(Newsday posted the following article by Jennifer Maloney on its website on October 4.)
NEW YORK — A newly formed federal railroad safety task force is studying the gap issue after recent reports of a death and serious injuries attributed to the Long Island Rail Road’s platform gaps.
At its inaugural meeting in September, the Passenger Safety Working Group — part of the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Safety Advisory Committee — reviewed data highlighting the severity of gap problems across the country. The findings show that deaths and serious injuries caused by slips, trips or falls on platforms are on the rise. And while there is no federal standard for the width of gaps, the task force found railroads with internal standards that allow gaps as wide as 13 inches.
The task force’s probe into gaps is not the first. Federal and state officials began investigating LIRR’s platform gaps in August after the gap-related death of Natalie Smead, 18, and a Newsday investigation that found gaps as wide as 15 inches — twice the railroad’s standard. In addition to the LIRR’s internal gap survey, the National Transportation Safety Board and the state Public Transportation Safety Board are investigating the gap issue and Smead’s death.
In the most recent LIRR gap incident, Christina Dadamo, 53, of New Hyde Park, fell when her left leg slipped into the gap as she was exiting a Huntington-bound train Tuesday afternoon at New Hyde Park station. She suffered scrapes and bruises.
In response to LIRR gap incidents highlighted in the media, the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee has made the issue of boarding and exiting trains a top priority for its newly formed Passenger Safety Working Group, which met for the first time last month. The LIRR has had a total of 209 gap-related incidents since 2002.
The task force, which the committee voted to create in 2003 but was not activated until this year, has had the ingress-egress issue on its agenda for some time, but moved it to the top “because of recent events on Long Island Rail Road,” said Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Steve Kulm.
The task force will study the gap issue for several months before presenting its recommendations, he said. In the past, the advisory committee has helped create federal regulations on train crashworthiness and emergency preparedness.
According to a presentation at the task force’s first meeting, a survey of six commuter railroads found that the internal railroad standards for gaps ranged from 4 inches to 13 inches. One railroad had no standard. Officials would not name the six railroads, calling the research preliminary. They are, however, among about 20 railroads across the country regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration.
Meanwhile, LIRR’s standard is 7 to 8 inches, and Metro-North’s is 5, according to local railroad officials.
Attempting to compile national gap incident figures for freight and passenger railroads, the task force researched numbers of deaths and serious injuries of non-employees caused by slips, trips or falls on platforms. Those incidents are on the rise, according to the presentation: 13 in 2002, 21 in 2003, 28 in 2004 and 40 in 2005.