Aug 22, 2006 8:59 am US/Eastern
Closing The Gap: LIRR To Investigate Platforms
by Marcia Kramer
QUEENS (CBS) ―
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State and LIRR officials will investigate the large gaps between trains and platforms on the LIRR and Metro North.
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The gaps can be as wide as 15 inches, a CBS 2 investigation found.
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Many passengers ignore the signs, like this one, that warns of the gap between station platforms and trains.
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The Long Island Rail Road took important steps Tuesday toward closing platform gaps on the trains many of us ride every day. The problem came to light after the tragic death of a teenager at an LIRR station. After a series of CBS 2 News reports, action is being taken.
On August 5, 18-year-old Natalie Smead of Minnesota was getting on an LIRR train at Woodside when she fell to her death, slipping through the gap between the train and the platform.
CBS 2 began looking at the size of the gaps at LIRR stations and discovered that some gaps were as wide as 10 and 11 inches. The Syosset station had a 15 inch gap in one locataion. Gaps were a problem especially where the platform was built on a curve.
Initially railroad officials wouldn't talk about the problem, but CBS 2 staked out the LIRR headquarters and confronted the agency's president.
"I believe the railroad us very safe and we're constantly looking at measures to prevent and redue accidents to out customers," LIRR President James Dermody told CBS 2. "Safe is a relative thing. They're as safe as you can make it because the gap is caused by the curvature of the track," he added.
The Disabled Riders Coalition said today's new study is too little, too late.
"For the MTA to come out now, only after somebody has tragically died, as a result of their own negligence, it's simply inexcusable," said Michael Harris of the Disabled Riders Coalition.
CBS 2's investigation yielded information about other passengers who have been seriously injured because of the gap, including former Rockette Shelly Rann, who was paralyzed two years ago at the Forest Hills station.
"I started to exit the door, and the next thing I know, I woke up at Jamaica Hospital," said Rann, who is now a quadriplegic.
Dermody will have more to say today here at the Woodside station, when he announces that a full review of the platforms will take place.
Published reports indicate that Long Island Rail Road officials never finished an earlier survey of gaps on station platforms. This is despite at least 115 gap-related injuries in 2004 and 2005.
Dermody is scheduled to appear at a press conference at the Woodside, Queens station on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. with state Department of Transportation Commissioner Tom Madison, among others.
-- CBS 2's Tamsen Fadal contributed to this report.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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