Some 267 homeless people are living in encampments in New York City Subway stations and trains, according to the latest estimates from traffic officials.
Some travel and others are installed in 29 camps located in tunnels and 89 in stations, according to an MTA survey conducted on the 2 and Feb. 3 as part of a “track crossing” task force formed in December to address an increase in unauthorized access to the rails.
Task force leader Jamie Torres-Springer said the encampments “directly lead to trespassing incidents,” which the MTA began tracking in detail in January, he detailed New York Post. The presence of homeless people has been linked to service interruptions and/or problems of random violence, crime, and poor health.
Mayor Eric Adams announced yesterday that homeless encampments will be removed who live in the Metro, as part of a new safety plan for trains, stations and buses. “We are dismantling and will dismantle every camp in our system. It’s not acceptable,” Adams said during an appearance on the Pix channel. . “Previous administrations may have seen this and passed by. We are not doing that. I am sending the correct message that our Metro system must be safe and reliable for our passengers”, quoted Daily News.
It is estimated that at least 8 homeless people have died on a train or platform this year on the NYC Subway, a significant increase because MTA data shows only two cases in the same period in 2019.
The counters of the MTA recorded 200 road trespassing incidents in the first month of their records, 40 of which were attributed to people with mental illness or emotional disorders ales, according to Torres-Springer. Other incidents involved slip and falls, intoxication, completed or attempted suicide, and four more shoving assaults.
Last year there were 350 serious crimes in the subway, and so far in the 2022 almost 300, including 3 people thrown onto the rails, including Asian Michelle Go (29), who was killed in January in Times Square. On Thursday, a woman was attacked with a hammer while her purse was stolen while entering a station in Queens.
“Last year there was 1, 267 incidents with a person on the tracks, which which represents an increase of 20% from 2019,” Torres-Springer said. “Of those incidents, 200 resulted in someone being hit by a train and there was 68 deaths”. As far as 2022 goes, the figures already look worse. Last week three people were run over, one of them fatally, in a string of accidents recorded over a period of 10 hours in the New York subway.
Even the new mayor Adams acknowledged in January that he did not feel safe traveling on the Metro, unlike a first statement he had made underestimating crime on trains and stations.