TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taichung MRT accident on Thursday (May 11) which led to one death and 10 injuries largely could have been prevented, according to Taichung City councilors who have begun to point the finger at the MRT control center, per UDN.
Taichung MRT provided city councilors with video and radio transcripts from the MRT control center. According to this data, after a crane arm fell onto the tracks, the traffic control center received a total of 16 warnings from six stations within five seconds.
The first action taken by the traffic control center upon receiving such reports was to confirm with Taipower whether or not the track had experienced a power failure. City councilors criticized the standard operating procedure (SOP) utilized by the traffic control center, forgoing the vital time needed to stop the MRT from crashing into the crane.
Taichung MRT said that it will strengthen the training of station attendants to potentially avoid a similar disaster, immediately informing them to block the doors of the MRT carriage from closing to prevent the train from moving forward.
According to reports, as soon as the crane fell around noon at 12:27:04 p.m., six different stations along the track issued warning alarms within five seconds. Taichung MRT Spokesperson Hsu Tai-ming (許泰銘) said the control center immediately dealt with the electrical problem according to the SOP, but it was impossible to immediately ascertain the cause of the problem.
Some media questioned why this accident happened with so many real-time cameras positioned along the MRT line. Hsu responded by saying Taichung MRT has more than 1,600 cameras with an average of more than 100 cameras at each station, and 16 screens in the traffic control center.
Except for important locations, the screen images appear in a random carousel or rotational manner, making it difficult to spot an accident. If the location and cause of the accident had been known earlier, the traffic control would immediately click on the camera screen for emergency observation.
Hsu added that Taichung MRT is currently reviewing the SOP regulations for dealing with such emergencies with potential revisions to emergency response measures.
In the future, security guards and carriage attendants will be trained to quickly block the door with their feet or other tools as a last resort in preventing the MRT from moving forward, giving the traffic control center more time to conduct countermeasures and visual inspection.