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My blog is getting many hits due to the recent subway killing.

My readers are familiar with my efforts to stop subway killings, and the other day yet another passenger was killed by making a simple mistake that was unreasonably fatal.  So, for your info, here is a copy of a letter I wrote, years ago to the Transit president.  I received a limp response 2 months later from the VP of Corporate Communications, Paul Fleuranges, saying he’d refer the matter to the Track Safety Dept., but of course, (no matter who I wrote to, whether it be Bloomberg or Cuomo or MTA Corporation,) nothing was done:

Howard H. Roberts, Jr.

President, MTA NYCT

370 Jay St.

Brooklyn, NY  11201

June 30, 2007

Dear NYC Transit President Roberts,

Though I am a train operator, today I am writing to you as a NYC resident, not an employee.

When Governor Spitzer appointed you to your position recently, I think many were hopeful to see an end to the pass-the-buck, do-nothing mentality of previous Transit bosses.

With this hope I offer a simple, inexpensive and urgent solution to one of Transit’s most critical problems.  Every year at least one passenger is killed while descending to the roadbed to retrieve something she’s accidentally dropped over the platform edge.

[Actually, the number may be many more than one per year, as Transit refuses Freedom of Information Act requests that would allow inquiry, so the number could be as many as 4 per month.]

We should as soon as possible install signage on the wall/pillars across from platform edges and between the running rails facing the platforms in each station stating clearly:

PLEASE DO NOT DESCEND TO THE TRACKS TO GET AN ITEM YOU DROPPED THERE.

CONTACT ANY MTA EMPLOYEE AND WE WILL BE HAPPY TO RETRIEVE THE ITEM FOR YOU.

Certainly the next fatality’s life is worth the cost of some printed plastic placards, nails and glue.  Why this obvious idea has not been generated or put to any use by the previous administration defies logic and offends a common moral decency.

Also — though the speed with which trains enter stations that are preceded by curved tracking is, of course, a more complicated issue, train operators should be limited, as a rule, to restricted speed in stations in instances where time is not a concern, a policy that would have saved the fatality that occurred a couple years back with a train moving swiftly into City Hall, after making the loop, rushing (as is the standard) just to wait in the station for a departure time.

I am ever hopeful for positive developments in our culture’s institutions, and I offer these solutions to you in an effort to start looking at subway fatalities as human tragedies, rather than public relations liabilities.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mark Crane