Gail Buffalo says she suffered several facial injuries simply exiting through the new fare gates at the 23rd\u00a0Street-Baruch College station.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe door slammed in my face,\u201d Buffalo said. \u201cIt felt like I had been punched.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were cuts to her forehead, lip and gums, and she thought her dental work was broken.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
One woman says the new fare gates at 23rd Street-Baruch College closed on her as she was exiting, causing cuts and bruising to her face and gums<\/p>\n
A second rider had them close on his face, causing a gash in his forehead
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The MTA says they are constantly learning and adjusting the gates, and the number of incidents has gone down from when the pilot program started in December
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The three new models of fare gates to modernize the system are being tested in about 14 stations \u2014 soon to be 20 \u2014 all paid for and closely watched by the companies vying for a contract to eventually install them at 150 stations<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a cut here. My gum was bleeding, and the next morning I noticed I was nicked here. I had this nick and then my mouth,\u201d Buffalo said. \u201cAnd then by three or four days later, I developed the black eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
It happened on Jan. 29, shortly after the new gates were installed. Buffalo looked online and started to see videos like one viral clip of a woman with her head stuck in one set of doors.<\/p>\n
She felt the MTA was not doing enough to help riders understand how to use the gates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t take a step back and learn how these doors, you know, work best \u2014 I felt like I was a guinea pig,\u201d Buffalo said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not alone \u2014 as NY1 exited the train to meet her, we saw a man who had just been hit by the gates and had a gash on his forehead.<\/p>\n
NY1 reached out to the MTA to find out how many of these incidents there have been and are awaiting a response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of what we call incidents have gone down dramatically since the beginning of the pilot,\u201d MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said.<\/p>\n
The MTA is apparently working on some educational videos.<\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of my team were out there filming videos and preparing and creating customer explainers, which we\u2019re going to roll out soon,\u201d Shanifah Rieara, the MTA\u2019s chief customer officer, said. \u201cBut we are looking at signage and updating that information.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MTA says over 1 million people have gone through the three new models of gates since the pilot program started in December.<\/p>\n
The gates are designed to modernize the system and are being tested in about 14 stations \u2014 soon to be 20 \u2014 all paid for and closely watched by the companies vying for a contract to eventually install them at 150 stations.<\/p>\n
While they may be new to New Yorkers, they have been tested elsewhere. The model at 23rd\u00a0Street is being used in San Fransisco\u2019s BART system, but it\u2019s no consolation for Buffalo.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf policymakers decide to use doors like this, they need to fix them, because these doors are clearly not working and they\u2019re clearly not safe for families in the city,\u201d she said, sharing the concerns she has about walking through them with her young daughter.<\/p>\n
The MTA says they are being fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still learning and we\u2019re still making adjustments,\u201d Lieber said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gail Buffalo says she suffered several facial injuries simply exiting through the new fare gates at the 23rd\u00a0Street-Baruch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25,1084,9,24,55,54,12,56,298,27,296,142,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-131921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-app-traffic-transit","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-samantha-liebman","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-traffic-and-transit","19":"tag-transit","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}