Subway death renews calls for TTC to install platforms barriers

Thsetar.com
June 19, 2018
Ben Spurr

It’s a subway rider’s worst nightmare.

Police say a man was killed in a “completely unprovoked attack” Monday morning at Bloor-Yonge station when he was pushed in front of a moving train.

On Tuesday, police identified the victim as 73-year-old Yosuke Hayahara. John Reszetnik, 57, has been charged with first-degree murder.

Such incidents are extremely rare on the TTC, and the agency says the last time someone died by being pushed on the tracks was more than 20 years ago.

But the alleged murder, which occurred two days after a suicide at another station, has revived calls for the TTC to install barriers on subway platforms in order to protect riders.

“Absolutely, I think we should be looking at it,” said Joe Mihevc, a TTC board member and councillor for Ward 21 St. Paul’s.

In 2010, the TTC board approved in principle the installation so-called platform edge doors on Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina), but the project has never been funded.

Mihevc and other proponents of the barriers argue they would not only eliminate suicides on the subway, but also prevent lengthy service delays caused by trespassers entering tunnels or debris falling on the track.

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The barriers could also make service more efficient by allowing trains to enter crowded stations at full speed, instead of slowing down for safety reasons.

Even at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, achieving all of those goals with a single project “is actually pretty cheap,” Mihevc argued.

According to the TTC, 19 people died by suicide on the subway network in 2017, and there were 26 non-fatal suicide attempts. That represents the highest number of suicide deaths on the TTC since 2010, and a significant increase from 2015, when there were just 11 deaths and five attempts.

Each incident not only results in the injury or death of the victim and inflicts trauma on witnesses and transit workers, but brings the subway system to a halt, stranding thousands of passengers. The transit agency says it typically takes between 70 and 90 minutes to get the subway running again after a suicide.

The TTC has previously estimated it would cost about $350 million to retrofit Line 1 with platform edge doors, but the TTC now says they’re likely to be even more expensive, and to outfit the all three subway lines could cost more than $1 billion.

In addition to the expense, there are also technical challenges. The TTC says to ensure the subway doors line up properly with the doors on the platform barriers, the subways would have to be operating under the computerized signalling system called automatic train control (ATC).

The TTC expects to complete installation of ATC on Line 1 by the end of 2019, but there is no firm timeline for installing the system on Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth) or Line 4 (Sheppard).

The agency is conducting a feasibility study about the barriers and plans to release a final report in 2020.

But TTC spokepserson Brad Ross said the agency is already supportive. Platform edge doors are “something that the TTC as an organization has long requested and would like to have,” he said.

While it would be difficult to install them on existing stations, Ross said the TTC would want any future subway line, like the proposed relief line, to include platform doors.

“I don’t think it would make much sense to build a new line like that without them,” he said.

Dr. Mark Sinyor, associate scientist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, also supports platform edge doors.

In a study released last year, Sinyor concluded suicide barriers erected on the Bloor St. viaduct in 2003 were successful in saving lives.

Despite the common misconception that someone determined to take their own life would simply find other means to do so if prevented by a barrier, Sinyor said the vast majority of people who experience suicidal thoughts can overcome them and survive, especially if they seek help.

“The barriers make it somewhat easier to do that, in the sense that they might delay or interrupt someone’s suicidal plans and give them the opportunity to go and seek that help,” Sinyor said.

At a news conference Tuesday, Mayor John Tory said the city owes it to “people who are troubled” to seriously consider installing platform doors on the TTC.

“Always the issue that looms out there, and I don’t mean to bring this back to money when you’re dealing with trying to save lives, but in the end, this is a huge undertaking for us to do if we did it retroactively to all the existing subways, and the question would arise as to how you would pay for it,” he said.