A former Charlotte Area Transit System rail controller who was fired after a train derailment last year said he and his colleagues were often required to work alone, violating state rules and creating an unsafe environment for passengers.
Terry Creech worked in the Rail Operations Control Center for three and a half years. He said he and others asked the transit system for more staffing because it was too difficult to monitor the Lynx Blue Line and Gold Line streetcar trains with only one person.
“It was rare, extremely, extremely rare when two controllers would be working at the same time,” Creech said. ”All of us were constantly saying one person being in control of this is ridiculous.”
He said they were ignored.
“And the whole time we just weren’t being heard,” he said.
Creech was fired a month after a Lynx train derailed on May 21, last year. He was working in the Rail Operations Control Center, or ROCC.
The transit system criticized his actions after the train derailed. Creech said he was a scapegoat and that he didn’t do anything wrong. He also said he was working alone that day, and he could have had a better response if he had help.
In March, the North Carolina Department of Transportation made a surprise inspection of the ROCC after being told it was understaffed.
In a March 31 letter to CATS, the state criticized the transit system for sometimes operating the ROCC with only one person. It wrote that CATS’ staffing in the ROCC “created undue stress and overwhelming levels of responsibilities.”
The DOT said that if CATS couldn’t staff the center with at least two people it would make the system shut down one train line.
Interim CATS chief executive Brent Cagle told City Council earlier this month the transit system would pay overtime to make sure the center was properly staffed.
Cagle, who took over in December, also said he’s working to expedite repairs to Lynx vehicles. The DOT also criticized the transit system’s response to the accident as “unclear, insufficient and not acceptable.”
Streetcar strains controllers
Creech said the workload became too much in August 2021 when the streetcar extension opened.
The line went from 1.5 miles to four miles. He said streetcar operators needed to communicate with the center more than Lynx Blue Line operators. For instance, streetcar operators often have to deal with parked cars blocking their path.
Leading up to the streetcar expansion, Creech said he told CATS officials they needed more people inside the ROCC.
“When the Gold Line first got introduced as an idea. …We were telling them from that point — are we going to have two controllers?” Creech said. “Because we knew we needed two for both lines.”
He added: “The way they did it in the ROCC at the time was so unsafe.”
He said CATS “dumped so many responsibilities onto the controllers” and that the transit system was “continuously putting us more and more on the controllers and ... were constantly telling us you should be able to handle that by yourself.”
Creech said there were often minor problems with Lynx vehicles — which required the drivers to ask controllers to troubleshoot problems.
“But while you’re doing that you are still in charge of every other train that’s talking to you,” he said. “All the streetcars on the Gold Line, still talking to you. Maintenance is calling you for stuff. You’ve got reports you’ve got to get out.”
Creech’s firing was first reported by the Charlotte Observer.
He spoke to WFAE this week at his home in Charlotte. Since the derailment, local media have written about numerous problems with the transit system, including the lack of staffing.
Creech has hired an attorney. He said he may sue the city over his firing.
Train derailment
Creech was the controller working on May 21, 2022, when a Lynx train derailed in between the Scaleybark and Woodlawn stations. The train did not tip over, and no one was hurt.
On the day of the derailment, Creech said the train operator reported to him a computerized warning that indicated a problem with the train’s hydraulics. He said the operator also told him the train — now stopped — had been handling weirdly.
“So I was like, OK, what do you mean by acting weird?” Creech said. “I need to know what that means so I can know what to tell you. And he says it’s just shaking a lot more than normal.”
Creech said he walked the operator through the troubleshooting process that’s in the manual.
He also said he dispatched someone from maintenance to look at the car as well.
After instructing the driver to turn the power off and back on, Creech said he asked the driver if he had any propulsion — and if he could make it to the next station.
The driver said he had power.
“(But) he calls back and says 'No, it’s still shaking really bad,'” Creech said.
He said he told the driver to not attempt to move the train. He said the CATS official that he sent to the scene quickly saw the train had derailed.
Creech said he immediately contacted multiple supervisors.
“I need help,” he said about him trying to manage the situation from the ROCC. “I still got trains that are talking to me on the radio, I’m trying to get them set up. I’m trying to get a game plan in my head as to what I’m going to do to be able to keep trains moving in their areas so people can get around. I’m calling the bus side to try to set up a bus bridge (for passengers).”
In explaining his firing, CATS said that when the train operator told him the train was unable to move and was shaking badly, Creech should not have asked the driver if he could get to the next station.
“They said that when the operator called in and said that the train was shaking badly, I should have had him step out and do a walk around the train to check and see if everything is OK,” Creech said. “But again, that’s not the normal procedure of what you would do in the control center, especially when you are by yourself. You would go by the troubleshooting guide.”
CATS also cited Creech for allowing trains to continue using the other track before someone inspected it to make sure it was safe. The transit system wrote that a rail controller’s primary duties “consist of having the capacity to multitask and make sound decisions for the benefit of the riding public."
Creech said having a second controller would have made a difference.
“I would have been able to focus a lot more on what was happening with him and his situation initially,” he said.
WFAE reached out to CATS about Creech’s comments but did not hear back.
After losing his job, Creech expanded a group called BreatheInk he started several years ago.
It helps teenagers express themselves through poetry.
He said he has no interest in going back to the ROCC.
