Woman Hit, Killed by Subway After Fainting in Brooklyn Station
Authorities say a woman has been hit by a train and
killed after she fainted on a train platform in Brooklyn.
The MTA said the woman was struck at the Eastern Parkway
and Utica Avenue station Tuesday morning.
Two recent pushing deaths, one in Queens and another in
Manhattan, have drawn attention to the dangers underground.
Fifty-five people died last year after they were pushed,
fell or jumped onto the tracks, up from 47 in 2011, according to the MTA. On
average, about 135 people a year are hit by New York City subways; most
survive.
At a City Council hearing last week, Transportation
Committee Chairman James Vacca said the recent deaths should be "a wake-up
call to our transit system."
MTA officials say they're working toward testing barriers
on platform edges and technology that sounds alarms when someone or something
is on the tracks.
The subway workers' union, meanwhile, is pushing another
approach: telling drivers to enter stations as slowly as 10 mph. The trains'
average speed is about 30 mph.
The MTA says slowing the trains would lengthen commutes
by about 30 seconds per station, make platforms more crowded and reduce the
frequency of arriving trains by about 20 percent unless more trains were added.
Vacca and other council members pushed MTA officials to
move faster on evaluating the bigger measures, noting that the agency started
gathering information two years ago about the barriers. They have been
installed in subway systems from Shanghai and Dubai to Paris.
"Why haven't we had action?" Vacca asked
outside the hearing, adding that he wasn't sure he favored the idea but wanted
the analysis to move faster.
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