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I’ve long been enamoured with the idea of platform screen doors at rapid transit stations in Toronto, and a new report that went to the TTC board this week — with the unfortunate result of the report being deferred to a subcommittee — brings doors a big step closer to reality, so let’s talk about platform screen doors at transit stations, their benefits, and their future in Toronto.
What Are Screen Doors
Platform screen doors are just a set of doors at a train station along the edge of the platform, that line up with the set of doors on the train itself. They are comparable to how elevators have both an internal elevator door protecting riders from passing floors, and the doors at each floor that prevent people falling down the shaft. A train track is less dangerous than an elevator shaft, but not that much less!
Not all screen doors look the same. Probably the most common type are full-height glass doors that do feel reminiscent of an elevator, but sometimes doors end at roughly head height, or in line with people’s hips, and sometimes they are opaque — particularly in places like Japan.
If you go almost anywhere in Asia, you’ll surely see platform screen doors. In Japan, everything from very old train stations to those on the bullet train now feature automatic barriers. In new rail systems built in China and Korea, but also in developing countries like India and Malaysia, screen doors are more or less universal on new projects, and in fact, in some places like Singapore, they are universal.
Though screen doors are not just an Asian thing. London’s Elizabeth line and Stockholm's city tunnel both have screen doors on lines served by mainline trains. Automated rail lines all around the world from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Sydney, Australia, and Santiago, Chile all feature screen doors. Other cities like Vienna and Barcelona have been retrofitting the doors. And some cities like Paris and Madrid have installed them as part of larger projects to take entire metro lines, sometimes over a century old, and automate them.
Screen doors have historically been lacking in North America outside of airport people movers — which generally are, for all intents and purposes, bespoke automated subway systems. However, this is beginning to change. New metro lines built in Honolulu and Montreal were designed with screen doors from the start, and cities like New York appear to be getting close to retrofitting them into some older stations.
The Benefits
With such widespread deployment, even where it requires significant reworking, from redesigning century-old metro stations in Paris, to special bridge plates used on Sydney's new automated metro where curved platforms from a converted suburban line could leave gaps, screen doors clearly offer some serious benefits — so what exactly are they?
Well, for one, when designed into new projects, screen doors enable all kinds of things that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. You can have air conditioning and heating in your station without letting all that hot and cold air just flow out into the tunnels, and you can also build cheaper stations by placing columns right up against the edge of the platform — but where you know a door will never be. You can also integrate wayfinding screens and even station lighting directly into the screen door structure. Pre-installed screen doors can also be part of the ventilation plan for a station, which is important for fire safety.
More generally, there are huge safety benefits — as alluded to earlier, being able to fall onto a train track is dangerous; obviously the fall could injure you, but in many cases there's also an electrified rail, and of course there are the trains. This becomes an accessibility issue when you consider people with limited vision or people in wheelchairs or with strollers. Imagine how much less scary using a subway station would be as a person with limited vision if there was suddenly not a ledge taking up a huge part of the station that you could seriously injure yourself falling off of.
There is also the issue of self harm. Such incidents are traumatizing (and therefore lead to huge costs outside of the victim in terms of leave and healthcare), disruptive, and can also cause damage to transit infrastructure and vehicles. Systems that have universal screen doors have seen self harm go to zero — saving potentially tens of lives or more every year.
In Toronto, many riders will also be familiar with the issue of “trespassers at track level” where huge sections of the subway might be disrupted when urban explorers or fleeing suspects go adventuring in the subway tunnels. Screen doors could make that a thing of the past.
But, it isn’t just safety. Without a dangerous platform edge, passengers can safely use the entirety of the platform space, and doors create natural locations for passengers to queue. Trains can also enter stations much faster when passengers aren’t at risk of hitting the train or falling in front of it. Plus, the risk of garbage or other debris entering the track area is totally obviated. All of these factors can add up to a substantial boost in capacity and reliability.
All of these factors explain why systems around the world install screen doors even when doing so is expensive — there are substantial benefits, and the doors can allow busy train lines to move even more passengers than they would otherwise. In many ways, it’s just the way that modern subways are built — I remember descending into the subway with a university roommate from China and them being shocked to see the trains with no sort of barrier protecting passengers from them. To get with the times, we need to install screen doors.
The Reports
So then, it was big news when two reports were released to the TTC board talking about how installing screen doors would look on the Toronto subway, and whether it makes financial sense, as well as a potential screen door trial at Dundas station, which will soon be renamed after the adjacent Toronto Metropolitan University.
The financials report is a mixed bag. The expected cost of $40 to $60 million per station includes things such as cost escalation and is unsurprisingly quite high compared to international examples which are as low as a quarter the price, but the total cost to add screen doors to the TTC owned parts of the subway network at ~$4 billion feels like a acceptable if high cost for an upgrade that would make the rather large system much safer, more accessible, and modern, and would be less pricey than many major transit capital projects in the city these days.
What’s great though is that even despite this high cost, the business case suggests that screen doors would more than pay for themselves — saving money on insurance claims, injury, and delays, even assuming very conservative costs for what is a mature and widely deployed technology. Better yet, many of these savings come from the TTC’s operating budget, letting relatively plentiful capital dollars bring down the pressure on a tight operating budget.
The feasibility report naturally goes into significant detail on the process of installing screen doors on the TTC system, from how they would work with our specific trains, to the constraints that exist at every different station.
The report investigated the use of several types of screen doors and intrusion prevention devices, ranging from sensors like those used on the Vancouver Skytrain and soon-to-open Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown to stop trains if someone enters the track area, to half-height doors often used in Japan, and even the niche solution of “rope-based” platform barriers that have been deployed at a handful of stations in Korea and Japan and were seen as a potential “value” option. Such barriers used vertical panels of ropes (glass versions also exist) that do not necessarily line up with train doors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, full-height doors won the day, as their cost is not substantially higher than other options, and yet they provide much more reliable separation of the platform and track areas, including from people seeking to get onto the tracks.
As one might expect, the different types of stations with different platform and ceiling designs, as well as stations like Davisville which are outdoors and thus exposed to the elements, would all see slightly different designs. Many stations would need their platform edges rebuilt or reinforced to support the weight of doors, and room would have to be found for the electrical and control systems needed for the door system. Fortunately, significant detail has gone into the practical considerations to actually get this important project done.
Trial stations are suggested at a number of locations where traffic is not too high, and where stations are of varying designs so that learnings can be taken along to high-traffic stations where disruptions due to installation and commissioning problems would be more expensive and disruptive.
The only other limiting factor for screen door installation is the installation of CBTC (what the TTC calls ATC) on a given line. This is because modern digital signalling systems are preferred when trains must be stopped precisely at each station to align with the doors — something already put to use in some TTC stations where platform markers highlight door locations. Currently, only Line 1 has active CBTC, but over the multi-decade suggested course of platform screen door installation, Line 2 should also have completed its upgrade to CBTC, with Line 4 being a smaller and simpler project given its short length and lower ridership.
As mentioned above, the study proposes starting at today's Dundas station, which feels like a good location given its high traffic and proximity to other stations (should there be any teething issues). Beyond that, the study sections up the network into packages that would be bid on similar to station accessibility upgrades, ideally leading to competitive bids — which seem like a real option to bring prices down, but also allowing proponents to learn from one station to another.
Some have asked whether screen doors should only be installed at the busiest stations, and while this is perhaps not illogical in a micro sense, some of the benefits of screen doors like a totally secured system without easy passenger access to the tracks require them to be universal. And the reality is also that for things like track access, less busy stations may even be a bigger problem than busier ones.
Screen Doors in Toronto
Now, besides the report headlines, there are a few things worth knowing about screen doors and the Toronto context.
For one, we actually already have screen doors at two of our stations — on the UP Express at either end at Union and Pearson. The UP Express does not have advanced digital signalling and so drivers have to manually line up the doors — this is fine at the terminal stations where there is surplus time, and where passengers not having to wait in the cold or heat is especially valuable. These are actually the only screen doors on a mainline rail service in North America.
It should also be noted that on the subway, an increasing share of the network over time has been designed for screen door installation. The York Subway extension was originally supposed to have screen doors, with them cut when the project went over budget, and installing them at those six stations should be simple. At the same time, while screen doors are not currently planned as part of the Yonge North or Scarborough subway extension projects which will add eight more stations, screen doors will be protected for and should be easy to install after the fact.
At the same time, the currently-underway Bloor-Yonge station rebuild will also at the very least bring that stations Bloor and Yonge line platforms into a state where screen door installation should be simple, and will hopefully install them on the Yonge line platforms where CBTC is already active.
Something which hasn’t gotten much attention is that there is significant potential for screen doors on the Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown. The line will operate using CBTC from day one, and its combination of short, narrow platforms without cantilevers and the risk of people hanging out near the platform edge because of the lack of a big drop may well make installation attractive sooner than later. In this case though, changing rolling stock may be a real concern, since different low-floor trams — compare those on Finch to those on Eglinton — often have very different door arrangements, so careful thought would be needed.
Suffice to say, between the extensions and the Crosstown, there are at least 40 stations and 80 platforms that would be very good candidates for screen door installation over the next decade, likely at a lower cost than many legacy subway stations.
Fortunately, Toronto transit riders can expect at least some screen doors at their stations in coming years, because Ontario Line 3, being a modern automated subway, will feature screen doors at every station and platform from day one, and it will be able to take advantage of their inclusion in station and system design.
And honestly, even beyond the subway, cities in China and the Middle East have taken to installing screen doors or gates at tram stops, both for safety, operations, and passenger comfort (read air-conditioned tram stops in Dubai) reasons. GO may well also be a candidate for screen doors or gates if future stations feature level-boarding and tracks that will not be used by freight trains — for example on a spur exclusive to future all-electric GO trains, or a cross-city tunnel in downtown Toronto.
Questions
Finally, there are some natural questions people might have if they’re unfamiliar with screen doors, and I’ve attempted to answer them here.
One obvious question is what happens if a door fails? Fortunately, this is rare since screen doors like train doors are fairly simple mechanisms designed around reliability, however in the case a door does fail, it and its connected train door will not open, and they will be marked either on a sign or on a digital screen.
Some worry about the risk of getting caught in between the train and the screen doors, but this is almost impossible, thanks to sensors in both doors that will detect if the door is held, but also extensions from the screen door that create only a tiny gap between the door and the train through which a person cannot fit through without triggering the sensors. There are also often additional sensors that make sure nothing is in the space between the train and the screen doors once they close before the train is able to depart.
And then there is the question of changing train designs. While this might have been a concern at some point, and is still an issue on some systems where either multiple types or train configurations are used, the reality is that all trains on Lines 1 and 2 have had the same number of doors for decades, and specific spacings should not be an issue. While screen doors would lock us into the current door layout, that’s unlikely to be an issue, and since the screen doors would be wider than the train doors, there may even be some margin for slightly wider doors on future subway trains.
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Reece Martin is a well-known advocate for good transit, worldwide. He is based in Toronto and blogs at nextmetro.substack.
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UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Line 5 and Line 6 Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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