The memory of a witness falling to her knees on the subway platform as a horrified screech escaped her lips still haunts Kevin Freeman.

Just six months after finishing his training, the rookie train operator was approaching Toronto’s busiest subway station when a man jumped in front of his train. It was rush hour on June 26, 2008. The station was packed. There were hundreds, if not more than a thousand, people on his train when the impact occurred.

It was a similar situation for Anne Marie Aikins, a transit worker who witnessed a death on April 28, 2015. It was a big day for Metrolinx, her employer. A new concourse had just opened at Toronto’s Union Station. The area was packed, with a live band, a mascot and food being served to celebrate the occasion, when a man’s bag got caught by the train as it left one of the station’s narrow platforms. Aikins witnessed the gruesome aftermath.

More recently, on June 18, Toronto police believe a man was intentionally pushed into the tracks at Bloor-Yonge station. Police have made an arrest and charged a 57-year-old man with first-degree murder.

Since 2007 in Canada, there have been as many as 1,235 track-level deaths on railway corridors across the country; the vast majority were suicides . The figures were provided by the Toronto Transit Commission and Metrolinx, Ottawa’s OC Transpo, Exo and Société de transport de Montréal, Calgary Transit, Edmonton Transit, TransLink in Vancouver, and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Experts say the number of deaths would decrease if transit agencies installed platform edge barriers: a series of sliding doors barring access to the tracks. They open only once the train has stopped.

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The head of the Amalgamated Transit Union of Canada, Paul Thorp, said such barriers should be in place nationwide. Barriers are an idea that other places in the world, such as Hong Kong, have employed to reduce the number of deaths on transit by more than half.

“Any transit agency that is not putting in these barriers due to financial costs need to stop putting a price on humanity,” Thorp said in an interview. “The tragedies of somebody being pushed or accidentally being caught is something that we can definitely sympathize with families.

“We feel that the transit agencies should be held accountable.”

For Thorp, the main concern is train operators, many of whom feel responsible for the deaths themselves and never completely recover. Often, he said, they are required to return to work before they are fully recovered from trauma.

“No one knows what our employees are going through,” said Thorp, whose union represents workers at five of the transit agencies.

Freeman, the Toronto Transit Commission subway driver, is still working the same route 10 years after the fatal impact. Every time he passes Bloor-Yonge station, he’s reminded of the horror and the precise time it happened, 9:45 a.m.

He remembers following the procedures he learned in training; running to an emergency power shut-off for the tracks and notifying transit control while attempting to evacuate the train. Next came the first responders, who whisked the train crew away to be interviewed by investigators. Hours later, he finally had a moment to reflect on what happened in front of a counsellor.

“I was shaking like a leaf,” Freeman said. “The hardest part for me was calling my wife and telling my family ... I was worried about how they’d look at me. How do you speak to this person now they’ve been involved in this?”

Mark Tetterington, president of the union representing light-rail drivers in Edmonton, still remembers an incident at University Station in 2012 in which a young visually impaired woman was killed after falling onto the track. Her name was Zaidee Jensen, a 29-year-old mother of two.

“She mistakenly went too close to the edge of the platform and she fell onto the track,” Tetterington said. “It was tragic. She was a regular transit user. Most of us knew her.”

In response to her death, Edmonton Transit installed yellow warning tiles along platforms to give visually impaired customers indication of where the platform edge is. Albert Potter, the father of the young woman, said his daughter’s death was a result of poor station design.

He said there should have been a handrail or barrier in the area where she fell.

“If you build a deck over the back of your house, anything over two feet you’re required to have a hand rail,” Potter said. “All the train platforms in the world don’t meet that standard.”

Potter said on the day of his daughter’s fatal fall, construction taking place at the station obstructed her regular route to the platform. Potter said his daughter took a stairwell she had never used before to reach the platform, which put her much closer to the edge than she was used to. That’s why she fell.

Potter, a former maintenance worker with Canadian Pacific Railway, said he believes the platform safety barriers should be installed regardless of cost.

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“The cost of the hardware is a onetime thing. The cost of Zaidee is a lifetime,” Potter said.

Edmonton Transit had explored the idea of platform edge barriers, as have provincially regulated transit agencies in Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. None are currently equipped with barriers, largely due to concerns about costs and compatibility issues with existing trains and platforms.

In Edmonton, transit agency spokesperson Rowan Anderson said, the concerns include how the transit system operates two different types of trains with different door locations. This means drivers consistently lining up train-side doors with platform-side doors would be an issue.

Calgary Transit manager of service design Chris Jordan said installing platform barriers would mean the transit agency would have to replace all its older trains with identical, or near-identical models that are compatible with a universal barrier system.

Each train car, however, costs between $4 to $6 million, and the transit agency currently operates about 220 train cars. It’s estimated that the total capital cost for barriers on each of the city’s 46 light-rail stations would be in the hundreds of millions.

Calgary’s CTrain also runs at street level, with parts travelling through downtown. This means a large portion of the system is easily accessible to those who truly wish to stand in front of a train.

“Whether it’s accidental or intentional, pedestrian collision can actually occur anywhere near a train corridor,” Jordan said. “Installing barriers at just one location, like a platform, won’t necessarily address the issue.”

Rick Ratcliff, president of the union representing Calgary’s CTrain drivers, said the transit agency has never discussed the idea of platform safety barriers with the workers. However, he agreed finding as safety-barrier system that would fit every model of CTrain may be a challenge. Calgary operates multiple types of trains, and the oldest trains, introduced in the early 1980s, are still in operation.

TransLink in B.C., meanwhile, had commissioned a study on platform barriers as early as 1994, a copy of which was provided to StarMetro. The Vancouver transit agency updated cost estimates in 2014, calculating that it would likely have to spend $140 million to upgrade 20 stations.

Though Chris Bryan, spokesperson for Vancouver’s Translink, said there are no current plans to install the barriers, the consultants who completed the 1994 study had determined platform edge doors were feasible for Vancouver’s SkyTrain system.

One advantage is how TransLink’s entire light-rail system is fully automated. This means the company’s trains can achieve precise stopping positions that only the most experienced human drivers can consistently land.

But there are still challenges, such as how TransLink also runs more than one type of train with different door positions on the sides of the trains. A solution that was proposed was to make the platform-side doors bigger — twice the size of the smallest train-door, providing a larger space to accommodate minor differences between train models.

Such a door size would be bulky and likely difficult to control due to the increased weight, however, the consultants wrote in their report. Construction time would also be significant. The work could take up to 18 months, with the potential necessity of closing stations during operation hours.

However, the consultants also determined platform doors could reduce monthly transit delays, often due to objects falling onto the track, by more than half.

Over 12 months from 2013 to 2014, TransLink experienced a total of 207 hours in delays due to customers, track intrusions and emergencies on its SkyTrain system.

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Over in Ottawa, OC Transpo had explored platform barriers at one point for its new Confederation Line, a 13-station expansion currently under construction. But it rejected the idea, instead relying on a sensor system to alert drivers of people and objects falling into the tracks, said OC Transpo director of O-Train construction Steve Cripps, in a statement.

Metrolinx in Toronto has also explored the idea of platform barriers. Aikins, the Metrolinx employee who witnessed a train-impact death in 2015, is also a spokesperson for the company.

“I happened to be just leaving my office as it happened and went to the platform. I normally am very removed, but to be there really changed things for me,” Aikins said.

She said after that death, Metrolinx began changing how it communicates with transit users after a train impact, and also considered the idea of platform barriers on narrow areas at Union Station. However, an internal review determined that platform safety barriers may create further hazards, and would be challenging to install for platforms that are curved.

Metrolinx would not release a copy of the internal review, saying only that the current plan is to widen and relocate platforms, many of which are too narrow or crowded.

Currently, the only transit agency actively considering platform edge barriers is the Toronto Transit Commission. Its decision follows a 2015 recommendation from Toronto City Council to install platform edge doors on all new extensions and lines, and to retrofit its existing transit stations with the same.

TTC spokesman Stuart Green said it would cost “anywhere from $1 billion to $1.5 billion” to install barriers on all 75 of its subway stations. Green said the transit commission is currently in the process of upgrading its subway system with automation capabilities, which would permit further compatibility with platform barriers.

So far, only six of the TTC’s stations are designed to be equipped with platform barriers. These stations service the new Yonge-University-Spadina extension and came equipped with an automatic train- control system, which provides better accommodation for platform-side doors.

According to 2009 figures from the TTC, there were 109 incidents of people being on the tracks that year, causing about 38 hours of delay on the system.

Green said the platforms would be as much for convenience as safety, preventing items such as newspapers from falling into the track and causing delays, in addition to promoting better ventilation.

The TTC said it is currently working to issue a request for proposals in September for a “comprehensive study” into platform edge barriers, with results to come back in 2020.

Thorp, the national transit workers’ union president, said he believes transit agencies should begin building new platforms with barriers planned in the original design, then move on to retrofit older stations as one means of overcoming challenges.

“Where we cannot force them to implement our suggestions, we hope they do take them seriously,” Thorp said.

Peter DeLeonardis, director of transit with platform-door manufacturer Stanley Access Technologies, said he has met in the past with TTC officials about implementing platform barriers for the TTC’s Spadina extension.

He agreed transit agencies with automated train systems using identical trains would be the ideal for installing platform barriers, but said there were plenty of options to answer the challenges raised by Canadian transit authorities.

For agencies with multiple types of trains, a common solution would be to install wider sets of doors on the side of the platform, he said, similar to the idea suggested by TransLink’s consultants. An additional set of transmitters would alert computers controlling the platform doors with information on what type of train is arriving.

“And the doors would open to a certain opening width, or spacing, depending on the type of train that pulls in. It’s somewhat of a flexible technology,” DeLeonardis said.

Another solution would be a “roll-up” barrier, similar to a series of garage doors made of rope stretching between station pillars. The entire system would roll up upon the arrival of a train instead of relying on individual platform-doors.

Regarding driver-based systems, DeLeonardis said one solution would be a red-yellow-green signalling system for drivers, who will be required to slow down before arriving at a station platform. As they approach, the light turns yellow — signalling it’s almost time to stop. Once the light hits green, the driver would know that the train is properly aligned with the station’s platform doors.

DeLeonardis said he is unaware of any transit agency in North America that uses platform doors in urban transit settings, apart from smaller airport transit services that have very few trains and stations.

The lack of platform doors in North America stands in stark contrast to Europe and Asia, where barriers are common. Hong Kong’s MTR transit service has 93 stations. MTR said nearly all of them are equipped with either full-height platform barriers, or half-height gates, even though the system was initially designed with no barriers in place.

Kendrew Wong, MTR spokesperson, said its entire retrofit took place during overnight, non-service hours at a cost of $2.3 billion HK, for 38 stations, or about $385 million in today’s Canadian dollars. Wong said at the time of the retrofit in the 1990s, there were no similar examples of large-scale platform door retrofits in the world.

“The corporation had to plan, design and construction the PSDs (platform screen doors) and APGs (automatic platform gates) from scratch ... tremendous technical challenges had to be overcome,” Wong said.

A University of Hong Kong study completed in 2008 found suicide deaths on transit were reduced by about 60 per cent after the installation of barriers.

DeLeonardis, with the platform-door manufacturer, said part of the reason North American transit agencies have rejected the idea of platform barriers is due to antiquated technology. The comparatively lower populations in North America cities has also meant the average transit station is likely less crowded than its Asian counterpart would be. This means accidents involving commuters falling onto the track less are less likely here.

For those who have been affected by a death on the tracks, the idea of platforms seems like a relatively easy fix.

“Most of the time we as operators have brought suggestions forward to management as ways to help, to improve things. We’re sort of not listened to,” Freeman, the subway driver, said.

“The technology exists,” said Potter, Jensen’s father. “We’re just 20 years behind for everything.”

Cities around the world

With platform barriers

London, Copenhagen, Paris, Toulouse, Torino, St. Petersburg, Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Busan, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok and Dubai

With barrier retrofits

Hong Kong is only known example of a system with barriers that weren’t part of a new-station build

Building platform barriers

Honolulu is only North American city currently building barriers in a metropolitan transit-rail system

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