MTA Archive

Sounds like a good idea.

The MTA may install sliding mechanical doors on subway platforms so riders can’t fall, jump – or get pushed to the tracks.

The metal-and-glass doors would be part of a barrier along a platform’s edge and would open only after a train stops at the station, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority document shows.

The system would help prevent tragic incidents, like the Sunday morning death on the L train tracks of 24-year-old Brendan Mahoney in Brooklyn, officials said.

And it would protect riders from killers like Andrew Goldstein, the mental patient who shoved 32-year-oldKendra Webdale to her death in front of a speeding N train beneath Madison Square Park in 1999.

In 2009 alone, 90 people were struck by trains – and 40 died, NYC Transit stats show. “We are very early in the process of looking at the possibility of installing platform doors that would go a long way toward enhancing passenger safety and station appearance,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.

The protective platforms under consideration are increasingly common overseas in cities like London, Parisand Tokyo. They are also in use closer to home at AirTrain stops in Queens and in New Jersey.

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