The Federal Transit Administration on Wednesday issued a scathing assessment of the worker safety on NYC subway lines, saying there was “an escalating pattern of safety incidents” affecting MTA transit workers — a finding MTA brass said they’ll appeal.
The FTA issued a pair of so-called “special directives” Wednesday, ordering the MTA to improve its safety procedures and the state’s Public Transportation Safety Board to step up its oversight of New York City Transit.
“FTA has determined that a combination of unsafe conditions and practices exists such that there is a substantial risk of death or personal injury” to transit workers, FTA officials wrote.
The directives cite two recent high profile incidents previously reported by the Daily News — the November 2023 death of track worker Hilarion Joseph, who was struck by a D train while working on the tracks near Herald Square, and a June incident in which an unidentified track worker was sent to the ICU with head trauma after he was struck by an F train near Bergen St. in Brooklyn.
Both men were working as “flaggers” when they were hit, meaning they were tasked with alerting train operators to the presence of their work crew. Joseph’s death remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
MTA brass pushed back against the conclusions, but union officials said they point to a need for greater safety on the tracks.
“The bosses resort to blaming workers when safety issues arise rather than addressing their poor management of the system,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union — whose largest local, Local 100, represents some 40,000 subway and bus workers. “The FTA directives should be a wakeup call for every transit rider in New York,” he said in a statement.
FTA investigators said they were aware of 38 “near-miss” incidents involving track workers in 2023. That number is up 58% from 24 such near-misses in 2022, and up 65% from 2021.
Nineteen of last year’s 38 near-misses involved “improper flagging,” FTA officials wrote. Other suspected causes included improper communications or radio use, lack of supervision, train operator inattention, or failure to disable automatic train control on sections of the system using computerized signals.
FTA officials said the “recurring nature of certain rule violations,” including issues with proper flagging or automatic train control, “suggests systematic issues that require more comprehensive monitoring.”
When the MTA reacts to near-misses, the feds wrote, the agency tends to issue safety advisories and bulletins.
“These advisories support communication with transit workers, but do not improve rules, procedures, training, supervision, compliance monitoring or on-track protection,” the FTA officials wrote. “[That] fails to address any factor beyond transit worker awareness and relies on the transit worker to independently review and incorporate information into their job performance.”
MTA brass said Wednesday they would appeal the FTA’s findings, which they said mischaracterized the agency’s safety record.
In a letter to FTA’s chief safety officer, Demetrius Crichlow, head of subways for NYC Transit, said the 38 near-misses represented 0.03% of the 127,355 times workers were on the tracks in 2023.
“We will be interested to learn if FTA has established a standard in excess of this 99.97% safety record,” he wrote.
Crichlow also rejected the FTA’s contention that danger on the tracks is escalating, noting that track work had been at a lull during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and had been increasing in recent years.
“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,” he wrote.
The head of subways also questioned the FTA’s decision to issue the directives before the NTSB and others had completed their investigations into Joseph’s death and the Bergen St. incident.
“[I]t seems premature to infer that a ‘combination of unsafe conditions and practices’ led to those events,” Crichlow wrote.
But Samuelsen welcomed the findings and called on MTA Chairman Janno Lieber and Gov. Hochul to take action to improve worker safety.
“We demand accountability from Lieber and Hochul in response to these damning safety findings,” he added. “Track workers are getting killed, maimed and narrowly escaping getting hit by trains, and Lieber hasn’t done a damn thing.”
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