Before a Muni train knocked passengers off their feet by whipping around a curve, careening past a scheduled stop, and barreling by a park during a busy commute Wednesday morning, the operator was slumped over the control panel, according to one rider.
The witness, 14-year-old Nina Aronov, told The Standard she had a direct view of the control booth during the ride on the N Judah that ended in a panicked evacuation on Duboce Avenue.
Nina, who takes the N regularly to Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, said she had just boarded the eastbound train at the station at Carl and Cole streets when she noticed something unusual.
The operator “put her head down on top of the control panel, slumped down,” Nina recounted. She said the Muni driver “sat up straight” when the train started moving again and entered the tunnel toward Duboce Park.
“I didn’t really think much of it,” Nina said. “I was just trying to get to school.”
As the train approached the tunnel exit, she felt it accelerate.
“We’re getting out of the tunnel, and the train’s not slowing down,” she said. “It usually goes so slow on the street, [but] it’s not slowing down, and I’m freaking out.”
The train sped through the curve by Duboce Park, jolting passengers to one side. Nina fell into other passengers, then onto the floor. The cars pitched back, as passengers screamed and toppled in the opposite direction. Nina found her footing and kept her grip on the pole, “holding on for dear life.”
“I’m looking at the operator, and she’s just sitting there,” she said. “And I’m really confused because … she didn’t look like she was very frantic to stop the train.”
Shortly thereafter, the train stopped on Duboce Avenue, between two stations. Nina said she started to cry when the operator opened her door.
“She comes out of her booth, and then she starts telling me, ‘You’re OK, you’re OK,’ and I’m like standing there crying. I’m freaking out, because I thought I was gonna die just now. It seems as though she was raising her voice at me … and she was waving her hands around. It was strange. I was telling her, ‘No, I’m not, and I really want to get out of here.’”
Nina asked if she could open the doors, but the operator said she had to move the train a little farther first. The operator’s voice “was kind of shaky.”
“She was waving her hands everywhere,” Nina said, “and she was repeating everything many times.”
When the doors opened, passengers spilled onto the street. Multiple riders described a strong burning smell coming from the train.
Everyone was shaken. The impact from getting knocked off balance left one woman with a concussion, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Other passengers who spoke to The Standard were sore from whiplash or had scratches.
The SF Municipal Transportation Agency would not respond to claims that the operator was slumped over, saying no additional details were available. But the agency confirmed that the employee in question “is on non-driving status.” In a statement last week, the agency said inspectors had found no mechanical error upon initial review.
The SFMTA dispatched ambassadors to the N Judah line starting Monday to field questions and concerns from riders.
Gina Gillham, who happened to find herself by the control booth at the same time as Nina, told The Standard she didn’t look at the operator until after the train got out of control.
“I wasn’t really paying attention until afterward,” said Gillham, a 27-year-old UC Law San Francisco student who was on her usual commute to school that morning.
The train filled with a burning smell, she recounted. Once the train stopped, she said, the operator emerged from the control booth and seemed as shaken as everyone else.
“She got out and she was kind of yelling, raising her voice, to calm everyone down,” Gillham said. “It was pretty chaotic. She was trying to reassure us that everything was OK. She said the brakes weren’t working, the brakes weren’t working, and then she had us all evacuate.”
Gillham said she filed a complaint about the incident but hasn’t heard back from the SFMTA aside from a canned response. Meanwhile, she has resumed her usual commute.
“I still take Muni every day,” she said. “It’s just a little bit scarier now.”
Nina said she’s been taking public transit since sixth grade and appreciates the independence it provides her but may opt to take buses from now on.
Like Gillham, she filed a report to Muni and said she’s “pissed off” that she has received only an automated email.
“I want them to do something,” she said. “I don’t know if it was a driver error … but whatever it is, they need to figure out what’s wrong with her or what’s wrong with the train.”
Nina’s mother, Olga Aronov, had left her phone at home when she walked her daughter to the station that morning. She returned to see several missed calls from Nina and texts that read: “Mama, please call me.”
When she called back, Nina was on another train, making her way to school. Aronov could tell Nina was shaken as she conveyed what had happened.
Aronov said Nina told her the operator “looked a little weird” when she got on the train and was “slouching over the dashboard.” Aronov asked if she looked asleep, and Nina said she didn’t think so. But given the statement from Muni that the train was “mechanically sound,” she wonders if what her daughter noticed could be important for the investigation.
“I hope the MTA takes it seriously and they complete the investigation and make sure that things like that never happen again in the future,” she said.