Ad campaign targets gaps

"Watch the gap."

Riding the Long Island Rail Road these days, you can't miss the message

repeated on trains, in stations and on ticket machine screens.

"I must have heard it five times this morning," Suffolk County MTA board

member Mitch Pally said at an LIRR/ Long Island Bus committee meeting yesterday

on his commute from Suffolk County to Manhattan. Railroad officials met to

give an update on steps to address dangerously wide platform gaps [CORRECTION:

Because of an editing error, the purpose of a Wednesday LIRR/Long Island Bus

committee meeting was mischaracterized in a story yesterday. Railroad and bus

officials gathered for a regularly scheduled committee meeting. They did not

meet to give an update on steps to address wide platform gaps. PG. A19 ALL

9/22/06].

They, along with state and federal officials, are investigating gaps

between LIRR trains and platforms after a gap-related death last month and a

Newsday investigation that found gaps as wide as 15 inches - twice the

railroad's standard.

Natalie Smead, a Minnesota teenager, was struck and killed by a train on

Aug. 5 after she slipped through the gap on to the tracks, crawled underneath

the platform to the tracks on the other side and was hit by a train at the

Woodside station. And on Sept. 6, Brittany Walker, 4, fell through a gap as she

tried to step onto an LIRR train at Penn Station. She was not seriously hurt.

At least 60 LIRR passengers per year have gap-related accidents - the

second-highest cause of injury on the rail line, officials said.

LIRR acting president Ray Kenny said: "We're looking at it in terms of what

we can do immediately, what can be done in the short term and what can be done

in the long term."

The railroad's immediate measures include an aggressive rider education

campaign and more alert train crews, he said.