It's easy for the police to release videos of drunken passengers, but what is Network Rail doing about dangerous platforms?
See
http://www.btp.presscentre.com/Photo-Library/Barnsley-CCTV-1f3b.aspx As public information campaigns go, this one seemed a cracker. Travelling while you're drunk is dangerous; and to make the point in the runup to Christmas, British Transport police have released CCTV images of a drunken passenger falling under a train as she staggers off it.
Thankfully, the woman in the film is fine, because someone saw her fall and the train was delayed while she was hauled from under it. But seeing those images makes me furious, because despite what Network Rail might like us to believe, you don't have to be drunk to fall under a train. According to the staff at my local station, Clapham Junction in south-west London, it happens to entirely sober passengers on a regular basis, because of ever-bigger gaps between platforms and trains.
I know this is true, because over the last three years my daughters, who travel to secondary school through Clapham Junction, have twice told me about incidents in which friends of theirs fell on to the tracks. Both times, as with the drunk woman in the British Transport police video, the trains were delayed while the girls were rescued.
More recently my husband, who also commutes through Clapham Junction, was about to board a train on his way to work when a female passenger just ahead of him did exactly the same as the woman in the video: she lost her footing and disappeared on to the tracks. He pulled her out, and then helped her on to the train; although shaken, she made an "announcement" to the passengers in the carriage that my husband had just saved her life.
So my point is this: it's fine for the British Transport police to make us aware of the dangers of being drunk, but why aren't they ^ and Network Rail, whose responsibility this is ^ doing more to make their platforms safer? At the moment, all they have are some chipped and faded and barely visible signs telling you to "mind the gap", and an occasional warning announcement.
But of course it's much easier to blame drunken passengers than to look at your own shortcomings. So to help Network Rail out, I've been down to Clapham Junction with a measuring tape. I stood on Platform 15, the platform my children use each day, and I measured the gap between platform and train on six departures over a 10-minute period. The biggest gap I measured was 51cm on the 15:11 train to Sutton; the smallest gap I measured was 46cm on the 14:54 train to Epsom.
Every one of the gaps I saw was easily big enough for a passenger, especially a child-sized one, to fall through and on to the track. Twice I helped passengers who were struggling to get on to the train safely; one was an older woman with a suitcase who was unable to lift it across the gap on to the train, and the other was a woman with a toddler and a pushchair. She needed both hands (and another passenger's help) to lug the pushchair on to the train, and the only way she could do it was to leave hold of her toddler's hand, leaving him at risk of falling on to the track.
Does Network Rail care about these dangers? According to the platform staff this afternoon, the problem is that the platforms weren't built for modern trains, and improving them to reduce the gap would cost too much. I wonder whether that's what they'll be saying when the day comes when a child falls on to the track and dies? I suspect not; because on that day, we'll all agree that any amount of money is worth spending to keep our children safe.
So listen up, Network Rail. Those are my daughters and their friends who are falling on to your tracks. If I'm angry now, I'll be incandescent on the day that accident happens. And it will. That's what station staff told me today: because higher passenger numbers (which you have) mean more platform crowding and more accidents.
So instead of shocking us with pictures of drunks, start thinking about how to keep my children and all your other passengers safe. And please, do it now.
For completeness, I've combined the full Guardian article text, together with the original British Transport Police video release, here in this topic.
