Thirty years of neglect

BY JENNIFER MALONEY AND KARLA SCHUSTER | Newsday Staff Writer

January 19, 2007

The Long Island Rail Road knew for more than three decades that the gap between trains and platforms posed a serious threat to passengers, injuring hundreds of riders in terrifying falls.

The railroad knew that Patricia Freeman fell into a gap at Garden City station in July 2004, fracturing a hand, three ribs and a bone in her spine.

It knew that Melissa Kalbacher slipped into a gap at Hunters Point station in Queens in January 1998, tearing the skin off her right shin.

It knew that Mark Daniels plunged into a gap at Hicksville in 1985, crushing his pelvis.

Since 1995, the LIRR has logged more than 800 gap incidents at stations from Penn to Bridgehampton, according to records obtained and analyzed by Newsday. The falls have involved toddlers and senior citizens, regular commuters and occasional riders, the disabled and the able-bodied. During that period, gap falls have comprised an increasing percentage of rider accidents.

And Thursday, LIRR officials revealed that an estimated 38 percent of its platforms have problem gaps.

Yet until recently the railroad's efforts to prevent falls amounted to little more than "Watch the Gap" warnings posted inside train cars, at a few stations and in safety brochures.

The long history of gap falls took a deadly turn in August, when Natalie Smead, 18, a Minnesota teenager whose blood-alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit for driving, fell through a gap at the Woodside station and crawled into the path of an oncoming train. In ensuing days, Newsday measured and reported the size of gaps across the system, including one in Syosset that was found to be 15 inches wide.

Only then did the railroad launch its first systematic attempt to fix the gap problem. That effort, which they announced two months later, used relatively simple methods -- such as tacking wooden boards onto platform edges -- that top LIRR officials admit they could have employed years ago.

"This was nothing new," state Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), the Senate's deputy majority leader, said of the gaps. "Injuries were occurring -- nothing fatal until now, but when you have continuous injuries ... I just believe that more significant steps should have been taken sooner."

Smead's death, the railroad's first gap-related fatality, brought into sharp, public focus a problem that has generated more than 30 years' worth of rider complaints and lawsuits but little government oversight or regulation.

"Here's a situation that was just totally neglected for 30 years until Natalie died," said attorney Bob Sullivan, who is representing the Smeads in a $5-million lawsuit against the LIRR. "Shame on every LIRR official for the last 30 years."

A Newsday analysis of railroad records shows that, except for 2002, gap falls were the leading cause of passenger injuries in the 5 1/2 years prior to Smead's Aug. 5 death. The analysis revealed 374 gap incidents from January 2001 through last July.

Looking back, the gap "was not high on the list of things going on," said Charles W. Hoppe, the LIRR president from 1990 to 1994. "Maybe it should have been."

Gerry Bringmann, chairman of the LIRR Commuters Council, an advisory group, said that when the council asked about gap incidents, LIRR officials told the panel that the falls were an inevitable part of running the nation's largest and busiest commuter railroad.

"The impression we always got from the railroad," Bringmann said, "is that, 'It's just one of those things that's going to happen.'"

In the wake of Smead's death, the railroad's past failure to address the gap problem strikes a raw nerve for riders injured in such falls.

The LIRR "had knowledge of a dangerous situation and did nothing about it," said Lori Wright, one of three people who fell through the gap at the Syosset station on the same day in January 1996.

Railroad officials say they have long recognized the hazard of platform gaps, noting that some space is necessary for the safe passage of trains. But they say that until Smead's death, they believed that rider education programs were enough to mitigate the danger.

In recent months, the railroad has launched an aggressive campaign to reduce gaps at several stations by moving tracks, shifting platforms and installing inexpensive wooden boards. The LIRR also has expanded its education programs, including posting a gap safety video on its Web site.