MTA’s slow-to-start subway safety rails test installed at just 10 stations draws straphanger skepticism: ‘Doesn’t do anything’

The MTA’s much-mocked subway safety rail test has barely left the station.

Since January, just 10 subway stations have received metal barriers designed to prevent deadly falls and shoves onto the tracks, officials confirmed to The Post.

Even the handful that have gone up didn’t impress straphangers such as Lily, a 25-year-old rider who called the barriers inside the Grand Street L station “stupid.”

“I guess it’s better than nothing, but there’s so much space between them that it’s like pointless,” she said Friday.

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Other straphangers questioned the railings’ effectiveness, noting they still left a wide gap for falls, jumps and shoves.

“It doesn’t do anything,” said Jeanette, 75, a home health aide from the East Village.

“Anybody just can go and throw them over. I don’t think it’s any safer in here if you get pushed.”

The platform railing pilot launched in January amid pressure to prevent attacks such as the fatal 2022 push of Michelle Go at the Times Square station.

MTA officials eyed full-sized platform doors, but argued they could only feasibly be installed in a fraction of the subway system’s 472 stations — and would still cost $7 billion .

The roughly hip-high metal barriers that first sprang up to straphanger befuddlement at 191st Street station were deemed a low-cost, first-step solution as compared to the bigger gates being long-slated to be tested for $100 million at three other stations .

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An MTA spokeswoman didn’t have a price for the smaller barrier test. She told The Post the stations being tested are along the L and 7 lines, but didn’t provide details as to why those were selected.

She also didn’t have details on how widely MTA officials planned to expand the pilot.

“The goal is to install at one to two stations a month, depending on timing for the delivery of materials,” she said.

“The goal is to install at one to two stations a month, depending on timing for the delivery of materials.”

Platform railings have been installed so far at five L line stations: Bedford Avenue, Dekalb Avenue, First Avenue, Grand Street and Morgan Avenue.

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The remaining railings are in the Fifth Avenue 7 line station, the 57th Street F station, the 191st Street 1 line station and Clark Street 2 and 3 line station, officials said.

New Yorkers and tourists in those stations told The Post Friday that the barriers couldn’t hurt, but also didn’t make them safer.

Anna, a 30-something straphanger in the Morgan Avenue L station, said subway shovings weren’t the primary danger many of her female neighbors faced in that very station.

“I don’t fear being shoved as much as I worry about someone attacking myself or a neighbor on an empty platform, dark street, stairwell, or anywhere that is hidden from view and easily accessible to people who want to hurt others,” she said. “Men follow me at night, sometimes starting in subway stations. That is a real, repeating danger.

East Village denizen Erin Hussey, 29, had mixed feelings about the railings’ effectiveness, especially when it came for people with mental health issues.

“I lost a partner to suicide,” she said. “I know if somebody’s gonna do it, they’re gonna do it.”

Avita Islam, 22, a Northeastern University student in the city for an internship, compared the relatively small barriers to the bigger platform doors she recently saw in the London Underground.

“I don’t think it significantly makes me feel safer, because it’s not like it’s not doing much,” she said.

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