The recent derailment of a car, because of a defect of design, “could have caused a catastrophic event”, according to the American office responsible for transport safety.
Le Monde with AFP
Target of recurring criticisms, the Washington subway has brutally removed from traffic, Monday, October 18 in the morning, more than half of its oars, as a result of a derailment that could have been dramatic consequences.
“We apologize for the longer expectations provided for”, Tweeted, Monday, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the Régie which took this radical decision under pressure of the American office responsible for transport safety, the NTSB.
The situation is a bitter for hundreds of thousands of users in this underground network, the busiest in the United States after that of New York, serving the federal capital and its suburbs and stretching over the States of Virginia and Maryland.
Recently, a car of a trace has derailed, without doing any injuries, but justifying the opening of an official investigation. It made it possible to identify a designed vice at the axle level, promoting derailments.
Inspections have identified no less than thirty-nine examples of this defect this year, even if the cars of the trains concerned, manufactured by the Japanese Kawasaki company, are the most recent to equip the network.
748 cars temporarily stopped at
The derailment “could have provoked a catastrophic event,” said Jennifer Homendy, the boss of the NTSB, in a press conference on Monday. In total, it is no less than 748 cars that have been temporarily stopped at the judgment, pending the result of additional expertise.
Décribe for his delays and malfunctions, the Washington subway is often cited as an emblematic example of the under-investments affecting the infrastructure sector in the United States. A priority national project for President Joe Biden, who did not yet have succeeded in adopting his colossal bill on the subject.
The Washington subway had undergone a serious accident in January 2015: a train had been invaded by smoke in a tunnel in the heart of the capital. A woman had found death and more than 80 people had been injured in this drama that had completed the rebuilding of the network.