Traffic & Transit

These Harlem Subway Stops Could Have Platform Barriers, MTA Says

After the deadly Times Square attack, the MTA released a study showing which stations could be fitted with doors—but don't hold your breath.

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A 1 train pulling into the 125th Street station in Harlem — one of many in the neighborhood that could not accommodate life-saving platform doors, according to the MTA.
A 1 train pulling into the 125th Street station in Harlem — one of many in the neighborhood that could not accommodate life-saving platform doors, according to the MTA. (Shutterstock / Popova Valeriya)

HARLEM, NY — As pressure mounts on the MTA to install doors on subway platforms to present track-related accidents, a study just released by the agency says that only a fraction of Harlem's stations could accommodate the barriers.

The MTA shared the enormous, nearly 4,000-page study last week, days after the Jan. 15 shoving attack at Times Square that killed 40-year-old Michelle Go. Prepared in 2019, the study examined every single one of New York's 472 subway stations.

It found that only about a quarter could accommodate the life-saving sliding doors, due to constraints like disability access and columns that stand too close to the platform edge.

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Critics are skeptical of that finding, noting that cities around the world have platform doors in their subway systems, and arguing that the MTA often exaggerates the difficulty of projects it does not want to undertake.

Patch combed through the study to pick out the findings for each Harlem subway station. According to the MTA, just two neighborhood stations could accommodate barriers, while five could not.

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Here's the breakdown:

Could accommodate platform doors:

  • 135th Street: B, C trains
  • 125th Street: A/C, B/D trains

Could not accommodate platform doors:

  • 155th Street (St. Nicholas Ave.): C train
  • 155th Street (Frederick Douglass Blvd.): B/D trains
  • Harlem–148th Street: 3 train
  • 145th Street (St. Nicholas Ave.): A/C, B/D trains
  • 145th Street (Broadway): 1 train
  • 145th Street (Lenox Ave.): 3 train
  • 137th Street-City College: 1 train
  • 135th Street (Lenox Ave.): 2/3 trains
  • 125th Street (Lenox Ave.): 2/3
  • 125th Street (Broadway): 1 train
  • 116th Street (St. Nicholas Ave.): A/C, B trains
  • 116th Street (Lenox Ave.): 2/3 trains
  • 110th Street-Cathedral Parkway: A/C, B trains
  • 110th Street-Central Park North: 2/3 trains
A photo of the 135th Street 2-3 station shows that its columns sit too close to the tracks to accommodate platform doors, according to the MTA. (MTA)

Even if the barriers were implemented, the price tags would be staggering: standard platform screen doors, like those in place at the JFK Airport AirTrain, would cost upwards of $39 million apiece at the two Harlem stations that could fit them, while shorter, chest-high gates would cost at least $30 million each, the MTA claims.

Subway deaths are a tragic, but fairly frequent occurrence in Harlem: in August, a man was struck and killed when he apparently jumped in front of a train at the 125th Street-Lenox Avenue station, and another person was struck and injured there this month.

The platform doors study was released amid a brewing battle between the MTA and local politicians over the issue. On Thursday, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine gathered in Times Square with several City Council members to demand that the MTA install barriers — only for the MTA's CEO to throw water on the idea hours later.

"I ask the politicians not to try to make hay out of this issue, but to work with the MTA for real solutions based on engineering reality," CEO Janno Lieber said in an interview on WNYC.

In a letter to Lieber earlier last week, Levine and other officials called for the MTA to test platform doors at Manhattan subway stations before a wider rollout. They acknowledged challenges to building platform doors, but argued those aren't "insurmountable."

"In particular, the MTA's Enhanced Station Initiative, which sunk around $936 million into mostly cosmetic station improvements, has proven the agency can find needs funds for initiatives when they are deemed a priority," the letter states. "Platform screen doors must be given the priority they deserved, studied, and funded for installation."

Lieber said he'd be open to exploring a platform pilot program for stations where officials deemed them "possible."

But he also called himself "disappointed" in Levine, the City Council's former health committee chair. Mentally ill people in the subway system are a potential safety issue too, he said.

"What was going on when they spend billions of dollars on mental health that left us with the conditions we're seeing in the system," he said.

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