Metrolink peer review report - Ventura County Star

METROLINK COMMUTER RAIL SAFETY PEER REVIEW PANEL
Final Report – January 5, 2009
Issue Papers
There is a need for the staff to spend more time overseeing turnaround maintenance at the six to seven outlying
points where layover maintenance, cleaning, toilet dumping, etc. is performed. Currently this oversight is
provided by one of the compliance officers at CMF. These facilities are located at:
• Lancaster - end of Antelope Valley Line
• Montalvo - end of Ventura Line
• Moorpark - on Ventura Line
• San Bernardino – end of San Bernardino Line
• Riverside, North Side
• Riverside, South Side
• Oceanside – This facility is in San Diego and is operated by Coaster (North County Transit District).
The contractor assigns the senior technician at each of these sites to general supervision. A senior supervisor
rotates among the different sites to conduct employee oversight.
In order to oversee performance of the maintenance contractor properly with the current fleet of equipment, at
least three or four compliance officers are needed. Currently there are two compliance officers. Of those, one has
additional responsibilities, and is also training the second. As the fleet expands, additional compliance officers
will be needed.
The equipment department has developed equipment training programs and guides for training the operating
personnel on the rail equipment and how to handle on-line problems (such as cutting out a door engine or a
traction motor, and determining if the correct one has been cut out -- all in accordance with CFR Title 49, Part
238), but these have not generally been used. We encountered among the equipment staff an observation that
transportation staff (i.e., train engineers) does not know how to use the equipment optimally; correspondingly,
when there is an on-line failure; the train crew often does not know how to physically isolate the problem under
guidance from the dispatcher.
At present, it appears that there is not a fully defined and effective QMP position established at the dispatching
center or elsewhere that can be contacted in case of on-line failures or malfunctions. In some cases, a decision
needs to be made regarding the equipment failure and the safe operation or recall of the equipment. The FRA
identifies the QMP as the person who makes safety critical decisions as to how, or if, equipment may continue in
revenue service with running gear defects. Without the proper identification of operating components that may
not be working properly, properly, safety decisions about the continued movement of that equipment are
hampered.
Regarding document control, while the active files appear to contain) maintenance records for the past four years;
it is not known how the older documents are handled. Certainly all documents should be scanned and placed into
PDF, or archived in some other electronic format, shortly after being generated and archived.
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