(The following story by Steve Ritea appeared on the Newsday website on December 27.)
NEW YORK — Sixteen months after a Minnesota teen fell into a gap and was killed at the Long Island Rail Road’s Woodside station in Queens, passengers still step over gaps greater than 9 inches – large enough for some people to fall through – at 36 stations in the system.
Although the LIRR earlier this month announced plans to install 1- or 2-inch metal plates at the base of every car door to reduce gaps, officials say that work will take an estimated two years to complete.
“A lot of people could be injured in two years,” said Christina Diekman, 64, of Manhattan, who has spent more than three months recovering from leg injuries she suffered after falling into the gap at the Syosset station.
Response ‘a little late’?
Meanwhile, passengers maneuver over gaps bigger than 10 inches at four stations, including Syosset, where a curved platform leaves gaps as large as 13.49 inches. The LIRR is proposing extending the platform there by 600 feet along a stretch of straight track.
Diekman said it’s a commendable response, “but I also think it’s a little late.”
The assessment of state Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) was more positive.
“I think they’ve made substantial progress,” Skelos said, adding that he assigns the LIRR a grade of C-plus for its work thus far. “I’d hope they would have moved quicker on some of the gaps that still have to be narrowed.”
There are 262 platform edges at the LIRR’s 124 stations. So far, the railroad has reduced gap widths on 64 of 113 platforms where the space measured greater than 9 inches.
In all, the LIRR has fixed 59 percent of platforms with gaps that the agency has identified as fixable. Seventy-six percent of platform gaps of more than 10 inches have been narrowed, and 52 percent of gaps between 9 and 10 inches have been shrunk.
Meanwhile, the number of gap incidents reported to the LIRR has increased – from 90 during the first nine months of 2006 to 130 over the same period this year. Officials say greater awareness of the issue prompted the uptick in reported incidents.
Al Cosenza, an executive vice president at the LIRR who has been overseeing gap remediation, said scheduling gap-reduction work has been one of the biggest challenges.
“It takes not just manpower; it takes track time,” he said. “It’s not work you can just do any time you want.”
Before August 2006, when Natalie Smead, 18, fell into a gap and was killed when she crawled into the path of an oncoming train, the LIRR did little to address gaps. After a Newsday investigation revealed that more than 900 people had been injured over a 10-year period, the railroad ramped up efforts to close the gaps.
Constant vigilance
LIRR officials acknowledge their work on the gap issue will take constant vigilance. Regular train traffic, over time, can cause tracks to shift up to 1 1/2 inches in either direction. Platforms also settle, another factor that can widen or narrow a gap.
Now, systemwide measurements are taken each year to help guide any work needed to reduce widening gaps, officials said.
“It’s never going to be a situation where the railroad’s going to say, ‘We’ve done everything we can; now we can stop,'” said Melville attorney Mitch Pally, who represents Suffolk County on the MTA board. “As long as there’s a railroad, there’s going to be a gap.”
According to data provided by the LIRR, the railroad managed to shrink gaps of greater than 10 inches at 11 stations to less than 8 inches. But to make those fixes, railroad officials had to actually widen other gaps at seven of those same stations to just beyond 8 inches.
It was a trade-off, Cosenza said, but one that was necessary to eliminate the greatest dangers.