World

NYC subway trains kill dozens of people a year. Other countries have paid for safety.

By Sammy Westfall
Yesterday at 2:01 p.m. EST

In just a matter of days in New York City this month, two people were pushed onto subway tracks in what police said were unprovoked assaults.

One of the victims, 40-year-old Michelle Alyssa Go, was shoved into the path of a train at the Times Square station Jan. 15. A homeless man was charged in her death. The other victim, a 62-year-old man, was pushed onto the tracks Sunday at the Fulton Street station but survived with minor injuries.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recorded 169 collisions between trains and people in 2020 — 63 of them fatal, according to The City, a nonprofit news outlet. In the previous year there were 62 deadly collisions. Sarah Feinberg, then the interim president of New York City Transit, told the news outlet that 12-9s — radio code for a person under a train — are not only “absolutely devastating” for the victim but also “traumatic” for train operators.

This month’s shoving incidents have spurred fears among the city’s millions of daily riders and galvanized calls for authorities to better protect passengers. But while episodes like these are rare, they also appear to be an outsize problem in New York and the United States at large. No major U.S. public transit rail systems have installed platform screen doors onto existing stations, according to Bay Area Rapid Transit in California.

In many other major cities around the world, governments have installed barriers — ranging from basic railings to high-tech sliding glass doors — to prevent accidents, suicides and crimes committed on the tracks. ... Here are several countries that have implemented or experimented with added safety measures for train riders.

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Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.

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By Sammy Westfall
Sammy Westfall is an assistant editor on The Washington Post's Foreign desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/sammy_westfall