Sutphin Blvd. station to get city’s first protective barriers

The MTA announced the beginning of a plan to install platform doors at three stations, including the Sutphin Boulevard E train platform. Photo via Adam Moss/Wikimedia commons

By Rachel Vick

Queens will soon be home to the subway’s newest safety feature — protective doors along the edge of platforms — Metropolitan Transit Association Chair Janno Lieber announced Wednesday.

The Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Ave E Train platform will be one of three stations tapped for the piloting of the new safety measure, Lieber said on NY1 Wednesday. The other two stations include the Times Square 7 train and the Third Avenue L train.

The announcement comes after several people were either pushed onto subway tracks or struck by an oncoming train and after Leiber questioned the feasibility of installing the doors.

“We're going to be piloting both platform doors at three stations where the engineering does work,” he said. “It doesn't work in a lot of places.”

Current efforts will focus on securing funding, which Lieber says is “a little complicated.”

“Our goal is to try out these technologies, at different places in the system, including three stations trying out platform doors,” he added.

The death of 40-year-old Michelle Go on Jan. 15, who was pushed onto the tracks of the Times Square R train, and the injury of a 61-year-old man who was pushed at a separate station a week later, were the latest in a series of assaults to rock some of the city’s most seasoned commuters.

Lieber said the plan also includes teamwork with city and state government to deploy teams that include mental health professionals, teaming up with the NYU Psychiatry Department at NYU Medical Center to explore how deter suicides on the tracks and deploy thermal technology to increase response time to individuals on the tracks.

Borough President Donovan Richards said the commitment to include the Jamaica station, which connects to the John F. Kennedy Airport Airtrain, in the protection pilot was “great news for Queens riders.”

“We fully support the [MTA] continuing to install subway platform doors — critical safety infrastructure that many other major cities have in their transit systems — in even more stations across Queens and NYC where possible,” he tweeted.