The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is leaning into the low-tech upgrade of lining subway platforms with metal barriers to address one of the system’s most intractable problems: the dozens of people each year who are struck by trains after being pushed or falling onto tracks.
Transit officials intend to install waist-high barriers along platforms — with gaps for riders to enter and exit trains — at one to two subway stations each month this year, depending on the timing for the delivery of materials, said Joana Flores, an MTA spokeswoman. Such waist-high barriers could have made it harder for Kamel Hawkins to push a man onto subway tracks ahead of an oncoming 1 train earlier this week, or helped to prevent the roughly two dozen incidents in 2024 where riders were pushed onto tracks — up from 20 in 2019.
The measure is one strategy transit officials hope will make riders feel more protected. In recent days, a spate of gruesome crimes on the subway has commuters on edge. In late December, a woman was set aflame in a Brooklyn subway car the same day a man was stabbed to death on a Queens train. The man who was shoved in front of a Manhattan train in an unprovoked attack on New Year’s Eve had his skull fractured.
The MTA is piloting the metal barriers as a quicker, cheaper way to help travelers feel less vulnerable on platforms as transit officials explore more robust, and costly, platform doors. The authority has cautioned that higher-tech options would be infeasible for many subway platforms that are too narrow or couldn’t bear the extra weight of the barriers. A MTA-commissioned study that took a close look at the concept in 2022 declared that it would cost $7 billion to install the barriers at 128 stations in the system — less than a third of the city’s subway stations.
The less ambitious but easier to deploy metal barriers are currently in 14 of the subway’s 472 stations, in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens — 10 of which are on the L line. The MTA has not shared how much it has spent on the initiative to date or how much it aims to in the year ahead.
Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner and transportation engineer, argued that the MTA’s approach is probably the most cost effective way for officials to offer riders some degree of protection. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway in South Korea utilized such barriers before deciding to invest in floor-to-ceiling doors, added Schwartz.
“This is a big improvement. It’s not perfect. But what is that saying? Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said. “It gives protection on 60% of the platform and it’s a sensible response to the tragedies that we’ve seen over the past years.”
Straphangers have mixed feelings on the metal barriers.
“It’s better than nothing, but I’d rather they spend the money on giving us full protection,” said Shelia Brown, who was waiting at the Grand Central-42nd Street station to catch a 4 train to her administrative job at a Harlem hospital. “A push or some freak accident could still land you in the tracks,” she added.
Ben Goldberg, who works in a Midtown law office, said he’d feel safer on his commute with more metal barriers, especially during the busy morning and evening rush when he sometimes feels at risk of being nudged off the platform and into the tracks.
“It’s a little simplistic,” said Goldberg, “but it would make me feel a bit safer knowing I can hug a barrier when a train’s coming.”
