Leadership shuffle follows a difficult summer that included a fatal monorail crash; Disney says the changes aren't related to the accident
Walt Disney World is shaking up its transportation leadership, after a turbulent summer that included the first fatal monorail accident in the resort's history.
Disney has appointed Jim Vendur, a vice president who had previously been in charge of transportation maintenance, to oversee both operations and maintenance of a system of that includes the 15-mile monorail, ferryboats and the largest bus fleet in Central Florida. Vendur's responsibilities also include utilities and telecommunications at the resort.
Disney has also created a new vice president slot reporting to Vendur that will focus exclusively on transportation, though it has not yet filled the position. Below that, it has separated oversight of the bus system from monorails and watercraft and assigned them to separate executives.
Kevin Lansberry, a vice president who had previously been in charge of transportation operations, will no longer have a role in transportation. He remains the vice president in charge of Disney's Animal Kingdom. And Disney has moved a former director of transportation operations to Disney's Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness Resort as general manager there.
Disney said the changes are unrelated to the monorail accident and instead part of a broad corporate restructuring that began early this year, as it sought to cut costs amid the global recession. The Walt Disney Co. laid off more than 850 parks-and-resorts employees in Florida as part of the restructuring, with the vast majority of the cuts occurring in Orlando.
"We are in the midst of a companywide reorganization and it makes sense for us to integrate transportation maintenance and operations under one leader," Disney spokesman Kim Prunty said.
Still, the shakeup follows a difficult summer for Disney transportation. In July, two monorail trains collided on the resort's Epcot line, killing 21-year-old driver Austin Wuennenberg.
The July 5 crash, the first fatal accident in the 38-year history of the Disney World monorail, has sparked multiple investigations, including probes by the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. While investigators believe human error is at least partially to blame, according to people familiar with the probes, they are also scrutinizing Disney's internal policies and procedures to determine whether they may have contributed.
One area investigators have zeroed in on: The practice of allowing monorail drivers to remain in the front cabin while they drive in reverse through track switches, rather than requiring them to drive from twin controls in the rear cabins of their trains. The crash that killed Wuennenberg occurred when another driver, who was driving from the front cabin, backed into Wuennenberg's train while mistakenly believing he was reversing through a track switch and off the Epcot line.
Former monorail pilots say Disney used to make drivers move to the rear cabin before reversing through switches but allowed the policy to change over the years to save time. Since the accident, Disney has reinstituted the rule requiring pilots to drive from the rear cabin when reversing through track switches.
Disney has also implemented a number of other changes, according to people familiar with the investigation, including requiring someone be stationed at a control grid with an emergency shut-down switch during track changes.
About two weeks after the monorail collision, two Disney buses crashed. A dozen people were sent to hospitals with minor injuries, though no one was seriously hurt.
And last week, Disney shut down its bus service completely for a few hours after a suspicious device was found mounted on one of the vehicles. Police ultimately determined that the device was harmless, though Disney workers inspected each of the resort's approximately 300 buses as a precaution.
Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:37 pm Post subject: Re: Walt Disney World shakes up transportation management
sarah91182 wrote:
Disney said the changes are unrelated to the monorail accident and instead part of a broad corporate restructuring that began early this year, as it sought to cut costs amid the global recession.
Not true, of course, but one of the more plausible excuses they could have come up with. I don't blame Disney for being less than honest here, though, since admitting they've made changes because of accident would just open them up for more liability.
Quote:
One area investigators have zeroed in on: The practice of allowing monorail drivers to remain in the front cabin while they drive in reverse through track switches, rather than requiring them to drive from twin controls in the rear cabins of their trains. The crash that killed Wuennenberg occurred when another driver, who was driving from the front cabin, backed into Wuennenberg's train while mistakenly believing he was reversing through a track switch and off the Epcot line.
Former monorail pilots say Disney used to make drivers move to the rear cabin before reversing through switches but allowed the policy to change over the years to save time. Since the accident, Disney has reinstituted the rule requiring pilots to drive from the rear cabin when reversing through track switches.
This is bad. They sacrificed a smart practice from years past for the sake of expediency. That seems to be the common theme behind all of the park accidents since the Christmas Eve 1998 incident at Disneyland.
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