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RSS FeedsCanadian transit unions call for platform safety barriers to stop train-track deaths
(The Star Books)

 
 

20 august 2018 04:50:13

 
Canadian transit unions call for platform safety barriers to stop train-track deaths
(The Star Books)
 


VANCOUVER—Six years after his daughter’s death, Albert Potter recalls watching the surveillance video of the moments before his visually-impaired daughter fell onto the tracks at Edmonton’s University Station.She had no way of knowing where the platform ended.Zaidee Jensen, 29, was a regular user of Edmonton’s light-rail system and would board at University Station each day as part of her commute. The mother of two’s death in 2012 is among the dozens of track-level deaths that occur each year on Canada’s transit tracks, often along platform edges, that could have been prevented had a system of internationally recognized barriers been installed.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 these numbers would cease to pile up 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.The head of the Amalgamated Transit Union of Canada, Paul Thorp, said such barriers should be in place nationwide. Cities around the world that have installed the barriers, such as Hong Kong, have reduced the number of deaths on the system by more than half.“Any transit agency that is not putting in these barriers due to financial costs needs to stop putting a price on humanity,” Thorp said in an interview. “We feel that the transit agencies should be held accountable.”Albert Potter, the father of the young woman, believes 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 ...


 
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