MTA appoints 'blue ribbon' panel to review safety at its three railroads

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has appointed a "blue ribbon" panel of six railroad and transportation experts to examine the circumstances behind recent safety-related incidents at MTA Metro-North Railroad, MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and MTA New York City Transit.

The three railroads have all experienced derailments in the past several months, with track-related defects identified as a potential cause or a contributing factor, MTA officials said in a press release. In one instance, an employee fatality occurred on a section of Metro-North track that had been closed to train traffic — an incident that points to a need to review safety procedures and the overall safety culture at the railroads, they said.

The panel's experts are "uniquely qualified to review maintenance and workplace practices, protocols and strategies that may have a relation to these recent incidents," said MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Prendergast. "We want to learn lessons so these problems never happen again, but also we want to make sure the MTA has a rigorous safety culture that ensures every employee works to prevent unforeseen problems in the future."

The panel members are:

• Louis Cerny, former executive director of the American Railway Engineering Association (now known as AREMA), and executive director of the Association of American Railroads' Engineering Division;

• Mortiner Downey, former U.S. deputy secretary of transportation, and former MTA executive director and chief financial officer;

• Jack Quinn, former member of the U.S. House from New York, who served on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee;

• Conrad Ruppert Jr., senior research engineer at the University of Illinois and a 35-year Amtrak veteran;

• Rodney Slater, former director of the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. transportation secretary in the Clinton administration; and

• William Van Trump, former senior assistant vice president of engineering at Union Pacific Railroad, and director and past president of AREMA.

The panel will pay particular attention to track maintenance practices and determine whether systemwide improvements to the track and infrastructure programs would prevent incidents, MTA officials said.