The Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Metro have announced plans to enhance safety measures for subway platforms to prevent falls. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Sept. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – The Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Metro have announced plans to enhance safety measures for subway platforms to prevent falls.
Recently, a 4-year-old boy fell through a gap at Chungmuro Station on Seoul Subway Line 3 while disembarking from the subway. Passengers heard his mother’s cries, stopped the subway doors from closing with their bodies, and rescued the child within 20 seconds.
The gap between the train and the platform is caused by the rectangular shape of the trains running on curved platforms. On curved platforms, the ends of the 20-meter-long trains have a 90-millimeter gap to the platform, but the middle of the trains can have a gap of up to 215 millimeters depending on the curve’s radius.
Out of a total of 19,256 boarding locations at 275 stations on Lines 1 through 8, 3,395 (17 percent) have platform gaps exceeding 10 centimeters.
In 2021, to reduce the gap between platforms and trains, the Seoul Metropolitan Government installed fixed rubber footrests at 3,739 (57 percent) of 6,492 possible stations on Lines 1-8 where the gap is 10 centimeters or more or where there are many passengers, such as transit stations.
This has resulted in a decrease in platform fall accidents from 104 in 2018 to an average of 60 in the last three years.
However, since there are still 3,395 stations with platform gaps exceeding 10 centimeters, which can lead to trains colliding with the fixed rubber footing, the installation of foldable automatic safety scaffolding has been promoted as a solution.
Before and after subway platform automatic safety barrier operation. (Image provided by The Seoul Metropolitan Government)
Foldable automatic safety scaffolding is a safety device that automatically raises the scaffolding before the train doors open when the train stops and lowers it when the doors close after all passengers have boarded.
This helps passengers board and disembark, and allows the train to operate unimpeded.
Additionally, an analysis of 309 platform falls over the past five years showed that 199 (64 percent) of the falls occurred among people in their 20s and 40s. Among these, female passengers in their 20s and 30s accounted for 130 accidents (42 percent of the total), while male passengers in their 30s and 40s accounted for 45 accidents (15 percent of the total).
The main reasons cited by the accident victims were wearing earphones, which prevented them from hearing announcements or focusing on smartphones, causing them to overlook the platform gap.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
