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The TTC’s Barrier to Common Sense

By RichardWhittall

20090219ttcbarrierfinal.jpg
Photo by Metrix X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It wasn’t long after Adenir DeOliveira, 47, (allegedly) pushed two teenage boys onto the Dufferin subway tracks last Friday when Toronto’s local media began whipping up public support for barriers on TTC subway platforms. CBCnews.ca wrote that the incident “spurr[ed] calls for the devices” without providing any attributive quotes. The Star felt it necessary to add the line “despite two frightening incidents in the past month” after reporting that TTC chairman Gary Webster believes Toronto’s subway stations are still safe. CityNews.ca chimed in as well, writing that Friday’s near-tragedy “has led to renewed calls for safety barriers in the subway” (the “renewed calls” being remarks made by city councilor Joe Mihevc and ordinary commuter Tony Wakelin).
Yet despite Friday’s shocking subway push, the TTC’s subway barrier proposal is a bad idea and not merely because, as the media reported last week, barriers would cost between five and eight million dollars per subway station and wouldn’t likely be completed until 2016. When proposals for Tokyo-style subway platform barriers first surfaced back in May 2008, Torontoist pointed out a number of practical problems with installation and maintenance that seemed to outweigh any benefits. Those benefits, as TTC chair Adam Giambrone laid out in a Facebook note yesterday, include cutting down on delays due to litter catching fire on the third rail, stopping subway suicides (for which the TTC provides no statistics), preventing pushing incidents like those of last Friday, and “help[ing] to make boarding and disembarking easier and more efficient.”
The advantages of preventing litter fire delays and making subway cars more accessible would have to be balanced against the potential costs and problems with barrier installation and maintenance. As for suicides, until the TTC releases reliable statistics, we won’t know how many lives the barriers could potentially save. That leaves pushing concerns. But as Giambrone himself remarked yesterday, fatal incidents are extraordinarily rare: the last major occurrence was 1997 when Charlene Minkowski, 23, died after being pushed in front of an oncoming train. The relative infrequency of incidents like what happened last Friday, weighed against the high volume of TTC passengers (one and a half million a day), suggest that Gary Webster’s claim that the TTC is still safe is still sound.
The TTC is currently awaiting the results of a feasibility study on subway platform barriers, which at the very least should provide a coherent cost-benefit analysis, in consultation with transport engineers and other industry experts, and actual projected numbers on delay times and anticipated repair costs. That, and not any media-driven hysteria, should be the deciding factor in whether or not the TTC decides to go ahead with platform barriers.

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Comments

  • http://null johnpee

    I would much rather see that money put into service or at the least, better communication of delays.
    I for one had to fight the urge to hurl myself onto the tracks after waiting 20+ minutes for an eastbound Bloor/Danforth train to show up last Saturday night.

  • http://null dowlingm

    It doesn’t just cover suicides and pushing. There were two accidental falls (one due to fainting and I think the other was alcohol related) in 2008 alone. A simple google search will provide the news coverage.
    Closing off the subway to incursions would make it easier the TTC to go driverless once the Automatic Train Operation is put in under the current plan in 2016, like the Vancouver Skytrain. This would not likely mean an fully unstaffed train, merely a conversion of role to one similar to the Skytrain Attendant.
    As for service reliability (johnpee) a reduction in person-on-track and fire incidents would help with that, wouldn’t it?
    If the rollercoaster from the car park to Pearson airport can have platform doors and automatic operation, why can’t the subway?

  • http://null CanadianSkeezix

    The biggest benefit, mentioned in this week’s Globe and Mail (but Councillor Giambrone does not seem to mention), is that the automated system that would accompany any barriers would enable the train to stop at the exact same stop in a station each and every time. This would, apparently, free up enough room to add another car to every train — there is apparently enough room on either end of the platform to squeeze in that additional car if the train stops precisely at the same location each time (impossible to do today with humans stopping the trains).
    An additional car on every train would be a significant improvement capacity-wise. It might still not be enough to justify the $500-800 million investment in barriers, but nonetheless it’s an important point worth considering.

  • http://null Svend

    We need barriers on all the streets off Toronto, in case someone gets pushed into traffic.
    If it saves one life, it will be worth the billions in cost.

  • http://undefined mister j

    and don’t forget streetcar tracks! lol

  • http://null nico

    Allegedly shouldn’t be in parentheses.

  • http://undefined rek

    I’m pretty sure subways in Japan (and Korea) still have drivers, but the stopping may be automated. At least that was my experience in Osaka and Seoul.

  • http://www.ekonoline.com Brian Gilham

    I could be wrong, but the impression I’ve been given from a few different people at the TTC is that the move to an automated system will happen regardless of whether or not barriers are installed.

  • http://null chadnuttall

    I agree. Totally waste of $$.
    C

  • http://www.krupo.ca/ Krupo

    Shouldn’t be, to be entirely proper, but then, to be entirely proper buddy shouldn’t be trying to kill kids. :p
    I wonder if the Globe editor’s son being one of the victims contributed to the media circus?

  • http://null Greg Smith

    The additional car would be half-length, not a full car.

  • http://null james a

    I’m thinking there are probably other ways we could spend $8-mil that would prevent more than 2 accidents per year. And come to think of it, even that number would only make sense if it were 2 accidents at every station.

  • http://undefined rapi

    ..what about preventing accidents on highways…an accident is what it is…and what if the next thing will be an accident that involves the barrier itself..

  • http://null Ben

    It’s not a waste of money at all. There would be so much more advertising space that I expect that the TTC will implement this for the revenue it will ultimately generate.

  • David Topping

    I’m not sure that that’s true—there’s not as much money in advertising on the TTC as you’d expect (aside from whatever potential safety problems there are with blocking any part of the screen doors). When I interviewed Adam Giambrone in July 2007, I asked him about advertising on the TTC. He said:

    Advertising revenue is somewhere in the range of 15 to 20 million a year, right now, currently. Those numbers are consistent, pro-rata, with Ottawa, Montreal, New York, Chicago, so: could you make a little more money on a yearly basis by totally selling out on advertising? Maybe—you maybe get another five, ten million a year. But in the context of the TTC budget, that’s nothing, and there’s a huge debate around whether people are comfortable with that.
    I think we have an acceptable level of advertising. Could it be less? Absolutely. At this point any reduction would be a budget reduction, and I’ll tell you I’m not really prepared to reduce the budget of the TTC to reduce the advertising. At the same time, I think we certainly have enough advertising. Many people would say too much, and even if we went all-out, the money is just not the solution to our city’s budget woes.

  • http://null Ben

    So 25% – 33% of what they get from advertising is “nothing.” You could make a case based on that that none of the advertising is necessary.
    Back when fare was $2.50, advertising supposedly reduced the fare from $2.54 (according to Now).

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    and what if the next thing will be an accident that involves the barrier itself?

    I’d put more money on the certainty of malfunctioning platform doors causing annoying delays, since it’s possible to design an interlocking system such that the train won’t move without all of the train’s and the barrier’s doors snugly closed.

    The possibility of gruesome dragging incidents is there, I guess, but a train sitting for a couple of minutes in the station, flapping its doors open and closed as the crew tries to convince it that it’s safe for it to start moving, is one of those things that just will happen.

    (Svend: how about hydraulic barriers that, synchronized with the traffic lights, rise from the road to create a perfectly safe crosswalk? I see a great need.)

  • http://undefined Ben R

    Just to weigh in on the great debate, I think that the subway barriers would be a good idea if proposed at a time when the TTC was in a better financial place. As it stands now, the system is cash-strapped and they are struggling to maintain an acceptable level of service. The subways and buses are getting old and will need to be replaced, the routes will need to be beefed up to accommodate the population growth, and the maintenance of the infrastructure will need to be consistent. With talks of raising fares yet again, can the TTC afford to put money into this idea?
    I am all for saving lives and I would love to see subway suicides and “shovings” eliminated, but putting substantial resources behind a relatively small problem does not seem like a sound idea to me. Put the money into improving services and security on the TTC (crime on the system is worse than ever); that’s where the need is greatest.