CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Interim Charlotte Area Transit System CEO Brent Cagle addressed the derailment of a non-revenue Lynx Blue Line car Tuesday at Charlotte City Council's Transportation, Planning and Development Committee Meeting.
According to CATS, the derailment happened Tuesday, Aug. 29 around 2:30 a.m. on a section of the track that helps transition rail vehicles from one track to another.
Since it was a non-revenue track, no passengers were on board at the time.
The train was traveling under 10 mph when it derailed, CATS said. The train did not jump the tracks due to the derailment and remained upright.
The operator of the train was not injured. It took a little over four hours to get the derailed train removed and to restore the track involved to service.
When addressing Charlotte City Council, Cagle listed a number of factors that could have contributed to the operator error, including lighting at the rail yard and filling vacancies with less-experienced workers.
"Filling those vacancies inevitably means that we have a large number of less-experienced operators," Cagle said. "They are all properly trained and have all successfully completed their training, but these are operators with four, six, eight months of experience, and they're learning and operating in the yard. We think these things together could be leading to a higher rate of yard incidents."
This latest derailment is adding to the list of ongoing derailment issues that have beleaguered CATS. In July, CATS began repairs on light rail trains with the hopes to correct an issue that caused a 2022 derailment. Earlier this year, it was disclosed publically for the first time that a Charlotte Blue Line train derailed in May 2022. The minor derailment was caused by a faulty wheel bearing associated with the train's wheel axle. Repairs are expected to continue through late 2027.
The faulty wheel bearing issue is only present on the Siemens S70 trains, which CATS operates for its Blue Line service, according to CATS. On the Gold Line street car service, CATS uses the Siemens S700 trains, which do not have the faulty wheel bearing issue.
“We have now scheduled all the trains for maintenance and we'll take a couple of years to run them through the full cycle because it takes a long time to do this, but trains are all safe," City Councilman Ed Driggs, who chairs the transportation committee, said. "We've increased pay. We're recruiting heavily. We've got staffing levels up now to where we don't need as much overtime as we did before.... The system is in a better place than it was six months ago."
CATS Safety Division will conduct an investigation into this recent derailment. The findings of that investigation will be reported to the North Carolina Department of Transportation State Safety Oversight Division.
WCNC Charlotte’s Wake Up Charlotte has the latest news and weather from the WCNC Charlotte morning team. Watch all the latest stories from the Wake Up Charlotte morning team in the YouTube playlist below and subscribe to get updated when new videos are uploaded.
Wake Up Charlotte To Go is a daily news and weather podcast you can listen to so you can start your day with the team at Wake Up Charlotte.
SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts || Spotify || Stitcher || TuneIn || Google Podcasts
All of WCNC Charlotte's podcasts are free and available for both streaming and download. You can listen now on Android, iPhone, Amazon, and other internet-connected devices. Join us from North Carolina, South Carolina, or on the go anywhere.