Metro News Release
For immediate release: July 20, 2010
All of Metro's 4000 series rail cars are cleared for service
Repairs completed to all 100 rail cars
Metro has completed the inspection and repair of the door motors on its Series 4000 rail cars, 18 days after the cars were removed from service as a safety precaution. The fleet of 100 cars was temporarily removed from service on Friday, July 2, as a precautionary measure to ensure safety after a concern about the rail car door motors was identified.
“On behalf of Metro, I would like to sincerely thank our riders for being patient while we made these necessary repairs to our Series 4000 rail cars,” said Metro Interim General Manager Richard Sarles. “Earlier this month, we took the precautionary and proactive action to ensure the highest level of safety for our riders by making the decision to remove the cars from service to repair each door motor’s circuitry.”
The precautionary action was taken to address a possible short in the car door circuitry that could have caused the doors to open while the cars were in motion. The removal of the cars from service was prompted by ongoing performance tests and observations conducted by Metro's operations staff, not by any single event.
The issue was identified within the circuitry of the cylindrical door motors, which are about a foot long and five inches in circumference and weigh about 10 to 15 pounds. In total, the 100 rail cars have 1,200 motors as each rail car has 12 individual doors.
During the last three weeks, a team was assigned to work on each rail car. The process to put the fix in place was a several step process. This included the removal and inspection of the door motors at several rail yards, then shipping them to the Greenbelt rail yard where the motors themselves had their circuitry repaired and cleaned. Then the motors were returned to the rail yards, where they were be reinstalled and tested before returning to service.
As promised, the fix was completed by the end of the month.
“There was not any single occurrence that triggered our decision to remove these cars from service earlier this month,” said Deputy General Manager of Operations Dave J. Kubicek, who recommended that the cars be removed from service. “We are always studying our cars and looking at ways to improve their reliability. In doing so, that’s how we discovered this issue.”
Metro’s 4000 series rail cars were manufactured by Breda and were delivered and put into service in about 1993. No other series of Metro railcars have the same door system as the 4000 series cars. During the mid-life overall of the 2000 and 3000 series cars, which also were manufactured by Breda, new door equipment was installed. Metro’s entire rail fleet consists of 1,120 cars. Between 60 and 70 of the 4000 series rail cars are in service on an average weekday.
Metro notified the Tri-State Oversight Committee, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Transit Administration of the concern and the remedy to move forward.
News release issued at 12:44 pm, July 20, 2010.