Another example that something "unique" isn't necessarily "exceptional"

I hate exceptionalism and most everyone's desire to declare their situation and community unique--of course their places are unique but the systems and structures undergirding places are similar and therefore not exceptional. ...

I first wrote about this in the context of what I call the tyranny of neighborhood parochialism. But parochialism appears to be an endemic problem that transcends neighborhoods (but not municipalities). Note to WMATA:

Railroad _systems_ are not unique even if specific transit systems are in fact "unique" because they are place-based artifacts. Railroads are supposed to be run the same way, regardless of place.

In "Sister Transit System Took Steps to Counter Hazard: BART Saw Circuit Problem At Center of Metro Probe" from the Washington Post, writers Lena Sun and Lyndsay Layton tell us that:

Metro officials said the malfunction that appears to be at the heart of last month's deadly Red Line crash was traced to "flickering" in a track circuit that seemed to be a "freak occurrence" they had never before encountered or knew was possible.

But that type of transient, intermittent failure is known to experts who work with automated transit systems and was flagged as a hazard by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco. Officials there installed a separate system as a protection against flickering track circuitry.

BART is considered a sister system to Metro because it was built about the same time using similar designs, technology and suppliers. Metro never installed the backup system, known as the sequential occupancy release system, that is used by BART.

Metro's rail chief, Dave Kubicek, said through a spokesman last week that he was not familiar with the BART system. ... Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that every transit system is unique and that it is difficult to know the "intricacies of everybody else's system and how they compare to ours."

Also in the story:

Willard Wattenburg, an electrical engineer and inventor retired from the University of California at Berkeley, said intermittent failures were frequent on BART in the early 1970s.

Wattenburg analyzed BART's initial design for the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates transit systems, and crafted some corrections. BART officials at the time said the failures were flukes, but regulators insisted on the design changes.

In the old days of DC Transit, the streetcar system was overseen by the DC Public Service Commission. But apparently there isn't the same level of regulatory oversight of WMATA by the three jurisdictions (DC, MD, and VA) today that there was in days past.

Just because an agency is a nonprofit or governmentally-controlled doesn't mean that significant oversight is not warranted.