SAFETY EQUIPMENT FOR PASSENGERS ON RAILWAY PLATFORMS

In Japan, especially in the Tokyo area, railway platforms are increasingly crowded with passengers during commuter rush hours for many reasons. It is a very important task for railway companies to reduce the risk of passengers being exposed to accidents. We built safety fences with automatic doors on the platform of Meguro Station, one of the stations of the Yamanote commuter line in Tokyo, in order to investigate whether safety fences are useful for preventing passengers from falling off the crowded platforms onto the tracks and being hit by moving trains during commuter rush hours. As a result of our investigations, we found that the safety fences with automatic doors do not hinder the flow of the passengers, and therefore concluded that fences are a useful way of reducing the risk of accidents to passengers.