The MTA is trying something new at E. 125th Street and Lexington Ave. in Harlem: no standing zones.
The station, which serves the 4, 5 and 6 lines, is the first to have such zones, painted on the platform where conductors’ cabs come to a stop.
A subway staff memo says the zones are “an effort to eliminate assaults against our employees.”
The no-standing zone “will assist employees in observing these areas as they arrive at a station [in order to] provide additional situational awareness,” says the memo, obtained by the Daily News.
The painted warnings are marked by blue lights and located just under the conductor’s indication board.
Demetrius Crichlow, the MTA’s senior vice president for subways said the markings were installed Friday.
Crichlow said the Harlem was chosen as a test site because of its “extremely high” rate of reported assaults on employees.
“We noticed that there were assaults on the rise — on conductors in particular,” Crichlow said.
The zones were conceived by a joint labor-management safety council required by the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, said a spokesman for TWU Local 100, the union which reps NYC subway workers.
Both union and transit officials describe the no-standing zones as one of a few ideas aimed at reducing attacks on workers.
“This is a relatively small and early step in major effort protect transit workers from assaults,” TWU Local 100 President Richard Davis said in a statement. “There will have to be an educational component, and possibly an enforcement component, to make these no-standing zones effective, but we are sending a message that assaults are unacceptable and Conductors must be protected.”
The freshly-painted warnings can be found on all four tracks at the station, marked by blue lights and located just under the conductor’s indication board — the zebra-striped panel subway conductors point to as their train enters the station.
Crichlow said the MTA would monitor the effectiveness of the zones at E. 125th, and could expand the program to other stations systemwide by late this year.
“So far the results have been pretty positive, at least over the weekend,” he said of the pilot program.
