anywhere in the country. that technology makes you feel like those kinds of accidents won t occur in the future. i feel that i m 100% sure that its going to work like its supposed to, i m a little bit skeptical. reporter: the system is a major step toward returning the rail system toward automatic control. they have been operating in manual mode since the crash which required slower speed and jerky rides. it sounds absolute. reporter: they won t say when they will return to automatic mode. it is headed in that direction. reporter: they are now cleared a major hurdle. metro first developed a prototype for the realtime monitoring system in october of 2009, shortly after the crash. the system that is now up and running was tested for a year and a half to make sure that is works. sherry, any idea why it took so long to test this and what could it mean to other transit agencies. this is a system that didn t exist. metro started from scratch to develop this and te