Concerned Senators and advocacy groups seriously questioned the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Long Island Rail Road about the problem with gap-related New York train accidents this week, and some interesting details were learned.

Long Island Rail Road officials described the extent of gap train accidents for the first time on Thursday. According to a Newsday story, company officials said that there are 32 platforms at 22 LIRR stations with gaps exceeding 10 inches. Metro-North Railroad president Peter Cannito confirmed that his railroad has 26 similar gaps at 17 stations. LIRR officials said that they have already begun fixing some of the gaps and also plan to spend more than $13 million to continue to do so. LIRR officials said that the company will have a specific safety plan to address the gap issues by the end of the month.

According to an Associated Press story in the New York Daily News, LIRR officials said that the company is launching a public relations campaign about the gap dangers and redesigning “Watch the Gap” decals which will be placed on their trains. One advocacy group wondered whether such signs would be enough for train passengers, while Senators justifiably asked what took LIRR so long to do more about these past and recent train accidents!

A grisly incident this summer involving a Minnesota teen who fell into a gap at a New York subway station and was killed when a train ran her over prompted a 5-month investigative study by Newsday on the history of these types of train accidents. A recent Newsday story revealed that New York gap-train accidents and personal injuries had been occurring for more than 30 years, and that instead of fixing the problem, LIRR and its parent company, MTA, decided to settle most of the resulting personal injury lawsuits over the years. MTA and LIRR are no longer able to hide from this problem as the Senate hearing on Thursday revealed!