A failure to communicate resulted in death of NY transit worker
Two employees of New York City Transit (NYCT) were struck by a subway train – one fatally - because the Rail Control Center failed to let the train dispatcher and tower operator know that flaggers were on the track. That’s the conclusion of a just-released National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the incident, which occurred on November 3, 2016 in a tunnel between the Fort Hamilton Parkway and Church Avenue stations.
Ironically, when they were struck by the train, the two NYCT employees were setting up flagging protection for someone else - a contractor who needed to cross the track to access an instrument control room in the tunnel.