(The following story by Jennifer Maloney appeared on the Newsday website on September 10.)
NEW YORK — Commuter railroads across the country would have to report accidents in the gap, the space between train and station platform, to the Federal Railroad Administration under a proposed rule released yesterday.
The proposal, which could be adopted next year and is in a public comment period until Nov. 10, would allow the railroad administration to monitor gap injuries and take steps to reduce them, the agency said.
A Newsday investigation spurred by the 2006 death of Natalie Smead, 18, at the Woodside Long Island Rail Road station found that the LIRR, its parent agency and state and federal oversight officials had done little to address a problem that had injured hundreds of riders. Smead slipped through a gap, crawled under a platform and was struck by an oncoming train.
Although the federal agency requires the country’s 21 commuter railroads to report bee stings and spider bites, it has never tracked accidents in which people slip into the gap.
The LIRR changed its accident tracking methods in January 2007 as a result of Smead’s death and the attention it generated. It previously had kept incomplete tallies of gap falls.
The railroad expects to spend $46 million by 2012 on gap-shrinking measures such as widening or shifting platforms and installing wider metal plates at the base of train doorways.
The proposed change announced yesterday would not create additional expense for the railroad, LIRR spokesman Joe Calderone said.
The LIRR was part of an FRA task force that developed a definition for “gap incident” and worked out ways for railroads to track and report gap injuries.
The FRA adopted the task force’s recommendations in its proposed rule, defining a gap incident as “an event involving a person who, while involved in the process of boarding or alighting a passenger train … has one or more body parts enter the area between the car body and the edge of the platform.”
The change in accident reporting requirements would allow the agency to assess the extent of gap injuries and identify locations where gap accidents occur frequently, the agency said.
Jawauna Greene, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Transit Administration, or MARC, said the change would allow railroads to identify problem platform and train designs, and find new ways to improve safety.
“It’s yet another mechanism to protect the public,” she said.
Other changes proposed by the FRA include requiring railroads to report:
Suicides and attempted suicides.
Deaths that occur within 24 hours of a grade-crossing accident.
Whether video of a grade-crossing accident is available.
AT THE STATION
What is a gap accident?
The definition, according to the Federal Railroad Administration: “An event involving a person who, while involved in the process of boarding or alighting a passenger train at a rail car door threshold plate at a high level passenger boarding platform (i.e., a platform that is 48 inches or more above the top of the rail), has one or more body parts enter the area between the car body and the edge of the platform.”
These are not examples of gap accidents:
While boarding or alighting from a passenger train, a person misjudges the gap and falls into the train vestibule or onto the station platform, without a body part entering the gap.
A person walking a station platform slips at a location other than the rail car door threshold, resulting in a leg entering the gap.