A worker surveys the snow on an elevated subway platform. Photo: MTA
A worker surveys the snow on an elevated subway platform. Photo: MTA

New Yorkers are debating whether the MTA should install platform doors or gates at subway stations, later on a spate of pushing attacks rocked the city.

Ndione Ndeye
Ndeye Ndione

I take some knowledge to share. As part of a Hunter College transit-policy grade taught by Streetsblog correspondent Charles Komanoff, Joslyn Johnson, Emily Shafran and I adult a cost-benefit analysis for the devices. The numbers we used were based on assumptions and value placeholders for things that we couldn't calculate — specially the benefits. Merely our inquiry independent the questions that advocates should be request — and which the MTA needs to make clear through its information if nosotros are going to have an informed word.

We examined:

  • The extent to which platform doors would better safety and passenger comfort past making falls, leaps or pushes onto the tracks impossible or at least less frequent.
  • The dollar value of lives saved past the barriers.
  • The extent to which platform doors would improve service reliability past reducing rails fires and blockages from debris.
  • The number of new subway trips the platform doors would attract, owing to enhanced safe and potentially faster service.
  • The dollar value of those trips to the people making them.
  • The extent to which more subway trips would reduce auto trips and the size of the "externality benefits" — less traffic congestion, lower emissions, fewer crashes — from the auto miles that would be eliminated.
  • Whether the doors will be full-length, 8-foot-high "platform screen doors" or half height (typically 4-and-a-half-feet) "automatic platform gates."
  • The costs of designing, technology and installing the platform doors.

There's no manner to put a price on a single life, then whatever calculations are ultimately dissimilar depending on your values, but our assay found many combinations of assumptions for which installing subway platform doors would exist worth the money. (The MTA has declined to approximate the cost of the barriers, but NY1 reported that outfitting 27 percent of stations could cost $seven billion, with full conversion costing $thirty billion.)

SIDEBAR: A Structure EXEC MAKES THE Example FOR PLATFORM GATES

For example, relying on a 2017 MTA report, nosotros adamant the uppercase cost for installing 8-foot-loftier barriers systemwide at $28 billion. Based on that, the doors were worth the toll if all of the following condition are met:

  • they enhanced security and passenger condolement enough to raise annual ridership past at least 5 percent over the 2019 pre-pandemic baseline of 1.6 billion annual trips;
  • a quarter to a half of those new trips displaced an equal number of motorcar trips; and
  • having the doors led to a measurable drop in congestion, emissions and crashes.

Needless to say, none of these variables tin can be known precisely. Some, such as the attraction of trips owing to greater safety and condolement, will be especially difficult to pinpoint. This makes it all the more than imperative that whatsoever MTA assessment be fully transparent and consider all possible assumptions.

The MTA could revisit its plan to examination platform doors at the Third Avenue station on the L line, which meets all the necessary mechanical conditions for hosting a pilot: It serves simply i line, those trains have communication-based train controls, and the railroad train cars on the line are all one model.

Nosotros demand to try such a test: Fearfulness of set on has contributed to persistently depression subway ridership — forth with fears of COVID-xix and the closures of schools, offices and amusement it has created. Low ridership, in turn, threatens to derail the metropolis's economic and social recovery past imperiling NYC Transit's finances and adding to the overflow of cars that congest and dethrone metropolis streets.

Unfortunately, the situation appears to be worsening.An NYPD source told the Washington Post that five subway shoves have occurred in the first 24 days of 2022; this extrapolates to around 75 incidents for the twelvemonth.  By comparison, in 2021, the NYPD reported thirty such incidents. Any number higher up zero is unacceptable,MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said terminal November after but such an set on.

"Nobody — no rider, no New Yorker — should have to fear this kind of thing happening," he said.

Yes, platform barriers volition be costly, and MTA's massive debt is no help. There are many strong claims on MTA resources, including modernizing signals, increasing the number of stations that are ADA accessible, and finally finishing mega projects similar the 2nd Avenue Subway and Long Island Rail Route expansions. Notwithstanding what good does information technology do for the MTA to provide reliable, efficient train service if riders, feeling unsafe, stay away?

World cities such every bit London, Paris, and Seoul accept screens on their platforms in order to keep straphangers from falling, jumping or beingness pushed onto the tracks resulting in injury or expiry. Why not New York City?

Ndeye Ndione (@_nndeye_) is a recent graduate of Hunter College, earning her B.A. in political science. She was as well a Roosevelt House student.