Another ‘open door’ incident on Sydney Metro is “not impossible,” according to Transport Minister John Graham, but he said adding extra onboard staff will not reduce the risk.
After meeting with the private operator, Metro Trains Sydney (MTS), Mr Graham said he had confidence in the safety systems in place.
“The chances of this happening again are small,” he told the ABC’s Stateline.
“[But] it’s not impossible.”
On Wednesday morning, video emerged of a peak-hour metro service travelling between Chatswood and Crows Nest with a set of doors wide open.
Mr Graham said the metro’s safety systems were specifically designed to prevent a train from moving with an open door.
He said the doors were open for “around two minutes”.
“This shouldn’t happen. If the door is open, the train is stopped, and that’s what the automatic systems are set to do.
“This was overridden,” he said, describing that decision as a “procedural error”.
Mr Graham said MTS had since warned metro workers against manually overriding the automatic safety system.
“They’ve emphasised these procedures now with all their staff,” he said.
“And we’re certainly not going to stop metro trains running across Sydney.”
This a worry as external doors is a safety critical feature on any rolling stock!
It seems this need to be investigated via independent train investigation team consisting of seemingly high qualified mechanical rolling stock engineers and technicians to rectify what went wrong!
If so the entire fleet of that particular design will need to pulled from active service until issues is resolved..
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