Subscribe to RSSVideo: Girl Slips Under Train
In Argentina, a woman’s bid to avoid paying a train fare nearly cost her the life of her daughter.
Her mother lowered her onto the tracks as a train was coming into the station, as shown by the surveillance video.
The woman is seen guiding the child underneath the platform, apparently trying to hide from ticket collectors. The woman appears set to join the child hiding under the platform when suddenly she sees the train approaching.
The woman scrambles back up onto the platform, but her daughter remains below. As the train comes to a stop, the woman bends over and peers into the gap between the train and platform, checking for the girl. Other commuters who witnessed the scene cluster around.
The little girl was pulled out alive.
Workers were able to crawl underneath the platform where they found the girl terrified but unharmed, safely ensconced inside a tiny nook.
In other news today:
The draft report of a KiwiRail investigation into the October fire on a Melling commuter train that left one passenger suffering from smoke inhalation, reveals that a series of problems contributed to the incident – including time pressure, misdiagnosis, lack of communication and inadequate staff training. Read Stuff
Sydney’s next batch of commuter trains - designed in Japan, built in China, assembled in the Hunter and known as the Waratah - will start hitting the tracks for passenger service some time this year but the SMH reports on some controversial issues. SMH
6 Comments
One superb reason why we should stick with fare collection on the trains, and not shift to platform/ station entrance collection. Turnstiles encourage fare dodging, and stupid track crossing behaviour. While this girl may have survived, others aren’t so lucky.
Plus, it’s very dubious as to whether platform/station fare collection is actually cheaper or faster. The more stations we have, the costlier it is to put turnstiles in, and you have to fully fence or secure the entire station, which is always impossible on the actual tracks! And if one turnstile jams or fails to read the token, get ready for queues…
Turnstiles encourage fare dodging?!?! I’d like to see the London Underground without turnstile fare collection. I can just imagine employees desperately trying to get through several hundred people in the 2 minutes or so between stations. We’re not up to that point yet.
I’d like to see your numbers that on board fare collection won’t take longer or cost more. Here are my numbers. From Britomart to the proposed Aotea station is 900 metres approximately. Assume a train will travel that distance at 30km/hr then the travel time will be 108 seconds. Assume it takes 5 seconds to process each transaction then each clippie can process 21 transactions in that time. If 400 people board a train then there will have to be 19 clippies on each train. These numbers are all estimates and I feel are on the rather conservative side of things.
Also in this case:
“The woman is seen guiding the child underneath the platform, apparently trying to hide from ticket collectors. The woman appears set to join the child hiding under the platform when suddenly she sees the train approaching.” It seems they were hiding from ticket collectors.
Auckland ISN’T moving to turnstiles. Even at Britomart and New Lynn and Newmarket, I understand what we are moving to is simply allowing you to “tag on” as you move into the station, rather than tagging on in the train. No physical barriers or checks at all - if you want to dodge the fare, you just walk in.
What we are actually moving to is a “prepaid” system using “tag on” posts - not turnstiles - and presumably with infrequent checks on board by staff to check whether people have actually tagged on, to discourage fare evasion. This kind of system will do nothing to encourage such risky behaviour at all, as long as the checks are on the train itself.
James B - we are not at the London Underground numbers, and your figures don’t add up. First you pick a hypothetical (unfunded and unbuilt) station that is far closer than any other station distance (900m vs normally 1500m).
Second, you ignore the fact that currently Veolia manage to collect tickets with no more than 2 clippies per (2 carriage) trainset. Hardly 19 staff!
Third, you can’t dodge paying fares to staff once ou board the train, unless the clippies don’t get to your seat by the time the train gets to your stop. That can happen, but is rare. By contrast, this woman hid her kid precisely because (she thought) she can find a place to hide on or by the platform - you simply can’t do that inside the trainsets, can you?
Finally, ingolfson - what I just said applies to both ‘token turnstiles’ and ‘tag posts’ for smartcards. This dangerous behaviour would have arisen whether the station used cash tickets, turnstiles or tag posts. Having not paid/tagged on, the woman then tries to find some place to hide - stupidly picking the tracks! There simply is no place to hide once the doors shut on the train.
Quite apart from the fact that the smartcard has not yet appeared….
I believe that gates are meant to be installed at Britomart and Newmarket with the idea that the majority of people will go through one of these two stations so will be picked up by them.
Bob – Clippies aren’t foolproof, people do regularly evade fares by a number of means, the most common ways are paying for less stages than they should or pretending they were already on the train by acting asleep/reading/listening to music etc. I have even heard of people hiding the seats when in a group to avoid everyone paying. Also we have a number of stations that are only 900m apart, between Morningside and Kingsland is an example.