West 4th Train Station Could Get Platform Barriers Added: MTA

WEST VILLAGE, NY — Got time to read 4,000 pages about train platforms?

With mounting public concern and interest over better safety precautions on New York City subway platforms, the Metropolitan Transit Authority publicly released a huge study Wednesday night from 2019 where it explored the feasibility of platform door barriers in the city's 472 stations.

The study found that only 128 of those stations had the correct conditions to allow for the installation of the floor-to-ceiling gates.

"There are serious challenges to installing — we have three different cars with doors in different places. ADA access for wheelchairs is an issue," Janno Liber, the head of the MTA, said Thursday in an interview on "The Brian Lehrer Show."

He added, though, that the agency has identified 40 to 100 stations where platforms barriers are possible, and he would like to see a pilot program set into place at those stops.

What about the West 4th Street Station?

The West 4th Street subway stop is Greenwich Village's largest train station.

The Lower Manhattan stop has up to seven different trains stopping within at any given time.

Out of those seven train lines, the MTA concluded that three of them have platforms feasible for the installation of the platform doors.

For the three platforms that the MTA deemed possible, the total installation cost was estimated between $65.2 million and $82.4 depending on which types of barriers were built.

The West 4th Street Station is also a historically designated property, meaning that any new design is required to go before the New York State Historical Preservation Office for approval.

Following the release of the 4,000-page report, various NYC transportation blogs criticized the MTA for not being solution-oriented on the pointed-out hurdles and possibly overestimating how much the installations would cost.

The issue of added subway platform safety has received major attention in the two weeks since Michelle Go was shoved in front of an oncoming R train at 42nd Street and killed.

Here's more of a breakdown of each platform within the West 4th Street station.

West 4th Street Station: A & C Train Platform

• It is possible to build both automatic platform doors and platform screen doors at the Lower Manhattan station's platform.
• There are two mounted signals at the northbound platform edge that would have to be relocated to implement the platform screen doors system. Reconstruction work would also have to be done on the platform edge to implement either system.
• The rough estimate is $32.4 million to install automatic platform doors and $41 million to install platform screen doors.

West 4th Street Station: E Train Platform

• It is possible to build both automatic platform doors and platform screen doors at the Lower Manhattan station's platform.
• There are two mounted signals at the northbound platform edge that would have to be relocated to implement the platform screen doors system. Reconstruction work would also have to be done on the platform edge to implement either system.
• The rough estimate is $32.8 million to install automatic platform doors and $41.4 million to install platform screen doors.

The MTA had less detailed information about the four other train lines that stop at West 4th Street, but did conclude that none of them were feasible for either version of the platform barriers to be built.

• West 4th Street F Train Platform: It is not possible to build either version of the platform guards due to "train door misalignment."
• West 4th Street B Train Platform: It is not possible to build either version of the platform guard due to "train door misalignment."
• West 4th Street D Train Platform: It is not possible to build either version of the platform guard due to "car misalignment."
• West 4th Street M Train Platform: It is not possible to build either version of the platform guard due to "train door misalignment."