Subway Construction to Halt for Half-Day Safety Review

An independent audit calling the injury rate on the Los Angeles subway project worse than the national average prompted officials Thursday to order an extraordinary half-day halt to construction so workers can review safety rules.

The safety audit--which had been kept out of public view--was released by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday, a day after a subway construction worker in Universal City became the third fatality this year on the troubled project.

“Safety leadership must start at the top of the organization,” the audit by an outside expert says. “There is a widespread perception within the MTA that the board is not committed to safety, only becoming interested in the wake of catastrophic events.”

The audit also concludes that safety objectives are not understood.

“Some individuals believe that the goal is to be better than the national average,” the audit says. “Some believe that the goal is to avoid all serious injuries. Others believe that the goal is to avoid adverse publicity.”

The audit was ordered by the MTA board at the request of Supervisor Gloria Molina after a worker was crushed to death in the Hollywood tunnel in February in the first fatality in the 10-year history of the $6.1-billion rail project.

On Thursday, Julian Burke, MTA interim chief executive officer, ordered that all subway construction be suspended for half a day Monday while contractors review safety rules with their workers. He pledged to make sure that “safety is never sacrificed for on-time performance.”

Molina said Thursday that the MTA must deal with safety problems head-on, in public.

Earlier in the day, Molina pressed for an emergency meeting of the MTA board to discuss worker safety in the wake of Wednesday’s accident.

Molina had not seen a copy of the draft report, which was completed in September. MTA attorneys refused to make the document public, citing attorney-client privilege. Board members who saw it were required to sign a confidentiality agreement.

This is not the first time that an outside expert has expressed concern about workers’ safety on the subway project.

The MTA took over oversight for job safety in 1995 from a private construction management firm after federal officials expressed concern.

Since then, the audit says, “performance has improved.” But the project’s rate of injuries requiring medical attention is 15.2 per 200,000 hours worked, worse than the 1996 national average for heavy construction of 10.6. “More importantly, further improvement does not seem to be occurring,” the audit says.

The audit by Behavioral Science Technology found that the MTA’s safety culture is characterized by “uncertainty and mistrust.”

A survey of safety engineers found a “lack of confidence” in management’s support of job safety. “There is a widespread perception among contractor and MTA construction staff that some members of the MTA safety staff have used anonymous complaints to Cal/OSHA as a mechanism to put pressure on the project,” the report says.

The audit makes 32 recommendations, including instituting regular safety reports to the MTA board, striving for an injury-free culture “where no injuries are accepted as inevitable,” and holding contractors accountable.

The audit also recommends that the MTA track injuries, rather than lost work days, as a measure of safety, citing the example of a carpenter on the subway project who was recently injured when a wire stuck him in the eye.

“This carpenter was not wearing eye protection, and it is important for management to have measures of how frequently this and other exposures to injury are occurring,” the audit says.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said subway contractors and MTA staff must have “a zero tolerance for safety violations.”

To reduce the likelihood of serious injuries or death, he said, subway contractors must “drill their workers on safety over and over and over again until it becomes second nature.”

The county transit agency has 13 safety engineers who visit subway construction sites on a rotating basis. That fact prompted Supervisor Mike Antonovich, an outspoken subway critic, to call the MTA’s safety program “an oxymoron.”