The subway will check the gates of the platform at 3 stations

More than a month after a woman was shoved to death in front of a moving subway train, the Metropolitan Transport Authority will install barriers to access the tracks at three stations, the agency’s chief executive said. said on Wednesday.

The move is a reversal for the transport regulator, which has long resisted calls for such barriers, calling them impractical, expensive and incompatible with the train system. Such an old subway.

Most recently last month, Janno Lieber, chief executive officer of the MTA, said that barriers – known as platform side doors or platform screen doors – were not viable due to “particular complexity” in the New York’s subway, a 104-year-old old man. system with 472 stations and 665 miles of roads.

But the agency said it needed to tackle the problem of more and more people walking on the tracks, so officials decided to test platform doors as a possible solution.

In an interview on NY1 On Wednesday, Mr. Lieber said that transit officials will move to install the doors as part of the pilot program at Times Square station, Sutphin Boulevard station — Archer Avenue – JFK Airport in Queens and Third Avenue station. in Manhattan.

In Times Square, one of the system’s busiest stations, doors will be located on platform 7, but not platform R, where a 40-year-old woman, Michelle Alyssa Go, was stabbed shoved to death last month. ONE homeless man confessed Go accused of killing her, which shocked a city already worried about safety on the subway.

It also prompted new requests for action from commuters and elected officials, many of whom want the transit agency to explore platform gates, used on many metro systems in Europe. Europe and Asia and on airport shuttle systems, including the AirTrain at Kennedy International Airport.

The doors create a barrier that separates the track area from the platforms, a marked change from the open design of the subway system. Although the shipping agency has worked on implementing them several times in recent years, previous leaders concluded that they were too expensive or unsuitable.

Last month, as calls for the doors mounted, the transportation agency released a detailed report 3,000 pages From 2019, the doors will only be able to be installed at 128 stations – about a quarter of the total number of stops on the system – due to station layout, subway car design and vehicle usage needs. rolling.

Mr. Lieber admitted on NY1 that technical concerns mean the doors won’t “work in many places.” However, he and other officials chose to continue the pilot program because the number of people on the subway tracks has increased in recent years and concerns about jostling have grown.

The agency did not provide a timetable for the door installation at the three terminals. A spokesman said more details will be presented at the transportation agency’s monthly board meeting on Thursday.

New York’s subway system has seen an uptick in attacks, including people being shoved on the tracks. Thirty people have been pushed onto the track in 2021, up from 20 in 2019 – before the pandemic, when rider numbers were significantly higher.