New safety barriers installed in Brooklyn’s Clark Street subway station

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — New safety barriers were installed on the platform in the Clark Street 2 and 3 subway station in Brooklyn Heights last week, as part of an MTA pilot program aiming to prevent people from falling or being pushed onto the tracks.

MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber visited the subway station last Tuesday to inspect the yellow fences, he said at an MTA board meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 31. “Platform safety has been [a] major topic of discussion for a long time, especially since the tragic death — the murder — two years ago of Michelle Alyssa Go,” Lieber said.

On Jan. 15, 2022, Go was waiting for an R train at the Times Square-42nd St. station when Martial Simon, a 61-year-old homeless man, pushed her from behind onto the track, where she was run over by the train and killed. 

“In the aftermath of that tragedy, I empaneled a Trespassing Task Force at MTA” Lieber said. The agency produced “a wide-ranging list of recommendations to keep people off the tracks and to make customers feel safer.”

MTA data showed 234 reported instances in 2022 of people “coming into contact” with trains — up from 200 one year earlier — a nearly 25% increase from 2018, when there were 189, THE CITY reported. In 2023, 241 transit riders came in contact with trains, and 90 were killed, according to The New York Times.  

The partial fencing won’t block people who want to get onto the tracks, Lieber said. “You have to keep space for the doors to open because you have to get on and off the train. But it does provide a regular customer an additional sense of safety, and they can position themselves in an area where…