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Amtrak Blames Outage on Computer Flaw

Posted on: Friday, 23 February 2007, 21:00 CST

By SARAH KARUSH

WASHINGTON - A computer glitch caused a power failure last year that shut down the Washington-to-New York City rail corridor for two hours during the morning rush, Amtrak said Friday.

Nearly nine months after the May 25 incident stranded riders on 112 trains operated by Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, Philadelphia's SEPTA and Maryland's MARC, Amtrak issued its final report on the incident and said procedures are in place to ensure it does not occur again.

Amtrak, which owns and operates the northeast corridor, said the conclusions stem from an investigation by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC, a self-regulatory organization of the electric industry.

The events leading up to the failure began two days before, when Amtrak reduced the power capacity at one of six substations serving the corridor in order to do maintenance.

After the problem was fixed, Amtrak employees tried to restore output to full capacity, but a four-year-old computerized control never implemented the command, according to a joint report by Amtrak and NERC.

"When we got into the rush hours, we needed the capacity we thought we had and it just wasn't there," said Bob Verhelle, Amtrak's deputy chief engineer.

The other substations tried to compensate for the one that was limited but were severely overloaded during peak demand, which led them to shut down, Amtrak said.

The initial malfunction occurred late May 23, but the system was able to keep operating during peak hours on May 24.

The computer that incorrectly kept the power off has been reprogrammed, Verhelle said, and from now on all six substations will be manned during rush hour.

In addition, Amtrak has learned from the manufacturer of the substation that it can perform maintenance without reducing capacity.

In another new measure, Amtrak has stationed a diesel locomotive in New Jersey at the entrance to the tunnel to New York that can pull out any train that gets stuck, spokeswoman Karina Romero said.

Three NJ Transit trains and one Amtrak train were stuck in that tunnel during the power failure.

NJ Transit had 45 trains disrupted, the most of any agency. NJ Transit is satisfied with the investigation, spokesman Dan Stessel said.

"We ... believe that Amtrak is taking the appropriate steps to prevent a reoccurrence," he said.

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Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Amtrak: http://www.amtrak.com/

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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