Two Men Hit By Trains Sunday, One Dead; MTA Considers New Glass Barriers

Two straphangers were hit by trains Sunday morning, leaving one man dead, and renewing calls for safer subway platforms in New York City.

A 24-year-old intoxicated man fell onto the tracks in Astoria around 5:15 AM at the Broadway and 31st Street station, The New York Daily News reports. He was struck by a Manhattan-bound N train and was killed.

Three hours later, a man in his 50s was struck by a northbound C train at the 96th Street station. He was taken to St. Luke's Hospital with head trauma and is expected to survive.

Just last month, 20-year-old college student Joshua Basin was killed when a fight with another man spilled onto the tracks at the Bedford Avenue stop on the L train. Unable to climb back onto the platform in time, he was struck and killed by a Manhattan-bound train.

A report released recently shows found that 147 passengers were hit by subway trains in 2011, up 15 percent from 2010.

The cash-strapped MTA is now considering installing sliding glass doors at the platform edges of all stations, as other cities in Europe and Asia have done, but may not have the money to do so.

"The idea came out at the transit committee meeting,” MTA chairman Joseph Lhota said last week, CBS News reports. “They’re quite expensive and given the 496 stations, I think that’s the number, it’d be quite prohibitive."