Efforts to Repair Aging System Compound Metro's Problems

Metro Safety Chief Fred Goodine said he believes the risk of derailment for a CAF train filled with passengers is "negligible."

Still, Goodine pushed the agency to launch an investigation into whether the cars' design may make them prone to jumping the tracks, records show. Metro engineers insist that the design is fine; the agency's safety officials are less certain.

"Based upon this and previous accidents . . . there seems to be something different . . . in the way the 5000 series cars negotiate tight spirals and curves," a safety report concluded after an Oct. 1 derailment.

When the CAF cars rolled off the assembly line with their red, white and blue interiors, they stood out from the orange hues of the rest of the fleet. The cars, the last of which were delivered in 2004, came equipped with sophisticated computer software, including the equivalent of an airliner's "black box" to give mechanics precise information about malfunctions. The cars also were the first to run all their electrical systems on alternating current, which produces less dust and is supposed to make the systems easier to maintain.

But CAF neglected to provide Metro with some technical documentation proving that parts were installed properly, agency officials said. Other records were written in Spanish, leaving Metro managers unsure of what they were reading.

Although CAF had made rail cars for transit systems in other countries, Metro was its first U.S. customer. The Federal Transit Administration questioned the decision to hire CAF, citing the contract in a 2000 audit as evidence that Metro didn't always determine whether its contractors were technically qualified.

Software bugs on the highly automated cars bedeviled Metro engineers; once they fixed one, they said, others would spring up. Records also point to basic manufacturing defects: faulty wiring, sloppy assembly and substandard materials that the agency had approved. As of May, officials said, Metro had made 170 engineering changes to try to correct flaws.

Still, the cars' performance has remained erratic. Some months, they seemed to improve, but then their reliability would plummet again, records show. "They're possessed," said Thomas E. Ferer, a senior Metro operations analyst.

Many of the defects were not discovered until after the cars were built because Metro and CAF failed to perform sufficient checks along the assembly line to monitor the manufacturing process, according to records and interviews with Metro officials. CAF wasn't consistently checking the quality of parts delivered by suppliers and was rushing the cars through testing, Metro documents show. And agency inspectors didn't object when inferior materials were used.

CAF's American representative, Virginia Verdeja, said the company would not comment.

As the cars went into service, defects were evident, records show. Some wouldn't accelerate, others had faulty air conditioning, still others had persnickety doors that often refused to close.

In 2001, with 78 cars built, Metro took the unusual step of halting production for three weeks. It told CAF to improve quality and redesign its assembly line. Production resumed, but troubles with the cars continued.