Crash Puts Focus on Aging Rail Fleets

The train that rear-ended another in Washington on Monday evening, killing nine people, was made up of some of the oldest cars in Washington’s relatively young subway system, cars that had been cited for vulnerabilities before. But federal data show that many other cities are also using outdated rail equipment.

More than a third of the equipment in the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies was rated in marginal or poor condition by the Federal Transit Administration this spring. Replacing all the equipment that has exceeded its useful life and finishing all outstanding station rehabilitations for just those seven large systems would cost roughly $50 billion, the agency estimated, and keeping the systems in a state of good repair after that would cost an estimated $5.9 billion a year.

By contrast, the $787 billion stimulus law contains only $8.4 billion for transit capital improvements across the nation.

Outdated equipment does not necessarily mean unsafe trains, and the cause of the Washington crash is still under investigation. But federal safety officials had warned that the Washington train cars could be unsafe in crashes, and called for them to be replaced, or at least strengthened. Transit officials there said they could not afford to replace the cars, which make up more than a quarter of their rolling stock, and added that they were obliged to keep them in service until 2014 because of the terms of a complicated tax shelter.

That the vulnerabilities in the nation’s capital were well known is a jarring reminder of the problems that transit agencies across the nation face trying to keep their aging systems in a state of good repair. Another federal report found last year that the nation’s transit systems were deteriorating, and warned that, “Decaying transit capital assets raise concerns for service reliability and rider safety.”

The effects of the aging systems are apparent to any straphanger whose train has broken down or who has been late to work because of “necessary track work.” But while rail transit is still one of the safest modes of transportation, old, decaying equipment has contributed to accidents in some cases.

When a northbound train on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line derailed in July 2006, injuring more than 150 people, the National Transportation Safety Board noted that the line had been placed into service 55 years earlier, and that many components of the track had never been replaced. The board’s report described corroded rails and fasteners, and rotten wood on the ties, and questioned why the problems had not been identified and repaired before the derailment.

Paying for capital improvements has been a struggle for many agencies. Although federal financing for capital improvements to transit systems has been rising, the share going to the largest systems has been shrinking as they have had to compete with new, smaller systems. So while the nation’s seven largest systems — in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New Jersey and San Francisco — carry 80 percent of the nation’s rail riders, and are in many cases among the oldest systems, they have received only 23 percent of federal financing eligible for bringing systems into a state of good repair, according to the transit administration.

Mechanically, the New York City subway runs in a remarkably similar manner to the day that the system first opened, in 1904. In 2005, after a fire destroyed a single Depression-era relay room, service was disrupted for months; at the time officials said only two companies in the world were able to perform the proper repairs. But despite this antiquated system, the subway’s safety record remains impressive: the last fatality because of a derailment or collision occurred more than a decade ago. “Our infrastructure is older than we would like it to be, but it is safe,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Other old systems are struggling to maintain what they have while modernizing the system and expanding to meet growing demands. “Do we or any other transit authority have the financial resources to get to a state of good repair overnight?” asked Jonathan R. Davis, the deputy general manager of the transit system in Boston. “Probably not.”

When Washington was warned in 2006 that the cars involved in Monday’s crash should be replaced or at least strengthened to better resist crashes, the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority’s hands were tied. Not only would replacing the cars right away have been prohibitively expensive, but the agency noted that it was constrained by a deal that it, along with many other transit agencies, had entered into to raise much-needed money. The deals essentially involved selling assets like train cars to private entities, which could then get tax breaks by writing off the depreciation, and then lease them back. There were penalties for breaking the deal.

A spokeswoman for the Washington transit agency, Lisa Farbstein, said that deal and others had raised $104 million, which was spent on capital improvements.

Henry Fountain, Michael Grynbaum and Lynnley Browning contributed reporting.