NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- The MTA will look into installing platform barriers at train stations after multiple subway pushes in recent months, including the death of a woman at the Times Square station on Saturday.
Renewed calls for barriers comes after Michelle Go was killed while waiting for a train at the Times Square-42nd Street station this past weekend. Simon Martial, 61, confessed to pushing her onto the tracks, police said, and has a history with officers in the past.
Despite the fact that MTA CEO and Acting Chair Janno Lieber saying he’d consider adding platform doors to increase rider safety, he denoted that it comes with plenty of problems in the way.
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“There are special complexities in New York,” Lieber said, according to the New York Post. “That said, we’re always looking for ways that we can make the system safer.”
Lieber also cited platform accessibility and the aging system amongst the issues that other officials said also included the ability to align subway doors with the barriers.
Lieber said other ideas would be on the table in order to improve safety. In the past, the agency has pushed away from barriers due to a billion-dollar price tag.
An unnamed former MTA official spoke to THE CITY, citing countries like South Korea having such barriers as a reason to push forward.
“Systems all over the world have made the decision to go in that direction, so now it’s just a matter of when are we going to wake up on this?” the official said in the report.
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The MTA has planned for, but scrapped trials runs on such tech as recently as 2019 on the L line, THE CITY reported. One place you can find such safety choices is on the AirTrain at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Subway conditions and safety have become a worry for many New Yorkers during the pandemic. Although police department statistics show major felonies on trains and busses have dropped over the past two years, so has ridership, making it difficult to compare.
The death in Times Square came more than a week after Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans to boost subway policing and outreach to homeless people in the streets and trains.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.