NYC subway trains kill dozens of people a year. Other countries have paid for safety.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

World

NYC subway trains kill dozens of people a year. Other countries have paid for safety.

By Sammy Westfall
Yesterday at 2:01 p.m. EST

In just a matter of days in New York City this month, two people were pushed onto subway tracks in what police said were unprovoked assaults.

One of the victims, 40-year-old Michelle Alyssa Go, was shoved into the path of a train at the Times Square station Jan. 15. A homeless man was charged in her death. The other victim, a 62-year-old man, was pushed onto the tracks Sunday at the Fulton Street station but survived with minor injuries.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recorded 169 collisions between trains and people in 2020 — 63 of them fatal, according to The City, a nonprofit news outlet. In the previous year there were 62 deadly collisions. Sarah Feinberg, then the interim president of New York City Transit, told the news outlet that 12-9s — radio code for a person under a train — are not only “absolutely devastating” for the victim but also “traumatic” for train operators.

This month’s shoving incidents have spurred fears among the city’s millions of daily riders and galvanized calls for authorities to better protect passengers. But while episodes like these are rare, they also appear to be an outsize problem in New York and the United States at large. No major U.S. public transit rail systems have installed platform screen doors onto existing stations, according to Bay Area Rapid Transit in California.

In many other major cities around the world, governments have installed barriers — ranging from basic railings to high-tech sliding glass doors — to prevent accidents, suicides and crimes committed on the tracks. ... Here are several countries that have implemented or experimented with added safety measures for train riders.

{snip}

Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.

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By Sammy Westfall
Sammy Westfall is an assistant editor on The Washington Post's Foreign desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/sammy_westfall

[PJMcK]

1. NYCs subway system is huge

Consider these facts:

It has 850 miles of track, (about 200 miles are sidings and service tracks).

There are 472 stations.

It is the busiest rapid transit system in both the Western Hemisphere and the Western world, as well as the seventh-busiest rapid transit rail system in the world and it runs 24/7/365.

In 2017, the subway delivered over 1.72 billion rides.

In 2018, it's budget was $8.7 billion.

In 2020, it's on-time rate was 89%.

It will be very difficult and supremely expensive to upgrade this system with the kind of safeguards found in other cities' mass transit systems.

I've been riding the subways in NYC since the 1970s. The service is far superior today than it was back then. There have been many improvements and the trains and stations are much cleaner than in the past. Yet it's hard to fathom how to implement the upgrades proposed.

All of that said, it's a terrific mass transit system that can take you near or far relatively quickly for under $3.00.

[Borderer]

2. Sensationized article

The article doesn't break down the nature of the incidents at all before implying that the system is unsafe, and emphasizes the scariest (but very rare) incidents of people being pushed onto the tracks from platforms. Very likely the majority of deaths are suicides, not all of them at stations, and suicide is obviously a wider social problem which is not solved by platform edge doors. If those figures do include suicides they are actually surprisingly low - comparable to London Underground which is significantly smaller. The article is a bit sensationalist.

That said, platform doors are obviously a very good idea, especially at the busiest stations and those with narrow platforms. My local subway (Glasgow, Scotland) is getting half-height doors very soon, which will be a big benefit because it is a really old system with some very narrow island platforms.

London has some doors on its newest lines, and most underground stations have excavated pits between and alongside the rails in stations, so people falling onto the track tend to drop down into the pits and can avoid being hit by a train if they lie flat. Even more expensive and disruptive to do than platform edge doors, though.