The operator likely was asleep at the controls when a speeding light rail train left the tracks at the W-Line’s end-of-the-line station in Golden last month, the Regional Transportation District said in a regulatory filing Tuesday.
It disclosed plans to revamp its “fit for duty” checklist process and conduct a fatigue awareness campaign among operators in the near term. It also proposed an evaluation of operators’ starting times and the duration of shifts, among other final corrective actions.
On March 11, two of four passengers on a mid-morning train were taken to a hospital with minor injuries after the train sped into the Jefferson County Government Center station and hit a bump post, sending the front car off the rails. The train car slid up a berm and came to a stop.
It was the metro Denver transit agency’s third light rail train derailment since January 2019.
RTD disclosed the findings of its investigation into the latest incident for the first time Tuesday afternoon when it filed a required corrective action plan with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
“RTD determined that the train operator likely fell asleep before impact and that excessive speed and inattention of the train operator are the causal factors of the accident,” says the report, signed by Dan McClain, the agency’s chief safety officer. “Contributing to this was the collision with the bump-post resulting in a derailment.”
The JeffCo Government Center station has remained closed as repairs continue. Since the crash, RTD has been running shuttle buses between the station and the Red Rocks College station.
RTD said in a statement Tuesday that it plans to restore W-Line service by Sunday, April 30, unless bad weather prompts a delay. And it confirmed that as of April 17, the operator involved in the crash is no longer employed by RTD. He had been in the job for nearly five years.
The corrective plan says that along with the more immediate responses, RTD will implement a comprehensive “fatigue risk management plan” by July 2026. Its more immediate awareness campaign will include “information regarding the hazards of operating a vehicle while taking certain medications,” though it did not say if that was a factor in the recent crash.
“RTD has identified a number of measures and corrective actions that will be immediately implemented to prevent a similar incident in the future,” the agency said in its statement.
Operator fatigue also was a factor in the crash of an RTD Route 483 bus on Parker Road in August. The driver appeared to be nodding off as he ran a red light at Orchard Road, and five vehicles were damaged. Four people, including the bus driver, were taken to area hospitals.
The two previous train derailments both occurred on the R-Line at an at-grade intersection crossing in Aurora, at South Sable Boulevard and East Exposition Avenue, in January 2019 and again on Sept. 21. Both times, trains were moving much faster than a 10 mph speed limit as they entered a 90-degree curve.
RTD’s earlier corrective plan for the September derailment included installing an automatic train stop signal, which triggers an on-board braking system when trains are moving too fast, along the R-Line track north of the intersection. RTD’s new filing doesn’t address its potential use as a corrective measure for the W-Line.
Such signals are used elsewhere on RTD’s light rail system, typically where trains are at risk of colliding with each other. But 9News reported last month that RTD doesn’t install those signals at the end of its lines.
Richard Bamber, a civil engineer who co-founded the advocacy group Greater Denver Transit, told The Denver Post last month that to protect against operator error, “the scope of this system should be extended to automatically stopping trains hitting bump stops at the end of the line.”
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