Comments on: Old Business Highlights Transportation Committee and Metro Board

By: Erik G.

Erik G. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:25:02 +0000

Randy-Yes, well, I am glad it is appearing that the cars are not at fault. But this was not clear when I made the post. In fact I have defended the highly-touted age of 30 years of the cars. Breda's refurbishment made them like new and therefore they are really only 13 to 16 years old.

It should be noted that the Metro cars at the front of the train that was sturck and that apparently failed to be detected by the Alstom signalling system were built by Breda and later rehabbed by Alstom:

http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=2624

So there is also a possiblity that the 3000-series Breda car does not always register with the signaling system.

However. We are not clear what the answer really is in Washington yet. So the decision to postpone any decisions about AnsaldoBreda is actually a good one.

By: randy

randy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:10:12 +0000

Erik -- initial reports are showing that the crash resulted from a signaling system failure and wasn't related to the car. The signaling system was built by Alstom, not Breda.

Are you trying to use these catastrophic deaths for political means, Erik? That's pretty low.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062501073.html?hpid=topnews

Please do a little bit of research before making offensive comments.

By: Erik G.

Erik G. — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:06:30 +0000

This AnsaldoBreda, are they the company that rehabilitated the Washington Metro 1000-series cars? You know, the ones that are causing a bit of a headache for former L.A. Metro (and Santa Monica BBB) employee John Catoe at the moment?

Say, let's look in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro_rolling_stock#1000-Series

Why, yes it is!!