Politics is boring, right? So Here’s a quick tube related diversion.
Every day, I get on the Jubilee line, and I think:
“If the door system on the Jubilee line saves lives, which I bet it does, and it isn’t being retrofitted on the rest of the network somehow, which I bet it isn’t, I wonder who did the cost benefit analysis, and how they felt about it.”
Well, I don’t know about Britain, or the emotions involved, but it turns out that in Hong Kong they did retrofit such a system on the Metro, and it did save lives, and someone has done the cost benefit analysis.
“Death and injuries due to suicides and accidental falls onto the track fell by 75% across the system and the service disruptions from such incidents fell by 69.4%”
The economic report, though I’ve only been able to read the abstract, seems to suggest that installing Platform Screen doors are worth it if the savings from lower disruption levels to the tube from accidents and suicides, are added to the ‘saving’ gained from the accident reduction rates (assuming a value of three times per capita GDP for each healthy additional life year, which is a depressing datapoint in itself frankly).
Anyway, I offer this policy, free, gratis and for nothing to the next Labour mayor of London candidate.
It would also be slightly less horrific for the tube drivers. I believe it was the head of the RMT that used that as a reason why tube drivers should have such comparatively high pay rates.
I did read somewhere, a long time ago, that because some many of our tube lines are so old and the tunnels comparatively small, it’s not trivial to install the systems however
There was a problem with different sized tubes on some lines, but that (now Met line replaced) isn’t such an issue I think. You need automatic train operation, of sorts. There’s also depth of platform, deepness of tube and curvature of station. I imagine a lot more stations could have them though.
Yeah, the cost-benefit analysis actually has been done, and it is super super expensive. There are huge problems with airflow in the old tunnels, curved platforms, getting the trains to line up correctly on platforms that were not designed for, mixed rolling stock and so on. I believe when the (newer – less airflow problems) NY metro looked at Platform doors the cost was between $5-20million per station – so not money the LTA has lying around.
I think Charles is right. Costs for old stations are much higher than for fitting this technology to a new line.
But that begs the questions
1)which stations and how old?
2) how much higher is that cost?
I suspect that for 5 stations on the Jubilee Line and 16 on the Victoria Line it might not be so expensive as for some of the older lines with their tight curves and bends in stations.
Someone who knows about the industry should be asked for a prelimniary estimate.
The expense point feels right- especially on the oldest lines.
I wonder though whether the london rail stations would benefit…
Additional bonus: it means people actually queue up in the right places to get on. Probably not worth much economically, but it makes for a slightly nicer experience.
That can be achieved by painting signs on the platform, as Greater Anglia have done on the Shenfield line
I work for a construction company who undertake a considerable amount of work for London Underground and we have just received an inquiry to investigate the issues regarding the feasibility of installation Platform Edge Doors on all the stations on the network. So it would appear that this might be on the agenda. From a construction view point many platforms were built over 70 years ago and will not have the load capacity that somewhere like Hong Kong’s more modern system has. The challenges of reto fitting PED’s to below and above ground stations are vast.
The decision to fit platform screen doors in Hong Kong was economic: the energy savings from the station air conditioning systems covered the installation costs. Safety benefits are a bonus.