Mind the gap
Even if you haven’t never ridden the London Tube, you know what the PA saying “Mind the Gap” means, just as New York straphangers using the 191st St. station in Washington Heights and Clark St. in Brooklyn Heights know how the new platform safety railings just installed work.
The simple barriers, positioned along the platform edge to have openings where the train’s doors align, limit the chance that someone can accidentally fall or be intentionally pushed to the tracks.
The fences came two years after Michelle Go was shoved off a Times Square downtown R train platform by a deranged man and killed on a Saturday morning in January 2022 and a clamor arose for something to stop such horrors.
As we wrote of the MTA then, “So out was wheeled an agency 3,920-page review that mostly seemed to say that there are too many hurdles, engineering and financial, to build barriers that would prevent passengers from ending up on the tracks.”
So, as they figured out how to retrofit ancient platforms for full floor-to-ceiling sliding gates like some European cities or airport transit systems have, at the suggestion of Gridlock Sam Schwartz, we urged that the MTA try the low-tech approach as well. Schwartz pointed to the simple fences at the southern end of the station at 96th and Broadway that have been there forever. The logic is that any wary rider can wait near a fence and then move towards the car door once the train arrives.
And so voilà, we have results. From 96th St., take either the No. 1 uptown to 191st St. or take the No. 2 or No. 3 downtown express to the first stop in Brooklyn, Clark St. There’s no moving parts, nothing to break, nothing to maintain. Just a bit safer. Well done.
Putting aside that it took two years, what is so hopeful about these fences, beyond making two stations safer, is that the work was done entirely inhouse by the MTA itself. There were no engineering consultants, no contractors having to submit bids, no resident engineer having to watch the contractor, etc., etc. Just parts and labor.
As we wrote two years ago, urging a simple approach, “It wouldn’t be as perfect as what they have in Paris, but it would provide some additional safety. There are 1,200 platform edges, so why not plant some fences on those platforms where they could be fitted?”
We wish the agency could do more like this on its own, instead of having to pay top dollar to outsiders.
That mammoth tome about all the problems with the elaborate sliding gates was prepared by one the biggest infrastructure consultants out there, STV. We’d bet that the big fat report cost much more than outfitting the two stations. And it is dated February 2020, two years before Go was pushed to her death, so it just sat on the shelf.
The MTA is still proceeding on a pilot for the fancy platform doors for three stations — the No. 7 at Times Square; the E at Sutphin Blvd.-Archer Ave. and Third Ave. on the L — with a request for proposals having been published and submissions due next month. Fingers crossed that it won’t cost a zillion dollars, but don’t be surprised if it does.