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Platform Screen Doors
The 'cutting-edge' safety feature in modern subways consists of transparent doors that separate rail tracks from platforms. Train doors and platform doors are aligned and open simultaneously after the train has stopped.
Subway systems with platform screen doors (also called PSD, platform edge doors, or PED) or half-high platform gate doors (PGD) in some or all of their stations:
- Bangkok (Green line, Blue line)
- Barcelona (under construction on lines 5, 11, planned for lines 9, 10)
- Beijing (PGDs on underground stations of line 5, PSDs on lines 8, 10)
- Busan (line 3)
- Chongqing (The three underground stations (Daping, Linjiangmen, and Jiaochangkou) have PSDs)
- Copenhagen (all underground stations)
- Daegu (lines 1, 2)
- Daejeon
- Dubai (metro, monorail)
- Fukuoka
- Guangzhou
- Gwangju
- Hong Kong (all underground stations)
- Incheon
- Kaohsiung (MRT)
- Kobe (Port Liner and Rokko Liner)
- Kuala Lumpur (KLIA line to airport, Kelana Jaya line's underground stations)
- Kyoto (Tozai line)
- Las Vegas
- Lille (VAL, all stations)
- London (Jubilee Line extension)
- Madrid (tests in 2010, plans for 2011)
- Nagoya (Tobu Kyuryo maglev line)
- New York (planned for new Second Avenue Line)
- Osaka (all stations on the Nanko Port Town Line)
- Paris (all stations on line 14, under construction on line 13)
- Rennes (VAL)
- Saint Petersburg (windowless steel doors in ten stations)
- Sao Paulo (line 2 since 2010)
- Seoul (lines 2 and 9, planned for all lines by 2010)
- Seville (Line 1)
- Shanghai (newer line 4 stations and refitted line 1 stations)
- Shenzhen
- Singapore
- Taipei (Muzha line VAL MRT)
- Tianjin (platform gate doors)
- Tokyo (Marunouchi, Mita, Namboku, Yurikamome lines)
- Toulouse (VAL)
- Turin (VAL)
- Yokohama (Kanazawa Seaside LRT line)
Benefits of PSDs:
- Preventing people from falling or jumping on the tracks,
- allowing trains to enter the stations at higher speed,
- reducing draught and air pressure caused by trains,
- letting platforms be quieter and cleaner,
- in hot climate, allowing the stations to be air-conditioned at lower cost,
- preventing people from throwing trash on the tracks and thus preventing track fires.
So PSDs can increase passenger comfort and average train speed, though PSDs usually need more time to open and close than ordinary doors. In an emergency they can be opened manually from both sides. Video of Hong Kong's Tung Chun station PSDs.
Less common are chest-high or waist-high platform gate doors like those on Hong Kong's MTR Disneyland Resort Line and Tokyo's Disneyland Monorail as well as in some stations in Paris and Taipei.
Singapore MRT was the first real subway system to introduce PSDs with its inauguration in 1987. PSDs are often being built with new subway stations but can also be retrofitted with existing stations. Additionally to the subway systems listed above, platform screen doors are found in most people movers (e.g. at airports) and monorails.
Saint Petersburg has ten stations with a unique feature: platform steel doors, not screen doors (see video). The stations were built between 1961 and 1972. Contrary to common belief, the reason for the introduction of steel doors was not to prevent flooding. The reason was to lower the costs of station construction when using tunnel boring machines. When tunnel boring machines (TBM) are used, station vaults normally are constructed to have a wider profile than the TBM to host part of the platform, which requires expensive manual digging. But those Saint Petersburg stations each consist of two tunnels with the narrow profile of the TBM and a larger station vault in between. The walls between the track tunnels and the vault carry all the weight of the ceiling and allow only for narrow openings. These openings had to be covered with sliding doors for safety reasons. This makes Saint Petersburg actually the world's first metro with platform doors ("horizontal elevator"), though they are not made of glass.
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Copenhagen |
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Hong KongSunny Bay station. Hong Kong has platform screen doors in all underground stations. However, the Disneyland Resort Line is equipped with chest-high platform gate doors (PGDs). |
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LillePorte de Valenciennes elevated station. |
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LondonCanary Wharf station, Jubilee Line Extension. |
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LondonCanary Wharf station, Jubilee Line Extension. |
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ParisSaint-Lazare station, line 14 (Météor). |
Photos by Mike Rohde. Page updated 8 July 2009 (database entries may be more recent).
SkyscraperCity: Cities with platform screen doors (forum discussion).
Westinghouse: platformscreendoors.com (a manufacturer of platform screen doors).
Wikipedia: Platform screen doors.
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