(The following editorial appeared on the Newsday website on January 3.)
NEW YORK — Though the Long Island Rail Road is correct to spend $20.7 million this year to narrow the too-wide gap between train and platform, neither this railroad nor any other can possibly spend enough money to remove all the hazards of travel. Riding on passenger trains will always require commuters to watch out for their own safety.
Newsday’s investigation found that the LIRR recorded more than 800 gap incidents from 1995 to early 2007. But it’s worth pointing out that this investigation began with one teenager who drank too much. We all regret her death, but we shouldn’t forget the simple lesson it teaches: Riding trains heedlessly can be dangerous.
The railroad has turned up the volume of its public education campaign to remind riders of their own role in safety, and that’s valuable. It also plans to spend a lot of money to put gap-narrowing steel plates on every door in all 1,140 cars, and to add one-inch boards on most platform edges. All that makes sense, in the same way that putting a new roof on your house does: It’s not the most gratifying way to spend money, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Perhaps the most contentious part of the railroad’s plan is its proposed 600-foot extension of the north platform at the Syosset station. The sharply curved existing platform makes for an especially wide gap. Extending it east, on a straighter stretch of track, would ease the gap, but it would also put a platform close to the backyards of residents.
Since the LIRR owns the right of way, it doesn’t have to take any property. Still, the concerns of homeowners are understandable. So it’s encouraging that LIRR president Helena Williams says the railroad will build a fence and plant vines to shield homes from the platform. This month, the railroad will meet with the community to explain its plans. The LIRR must keep doing all it can to ease the impact.
As for the railroad’s riders, while all this work goes on – and long after that as well – we have no choice but to heed the LIRR’s words to the wise: “Watch the gap.”