WOMAN HIT, KILLED BY SUBWAY AFTER FAINTING IN BROOKLYN STATION

A woman was hit by a train and killed after she fainted on a train platform in Brooklyn Tuesday morning.

The MTA said the woman was struck at the Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue station at about 10:30 a.m.

Brooklyn-bound 3 trains are running express from Atlantic Avenue to Utica Avenue, and some southbound 4 trains are rerouted. There are delays in both directions, and Brooklyn-bound trains are bypassing Utica Avenue.

Two recent pushing deaths, one in Queens and another in Manhattan, have drawn attention to the dangers underground.

Fifty-five people died last year after they were pushed, fell or jumped onto the tracks, up from 47 in 2011, according to the MTA. On average, about 135 people a year are hit by New York City subways; most survive.

At a City Council hearing last week, Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca said the recent deaths should be “a wake-up call to our transit system.”

MTA officials say they’re working toward testing barriers on platform edges and technology that sounds alarms when someone or something is on the tracks.

The subway workers’ union, meanwhile, is pushing another approach: telling drivers to enter stations as slowly as 10 mph. The trains’ average speed is about 30 mph.

The MTA says slowing the trains would lengthen commutes by about 30 seconds per station, make platforms more crowded and reduce the frequency of arriving trains by about 20 percent unless more trains were added.

Vacca and other council members pushed MTA officials to move faster on evaluating the bigger measures, noting that the agency started gathering information two years ago about the barriers. They have been installed in subway systems from Shanghai and Dubai to Paris.

“Why haven’t we had action?” Vacca asked outside the hearing, adding that he wasn’t sure he favored the idea but wanted the analysis to move faster.

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more at Woman Hit, Killed by Subway After Fainting in Brooklyn Station: MTA | NBC New York.