MTA exploring platform barriers after Times Square subway shove tragedy
Transit leaders will explore the installation of platform barriers following the horrific death of a woman shoved onto the tracks at the Times Square subway station, MTA acting Chair Janno Lieber said Tuesday.
But platform shove-preventing screen doors — which the MTA has previously derided as prohibitively complicated and expensive — face significant obstacles, Lieber cautioned.
“Platform doors are an idea that works in many places, but there are special complexities in New York,” Lieber told reporters. “That said, we’re always looking for ways that we can make the system safer.”
Lieber cited “the age of our system,” station ventilation and maintaining platform accessibility as potential roadblocks. A transit spokesman also cited “train door misalignment” and “column placement.”
MTA leaders have previously knocked platform screen doors as a prohibitively expensive and complicated “multi-billion dollar solution.”
On Tuesday, Lieber said the MTA’s recently formed “track trespass” working group is exploring its feasibility among other potential responses to a recent increase in subway track intrusions.
Experts said the investment is worth it.
“I’m sure it is feasible,” said NYU transit researcher Eric Goldwyn. “They are already retrofitting stations. If you throw platform doors in, does that cost much more?”
New York City’s only platform barriers are on the JFK Airport AirTrain — but international cities have figured out how to retrofit aging stations with platform screens, Goldwyn noted — including Paris, Hong Kong and Sofia, Bulgaria.
Transit officials have considered, then ruled out platform door upgrades on several occasions. Former Transit President Andy Byford said in an email Monday that he weighed screen doors during his MTA tenure but ultimately decided signal modernization to speed up service was more important for improving service.
“The cost to retrofit platforms in NYC (and in London) would be very high,” Byford wrote. “The platforms were in most cases, not designed to carry the weight of the doors, even half height versions. Add into the mix the fact that a fair number of NYC platforms are curved and you have even more of a challenge — you’d be looking at a lot of platform rebuilds.”
“We concluded that the cost and disruption … was not a realistic consideration at that time and that we should focus our attention on the signaling first,” said Byford, who now runs London’s transportation system.
He said platform doors “shouldn’t be ruled out for the future” – particularly when building new stations.
Yet the MTA has so far opted against installing gates at its newest stations and kept them out of the current $55 billion capital improvement plan. Advocates said they are puzzled by the continued reluctance to embrace some form of platform barrier.
“Retrofitting stations with platform screen doors is a genuinely complex job. But it is a challenge that a growing number of transit agencies, such as Hong Kong, are tackling. To keep up with global best practices, the MTA will have to drop the defensiveness and develop feasible plans to make these upgrades happen,” said Ben Fried of the Manhattan-based think tank TransitCenter.
Fried said the MTA was right to prioritize signals and station accessibility given New York’s exorbitantly high construction costs.
