The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had distressing information final week: Deaths on subway-train tracks soared in 2022, to 88.
It’s a little-remarked aspect of our post-2020 period of dysfunction and chaos.
A poorly secured transit system presents an acute hazard to New York’s most weak residents, together with folks affected by habit and psychological sickness.
In a practical metropolis, rail transit is the most secure type of transferring from one place to a different.
However as with all the pieces else in New York previously three years, issues went awry. Final yr’s 88 observe deaths had been 35% above the 2018 and 2019 averages — 65 every year.
For context, 120 pedestrians died above floor final yr in crashes with automobiles or vehicles, near the common of 121 in 2018 and 2019.
The purpose under floor, simply because the “Imaginative and prescient Zero” traffic-death marketing campaign above floor, ought to be no deaths.
The truth is, it’s startling the variety of deaths underground might even start to rival the variety of deaths above floor, the place unlicensed and drunk drivers velocity and take quick turns.
What’s happening? Of 1,365 identified subway-track incidents in 2022 (most of which didn’t finish in loss of life), about 15% had been unintended falls or medical emergencies, a brand new MTA evaluation finds.
A fortunately surprisingly low quantity — fewer than 10% — was suicides or suicide makes an attempt.
A good smaller share was assaults — that’s, folks being pushed to the tracks. (Although with pushes to the tracks comprising three of final yr’s 10 subway murders, a 30-year excessive, a small share is just too many.)
Normally — nicely greater than two-thirds — folks ended up on the tracks voluntarily.
In 20% of complete circumstances, folks had been clearly mentally sick (however not making an attempt suicide); in one other 10% or so, folks had been drugged or drunk.
And in almost half of complete trespassing circumstances, the MTA or NYPD discovered folks simply strolling the tracks — strolling to homeless encampments on MTA property, writing graffiti, simply . . . wandering about.
Two such trespassers had been graffiti writers from France; they died below a Brooklyn prepare final April.
And a few “accidents” — increasingly — are subway surfers.
Two 15-year-old surfers have been killed previously 4 months, and one other 15-year-old misplaced his arm this yr.
It’s extra proof that left to their very own units in public areas, too many New Yorkers will behave dangerously — posing a hazard to themselves and others.
Because the MTA’s Shanifah Rieara, high coverage and communications adviser, notes, the deaths are grievous for households but in addition “frankly tragic for our prepare crews.”
The excellent news is that we all know how one can repair this, and we are fixing it.
The worst spike in observe intrusions began somewhat greater than a yr in the past, in December 2021 to February 2022. (This contains January 2022, when Michelle Go was pushed to her loss of life in Occasions Sq. by a mentally sick, violent ex-con.)
This winter, observe intrusions are down 30%.
Why? Largely police enforcement.
In January and February of this yr, the MTA made 2,065 arrests within the transit system, two-thirds larger than final yr and rivaling pre-COVID numbers.
Fare-evasion arrests tripled from final yr.
Civil summonses, at greater than 26,000, had been greater than 80% above final yr’s ranges.
Sure, it’s true that severely mentally sick folks wandering New York’s subway tracks don’t want policing as a long-term answer.
However they do want police, to maintain them off the subway tracks and thus maintain them alive, as a short-term answer.
So do idiotic teenagers.
Simply final week, police stopped 5 teen subway surfers in a single incident in Queens — probably averting a mass tragedy.
Police stopped greater than 1,000 folks in such incidents final yr.
However this yr, as Rieara says, the pattern, pushed by social-media dare movies, is accelerating — “regarding, escalating and lethal.”
Additionally final week, police grabbed three unlawful weapons off farebeaters in simply 4 days — one cause violent felonies are lastly falling after the 2020 enhance.
As contemporary information from final week present, violent felonies within the subway are down 17% from final yr for January and February, a major achievement.
The surge in subway policing that started final fall isn’t simply chopping crime. It’s protecting mentally sick, drugged or simply plain dumb folks from doing hurt to themselves by strolling smack into subway trains — or falling off them.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s Metropolis Journal.
