MTA To Revisit Issue of Platform Screen Doors

Every time we hear someone has been pushed on to the tracks at a station or has been run over by a train, the issue of platform screen doors (PSDs) comes up. These PSDs would prevent someone from falling on to the tracks - either accidentally, or on purpose.

The MTA has been resistant to considering them, primarily because of the immense cost of retrofitting the systems to all 468 stations in the system.

In fact, they weren't being considered for the new stations being built as part of the 7 line extension or the 2d Avenue subway. For those stations, it was estimated that the platform screen doors would add about $1.5 million per platform side.

Up to now, the MTA has resisted the idea of PSDs, but after two homicides in the past week involving people being thrown on to the tracks, the idea is being revisited.

I think it's an issue worth revisiting.

Not only can these doors prevent the senseless deaths due to being shoved on to the tracks, but they can also improve subway efficiency by reducing the amount of trash that collects on the tracks - reducing the chances for track fires, vermin that are attracted to trash, and can improve the air quality on underground platforms.

But that all runs headlong into cost.

It would likely cost $2 billion or more to retrofit the entire system.

That's money the MTA doesn't have and can't even begin to address because of the need to complete repairs due to Hurricane Sandy.

But it is something that should be considered for high volume stations, and stations as they are renovated and rebuilt.

One Way To Reduce Gun Crime - Solve Nonfatal Shootings

Gun control and the right to bear arms has been on the minds of many since the Newtown massacre and the murder of two firefighters responding to a fire outside Rochester, New York. There are some things that can be done without even addressing the issue of gun control. One of them involves better law enforcement investigation of nonfatal shooting crimes.

A startling amount of them go unsolved for one reason or another.

If someone is murdered in NJ for example, 65% of the cases are closed as solved. For nonfatal shootings, the percentage plummets to 21%. Figure that many of the nonfatal shooting perps go on to commit other crimes.

A more concerted effort to solve the nonfatal gun crimes could have a significant effect on the crime rates and firearms incidents statewide. Heck, many police departments don't even track that kind of information.

It's an area ripe for reform and concentration of effort.

"You’ve got dozens and dozens, if not scores, of dangerous people who commit heinous crimes, who walk away and who are not held to account, and that has all kinds of implications for public safety in those towns," said Eugene O’Donnell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor in Manhattan, and a former assistant district attorney. He said failure to track nonfatal shootings underscores "the medieval approach that police have to crime statistics. You would think that this would be a barometer of the safety climate and the police would be on top of it."

While trying to gather information for this story, The Star-Ledger found few police departments track nonfatal shootings or the number of those cases solved. In some places, like Jersey City, the data was readily available. But most agencies needed several months to compile the statistics because the incidents first had to be identified then organized.

Because the category is not tracked as closely as homicides, experts said many law enforcement agencies may not comprehend the full extent of the problem. That would be a mistake, said Wayne Fisher, a professor at the Rutgers University Police Institute and its former director. The low closure rates in New Jersey, he said, can pose a serious threat to the public.

"What’s left on the street is both the firearm and the person that’s willing to use the firearm," Fisher said. "Let’s face it, an offender who is willing to shoot a gun at another person is an obvious threat to the public safety, whether or not that bullet, misses, injures, or takes the life of the intended victim."

Earlier this month, a 19-year-old Newark man was shot multiple times while driving through the city’s South Ward, an attack for which he remains hospitalized and barely conscious, investigators said.

Police have not identified a suspect, and no witness has stepped forward. The teen’s passenger, who was the intended target, has barely spoken to police, and the victim has been unable to communicate.

If police were forced to take a better look at nonfatal shootings and devote more resources to those crimes, they could not only bring down the crime rates, but close those cases and bring the criminals behind them to justice.

There are serious roadblocks to overcome, notably because many of these crimes go unsolved because of a lack of witnesses or other evidence that can be used to track down those responsible.

It will also involve spending more money on investigations, including crime labs and technologies that some police departments can ill afford in the current economic climate. Yet, focusing on these particular crimes could pay dividends in the long run and improve public safety considerably.

Another Report Shows NJ Transit Ignored Flooding Risks

NJ Transit continues to show that it ignored reports and warnings that its facilities in Hoboken and Kearny were in flood zones and equipment and materials stored there could be subject to flooding.

A report studying climate change and its effect on NJ Transit highlighted that both Kearny and Hoboken were in flood zones.

The $45,990 study included a map that shows the Kearny and Hoboken rail yards sit squarely in “storm surge areas.” Sandy floodwaters inundated both yards, swamping locomotives and rail¬cars — including 84 new multilevel passenger cars — and damaging spare parts. In those two yards, damage to railcars and locomotives was estimated at $100 million.

Nearly two months after the storm hit, NJ Transit’s rail service is still not operating at 100 percent. And the decision to leave locomotives and passenger cars in the low-lying yards has provoked a torrent of criticism from lawmakers and rail advocates. Throughout it all, NJ Transit officials, at hearings in Trenton and Washington, D.C., have maintained that they had no prior knowledge the yards could flood.

“I wish I had had the foresight and the understanding to know that a yard in the Meadowlands, in Kearny, that the western part of the yard in Hoboken, which had never flooded before, was going to flood. But I didn’t,” Executive Director Jim Weinstein told the Assembly Transportation Committee during a Dec. 10 hearing that focused largely on the agency’s costly decision not to move the equipment out of harm’s way.

“We now know under the right circumstances that they are prone to flooding,” Weinstein told the committee.

Weinstein has repeatedly said that NJ Transit made the right decision to leave hundreds of pieces of equipment in the two yards, based on what the agency knew at the time. Of them, 323 pieces were damaged.

“There is no history of flooding at the Meadowlands Maintenance Complex,” he said.

NJ Transit spokesman John Durso Jr. said the report was read by David Gillespie, NJ Transit’s director of energy and sustainability, but characterized it as “generic,” with no specific predictions for flooding of the magnitude caused by Sandy.

NJ Transit hired First Environment Inc. of Boonton in 2011 to look at climate change and the risk weather events, such as rising seawater levels, wind velocity and temperatures, pose to NJ Transit bridges, tunnels, culverts, rails, terminals, stations, platforms, offices and other assets over the next 20 years. The report listed strategies the agency can use to minimize weather-related damage to its assets, and guide NJ Transit in capital planning.

It concluded that NJ Transit “will continue to experience weather-related impacts … can expect more frequent service disruptions over the next 20 years and must consider how the weather is affecting the state of good repair for its assets. The “next immediate step for NJ Transit is to prioritize its critical assets and determine … strategies it wants to implement,” the report said.

The report didn't specify a specific storm, but that's actually besides the point.

Jim Weinstein, the agency's executive director, has repeatedly claimed that it didn't get warnings that its facilities would flood, and that it was the agency's experience from past storms that they wouldn't flood.

Well, they did - and the flooding caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to a third of its rail fleet. The damaged and lost equipment has meant that service is still not back to normal.

NJ Transit knew that there was a risk of flooding in those storage yards, yet it didn't move the equipment to higher ground because it believed that those areas were safe from flooding.

The agency ignored warnings issued by the National Weather Service, other weather agencies, and anyone who listened to weather reports 48 hours before Sandy hit knew that this would cause massive amounts of flooding to low lying areas. That includes Kearny and Hoboken.

That's exactly what happened.

One doesn't have to believe in global warming to know that having rail maintenance facilities in flood zones exposes those facilities to potential flooding. NJ Transit did nothing to move the equipment out of those areas before the storm hit, claiming that by moving it to other areas that it would expose them to damage. That's nonsense and they know it. There were places up and down the Northeast Corridor and other NJ Transit lines that the equipment could be stowed more safely. It chose not to do so.

The agency claimed that had it stored equipment on other lines, it could be subjected to downed trees or downed power lines. Both are technically correct, but if NJ Transit maintained its rights of way (or on lines operated by freight rail or Amtrak) by properly trimming trees, then the damage would have been minimized.

NJ Transit is great at making excuses for its inexcusable actions, but not so great at providing rail services or communicating with the public. Heck, they rationalize poor communications and misleading service updates by saying that they're doing so despite the tremendous damage done to their system. It's nonsense.

The MTA could do a fantastic job with even greater damage done to its system. It wasn't the damage. It's the NJ Transit's missteps and miscommunication.

Excuses wont cut it. Things have to change at the agency, and that means that Gov. Christie and the legislature needs to come down hard on Weinstein and company.