MTA to Install Platform Doors for Passenger Safety at Three NYC Subway Stations

By Yehudit Garmaise

As New Yorkers' anxiety at subway stations continues to rise, the MTA will begin to provide more passenger safety by installing subway platform doors to prevent passengers from falling or being shoved onto the tracks. 

The first three locations to receive platform doors are Times Square on the 7 line, Third Avenue on the L line, and at Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue, on the E train, Pix11 reported.

The $100 million project is expected to be completed by 2024, the City reported.

The Times Square station is where Michelle Alyssa Go, 40, who had volunteered to help homeless people, was tragically shoved to her death on Jan. 15 by Simon Martial, 61, who was homeless and mentally ill.

The purpose of the platform doors, which are used at subway stations in several cities worldwide, is to prevent people from going onto the tracks: either voluntarily or by falling or being shoved, chas v’shalom.

The number of people who trespass on subway tracks decreased from January to May 2022, compared to the same time in 2021, the MTA reported on progressiverailroading.com, however, the number of “track intrusions” remain high, after peaking at 160 in January, which was the highest single-month total over the past three years. 

In April, when the MTA reported 100 incidents in which people ended up on NYC’s subway tracks, the transit agency bemoaned the “unacceptable number of incidents that impact service and cause injuries and fatalities," MTA officials said.

Just last Sunday, Theodore Ellis, 30, came from behind a woman waiting for her train in the Bronx to throw her on the subway tracks in what police are calling an unprovoked attack.

The three NYC subway stations that will soon feature subway platform doors are the first to test out the new safety precautions in what could eventually be used in all of the city’s 472 stations.