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Subway Platform's "Little-Known Switch" Could Have Saved Man
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 14, 2009
Modified Jan 14, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 14, 2009
Modified Jan 14, 2009
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[UPDATE BELOW]
The MTA is looking into a horrible incident that occurred at the City College stop on the No. 1 train at 137th Street and Broadway on the morning of January 4th. Ronald Melichar, an official at the Department of Small Business Services, apparently had some sort of seizure and fell onto the tracks, where he was seen twitching and rolling up against the third rail. A witness ran to the token booth and urged the clerk to shut off the power, so the clerk got on the phone to arrange to turn the power off.
But according to the Daily News, there is a "little-known switch" in subway stations that enables people to temporarily disable the third rail in emergencies like this. Melichar was left on the track to be electrocuted and have a heart attack, and then two minutes later he was run over by a train. The Fire Department was able to get him out alive, and he's clinging to life at St. Luke's Hospital. (Doctors have amputated one of his legs.)
Melichar's sister is calling for an investigation; she wants to know why the train conductor wasn't notified of the emergency and why the bystanders weren't told about the switch. An NYC Transit spokesman tells the News they're looking into the incident, which, oddly enough, occurred almost exactly two years after "subway hero" Wesley Autrey jumped into the subway tracks to save a fellow straphanger at the same station. Anyone who caught that spooky Hungarian subway movie Kontroll will probably be inclined to start taking the bus.
UPDATE: MTA spokesperson Charles Seaton writes, "These switches are located in areas that are NOT accessible to subway customers. They are not on the station platform." And they're not accessible to the token booth clerk, either. Seaton declined to elaborate on their exact location, for obvious reasons.
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Ronald Melichar
subway
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third rail
tracks
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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