With subway-related deaths getting a lot of attention this year and the transit union nipping at the MTA's heels about it, New York City Transit president (and acting MTA CEO) Thomas Prendergast today delivered a "Customer Contact with Train Incident Report" [PDF] to a Transit Committee meeting. The gist of it? The MTA is aware that people don't like reading about subway-related deaths and is working on it. But y'all got to be patient.
Before we get to the MTA's plans, let's quickly look at the stats you are most interested in—how often do people actually get hit by the subway. And the answer, in 2012 at least, was 141 times. Of those incidents 51 were people who "contacted a moving train while on the platform," 54 were incidents were a passenger was "stuck on the tracks," 33 were suicides or attempted suicides and three were cases were a customer fell between cars. Further, 24 percent of the incidents involved drugs or alcohol. Which makes sense. You can compare that to previous years, here:
Last year's stats.
So what is the MTA doing about this situation? A few things. For one they are about to plaster your subways, buses and MetroCards with reminders to step away from the platform edge. Also, they are printing up 2,400 lapel buttons (see above) for workers to wear. Which can't hurt, we guess. Still, that is just the beginning.
In addition to awareness programs the MTA is also looking into a number of other ways to help reduce the need for subway heroes. First, they are going to equip more subway stations with "Help Points" which will allow riders to hit a button to alert authorities about emergencies (though they don't allow straphangers to stop trains from entering the station, as they do in other cities). Those should be in all stations by, oh, 2019. In addition, as we knew, the MTA is also seriously looking into the idea of platform sliding doors. The problem is that with so many different types of stations and trains, those will take a long time, and a lot of money, to be implemented (if they even can be).
And that's not all! Interestingly, and possibly affordably, the MTA is also looking into something called "intrusion detection," which instead of using sliding doors would simply install sensors on stations tracks that would alert authorities when something bigger than a rat is running around.
So, yes, the MTA is aware that you are worried about people dying on the subway. And yes, they are working on trying to make it a less frequent thing. But it is going to take some time. And rider's advocates, at least, seem okay with that. In a statement today the Straphangers Campaign said that it "thinks the MTA is taking [the problem of subway deaths] seriously, responding to public outcries in the wake of high profile incidents of riders being pushed to their deaths...This is an issue that should not go away."
