To Improve Safety, Metro Plans to Hire Contractor

New Chief Also Wants to Step Up Training

Metro's new chief executive announced a safety overhaul yesterday, promising to change the agency's culture and give employees the power to take preventive action, such as halting train service, when they spot a problem.

The announcement by John B. Catoe Jr. comes after a series of accidents that have raised concerns from federal officials and riders about the subway's safety. Catoe said Metro intends to hire a contractor within 30 days to identify system weaknesses and create a training program that will emphasize more responsibility and accountability for supervisors.

In his first sit-down with reporters since being sworn in Thursday, Catoe also said he would not raise fares to balance the budget until Metro is "as lean as possible." To determine if the agency can make additional administrative cuts, an outside company is reviewing "every position, every function and every major contract," he said.

Catoe, who rides the bus and subway to Metro headquarters from his home in downtown Washington, also said he would require top managers to ride the system to work and will eventually require lower-level managers to use it as well. All Metro employees ride the system free.

Metro officials have been criticized in the past for being out of touch with employees and riders. Richard A. White, who was forced out as the top executive last year, drove to work from his Fairfax home in his Metro-issued sport-utility vehicle until he was pressured by the board to resume daily commuting on the Orange Line.

Catoe said he instituted similar safety initiatives in his last job, as the No. 2 official at the Los Angeles transit agency. He said the Washington system is safe. But, he added: "Is our system safe enough? It isn't."

He promised improvements. "We will make Metro from the worker's standpoint the safest place in the Washington metropolitan area, and we intend to make it from a customer's standpoint the safest system in the nation," he told reporters.

Questions have been raised about the safety of Metrorail, the nation's second-busiest subway system, after a series of incidents including a derailment this month that injured 20 passengers near the Mount Vernon Square Station. In addition, four Metro workers were killed in three train accidents in a span of a little more than a year.

In Los Angeles, Catoe said, officials began the plan because the transit system had the most worker's compensation payments of any state agency -- $64 million a year, he said. Working with a safety division of the chemical giant DuPont, the Los Angeles system reduced employee injuries by 61 percent in six years and cut worker compensation claims by more than 50 percent during the same period, according to Catoe and Los Angeles transit officials.

In Washington, Metro budgeted $16 million in the current fiscal year to cover worker compensation claims, down from $17 million the previous year. The number of claims filed has dropped more than 11 percent in the same period, and the average cost of claims -- $9,257 in fiscal 2006 -- has also declined, chief safety officer Fred Goodine said.

"But if we can bring in a private sector partner and get 50 to 60 percent reductions, we're all for it," Goodine said. He welcomed Catoe's plan to hire an outside company, saying it was needed to change the mind-set among Metro's mid-level managers, often referred to by employees as "the frozen middle" for their resistance to change.

Jackie Jeter, recently elected president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 689, which represents about 7,000 of Metro's 10,000 employees, also said she supported the safety initiative.

Under Catoe's proposal, which he will present to the board next month, the outside company would not receive money up front but would earn a percentage of the savings Metro achieves in reduced claims and medical expenses that result from improved safety, he said.

Every employee will go through two days of required training. Metro's safety officers will have increased authority to stop actions they consider unsafe, he said. Eventually, that authority will extend to all employees, he said.