Subway goes wrong way this morning

A Metro Rail Purple Line train went the wrong way this morning, ending up on tracks for the Red Line, rattling some riders, causing a 25-minute delay and provoking the rail service to apologize for the mix-up.

This morning, a Purple Line train departing from the Wilshire/Vermont station at 9:14 a.m. was supposed to head next to the Wilshire/Normandie station. But instead, the train ended up at the Vermont/Beverly station, serviced by the Red Line, Metro spokesman Rick Jager confirmed this afternoon.

The Red Line and the Purple Line share five stops together after departing Union Station downtown. But after the Wilshire/Vermont stop, the two are supposed to split off -- with the Red going to North Hollywood, and the Purple Line ending near the Wiltern Theatre in the Mid-Wilshire area.

However, even though Purple Line riders say they heard the conductor say the next stop was going to be at Normandie, they were surprised to end up at the Vermont/Beverly station.

Metro rider Carla Olson said the 75 or so people on board, many on the way to work, were panicked and bewildered and told to get off. They were told to reboard a Red Line train back to the Wilshire/Vermont stop and catch the next Purple Line train out, Olson said.

While there were no reports of any damage to property or persons, Olson said since Friday’s deadly Metrolink crash riders are a little more paranoid when something malfunctions on a rail service.

"A lot of us were shaken up a lot, especially the people who don’t speak English who didn’t know what anyone was saying," Olson said. "The person conducting obviously did not know what was going on, or that his track had been switched because he announced the Normandie stop."

Rick Jager, a Metro spokesman, said the train went to the wrong stop because an operator at the main rail operation facility input the wrong code into the system which automatically directs the trains on the tracks. Instead of inputing the code that would have directed it to the next Purple Line stop, it went to the Red line.

The Red and Purple lines operate on a rotating basis out of the Wilshire/Vermont station, Jager said. After a Purple Line train leaves, a Red Line train leaves, followed by a Purple Line train, and so forth.

Unlike Metrolink’s situation with last week’s crash, Metro rail trains operate on dual tracks and not on a single track, and the system uses technology that automatically brakes a train if it passes a a red light, according to Jager.

"He had all the green (light) signals," Jager said, adding that there wasn’t a possibility for two trains colliding.

Jager apologized on behalf of Metro to the riders affected, and said the occurance "very, very rarely happens."

Olson, who has been commuting from Studio City to the Mid-Wilshire area for four years to her accounting job for an airline, concurs with Jager’s statement, "this never happens, but I hope it doesn’t again."

--Francisco Vara-Orta

Comments

[stan derrin]

"It sounds like you have a problem reading the sign posted on the train and the display at the track"

Yeah,me and half the train that have to disembark.I guess were all wrong all the time.
The train says n.hollywood so me and a hundred other people obviously have no legit claim as to the poor signage.

[Kymberleigh Richards]

I ride the Red/Purple Line fairly regularly, at varying times of day, and I have never been on a train that was inadvertently switched to the wrong branch.

In fact, if you stand at the far west end of the lower platform you can see and hear the switches being moved about a minute after each westbound train leaves. This is a routine matter and I have to agree with "R" that those who believe trains get misdirected "all the time" probably are boarding the wrong train before Wilshire/Vermont (and ignoring announcements made at that station as to which train you are on).

This was a simple error by the control center, and one that caused inconvenience but no threat to lives. Let's just admit it happened and move on.

[R]

Jim J- This was concerning a Metro subway, not a Metrolink train.

stan derrin- Half of the trains that leave that platform at Union are Purple line trains. They share the same platform with the Red line. It sounds like you have a problem reading the sign posted on the train and the display at the track.

[Jim J]

In 1901, a mechanic working for the Boston Elevated Railway invented a mechanical device that would cause the brakes on a train to be applied and bring the train to a full stop if that train ran a red light. The device worked so well that New York City began using it on all of their subway lines beginning in 1904. Here we are over a century later in and Metrolink does not have a fail-safe device to stop a train that ignores a stop signal.

Wake up Metrolink, the 21st century is here.

[stan derrin]

that purple line is a menace.
Half the time when you take the redline from union station to hollywood the train swiitches to the purple line.There is no marking or warning that the redline train is not going to hollywood.Its beyond dumb.

[Alek F]

Yep, looks like the switch at Wilshire/Vermont wasn't switched the way it should have...

[J in Pasadena]

Fortunately texting doesn't work in the subway so they will have to think of some other excuse for this one. Maybe the engineer owns an iPod?

[richard schumacher]

If it depends on a hu-mon entering a code then it's not really automatic.

[Justin W.]

That doesn't make any sense! At Wilshire/Vermont there is a signal that tells the operator which way the switch is aligned for the train.

Green- Switch is lined for the AR tunnel (i.e. Red Line up Vermont)

Yellow- Switch is lined for the BR tunnel (i.e. Purple Line down Wilshire)

Why an operator that knew he was operating a Purple Line train rolled through a Green signal is beyond me. He should have realized that if he continued without contacting the Rail Operations Center, he would end up as a Red Line train. Thankfully, this kind of situation has no risk of collisions.