WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday urged the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority to remove its Silverliner IV coaches from service until the Philadelphia-area commuter agency can mitigate fire risk in the fleet.
The NTSB concluded that the outdated design of the Silverliner IVs, in combination with SEPTA’s maintenance and operating practices, represents an immediate and unacceptable safety risk because of the incidence and severity of electrical fires that can spread to occupied compartments. The NTSB found that the risks posed by the design cannot be fully addressed without an extensive fleet retrofit or replacement of the electric multiple-unit cars.
The Silverliners, which were delivered between 1974 and 1976 and were originally operated by the Reading, make up a third of the SEPTA Regional Rail fleet. SEPTA did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the NTSB recommendations.
The NTSB also found that SEPTA’s current operating practices have failed to protect passengers and crews because defective railcars have been kept in service.
The NTSB issues urgent recommendations to address immediate, critical issues that threaten lives or property. Recipients have 30 days to respond.
The recommendations released today stem from the NTSB’s investigation of a Feb. 6 fire in Ridley Park, Pa., as well as four other Silverliner IV fires: Levittown, N.J., June 3; Paoli, Pa., July 22; Fort Washington, Pa., Sept. 23 and Philadelphia, Sept. 25.
Investigators said the recurrence of fires — despite SEPTA’s attempted fixes — shows organizational lapses that block effective risk mitigation. The NTSB said SEPTA’s proposed changes to its operations, maintenance and engineering activities require ongoing monitoring to ensure they protect passengers and crews.
The urgent recommendations call on SEPTA to:
- Suspend operation of the Silverliner IV fleet until the transit agency determines the root causes of fires, develops and implements a plan to address these causes and identifies and corrects the organizational factors that have prevented effective risk mitigations.
- Implement a plan to monitor the success of its risk-mitigation approach to the Silverliner IV fleet, including provisions for immediately removing the fleet from service again if its mitigations fail to prevent fires.
- Create an expedited procurement or retrofit schedule and seek funding from appropriate sources as soon as possible to accelerate the replacement of the Silverliner IV fleet or its retrofit to include modern feedback systems and meet federal fire safety standards for new railcars.
SEPTA has said it has plans to replace the Silverliner IVs but does not have the funding to order new cars.
In other words, SEPTA is in a no-win situation: Silverliners constitute too much of the fleet to remove them, and there is no money to replace them (nor, given Pennsylvania’s budget difficulties, is funding likely).