(Newsday posted the following article by Jennifer Maloney on its website on February 15.)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Railroads across the country are taking a fresh look at the gap issue and some already are making changes as a result of the death of a Minnesota teenager on the Long Island Rail Road in August, officials said Wednesday.
Details of some railroads’ actions came out at a meeting of a federal group studying the issue nationwide. An initiative to develop national gap standards is under way.
New Jersey Transit voluntarily undertook a survey of platform gaps at all of its 44 high-level platforms that are 4 feet above the tracks at about the same height as train doors.
Now, the New Jersey railroad, which has “Watch the Gap” signs inside trains, is using new signs and on-board announcements in a stepped-up education campaign.
“We wanted to say something more about the gap,” said Jeff Kovacs, the railroad’s director of safety.
The new poster reads: “Don’t turn your trip into a fall. Watch the gap between the platforms and the train.”
The LIRR conducted a survey regarding gaps throughout its system at the request of state and federal investigators after the death of Natalie Smead, 18, who slipped through a gap at Woodside station and crawled in front of an oncoming train.
A five-month Newsday investigation found that the railroad, which had 882 gap incidents in the past 11 years, had known for more than three decades that gaps posed a hazard to riders.
The investigation, published last month, also found that there are no federal regulations limiting gap width, except for a 3-inch maximum in the Americans with Disabilities Act that federal transportation officials concede is impossible for most commuter railroads to meet.
At the second day of a Federal Railroad Administration study group’s meeting, officials from several railroads discussed gap widths, statistics on gap accidents and measures they are taking to prevent falls.
New Jersey Transit’s gap width survey, which measured gaps at 100-foot intervals on all the railroad’s high platforms, found that most gaps were between 6 and 8 inches, Kovacs said. Most railroad experts consider such gaps acceptable.
A few on curved platforms were about 12 inches; those complied with the railroad’s internal standard gap maximum of 13 inches on curved platforms, Kovacs said.
The railroad also analyzed gap falls, finding a slight increase over the past six years — and a sharp rise in 2006. In 2000 there were 26 gap falls but 38 falls each year in 2004 and 2005. But in just the first seven months of 2006, there were 27.