Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski touted an increase in federal oversight over municipal public transportation systems on Monday.
“Headed 2 press conference on my new federal safety standards for metro,” Mikulski tweeted Monday afternoon.
“New safety standards will help identify problems, fix them, ensure they don’t happen again,” the long-term Maryland senator followed up in subsequent tweet.
The comments followed a pair of weekend shutdowns for the Metrorail subway system in Washington, D.C., that officials said were caused by computer failures. Trains were held in place in the system for about 30 minutes on two separate occasions after a glitch prevented Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) from accounting for the location of trains within the system.
Lawmakers included an expansion of congressional power to regulate public transit systems in a recently approved $105 billion surface transportation.
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