversight testing and auditing is not currently
clear in SCRRA’s procedures. Representative examples of this lack of clarity within the Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs) include:
• SOP # 8 – Mechanical – SCRRA’s FRA-based Efficiency Testing Program assigns the Maintenance
Contractor and Metrolink joint responsibility “to ensure that SCRRA and Maintenance Contractor are
verifying that the equipment operators are following safe operating practices involving blue flag, radio rules,
and observing the speed limit in the yards.” This task properly belongs to the contractor alone. The
contractor should be performing the tests, analyzing the results, identifying deficiencies and correcting them.
SCRRA’s job should be simply to oversee the process. The oversight may include field checks, but SCRAA
field work should in no way relieve the contractor of its responsibility to implement a comprehensive testing
program.
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