Platform screen doors.

Besides, the link that I provided is giving enough info. :)
 
My understanding was that any sort of platform screen doors require CBTC signalling so that trains can consistently stop in the exact same place. That should be true for the Green Line post GLTPS phase 2, but not any other lines. Are there ways around this limitation, or will this just be an RFP doomed to go nowhere?
Not necessarily. There are definitely platform screen door systems out there that are far older than CBTC signaling. Operators may need some in-car optical sensor assist on stopping position so it's accurate to the inch instead of the foot, but it shouldn't require an all-new signal system. However, most world examples tend to be on high-platform HRT lines. The Green Line, despite having some of the worst crowding conditions on the system, wouldn't be an appropriate place at all for it because of the low-level boarding, degree of operator independence even within the GLTPS next-gen signaling, and the track crossings and double-berthing like at Park Street.

The cost is what's going to make this a nonstarter here. We've got very old stations that aren't very dimensionally consistent (example: support columns haphazardly arranged very close to doors-open positions on the platform) and spaghetti utilities on top of the operators (who are usually pretty good about it) still being responsible for the stop positions. And we aren't prone to the kinds of extreme platform overcrowding that some world examples of platform screen doors have necessitating their usage. New York City, who needs it way more than us, studied it with predictable budget-nuking results. If we want to improve the boarding/alighting experience in the core downtown stops I can think of probably a dozen egress-centric discrete improvement projects that would make a bigger aggregate difference to passenger flow. And we have to learn to build things within some semblance of cost if it's going to be scalable to significant parts of the system, which (per New York's look-see at the technology) we are utterly unable to do right now. It's not going to make a difference if we do it at like 2 or 3 early-action stations, blow out every semblance of budget such that it becomes a scandal, and then retreat from doing any more because it's just too hard for what passes for project oversight in this country. Look how hard it is to swallow basic ADA accessibility projects and their cost overruns, and that's even with us being a pretty damn good system vs. its peers for overall accessibility.


But, more directly, I'll believe that Phil Eng actually values world best-practices when I see some actual evidence of applied knowledge from this agency. We're not exactly on a good run with that lately, which is why I made the electrification crack.
 
The youtube link in my first post of this thread.

Platform dynamic doors

 
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The youtube link in my first post of this thread.

Platform dynamic doors

That's only needed on systems that intermix rolling stock of differing door configurations. We don't have that anymore with all our lines either having uniform per-line fleets or having uniform-fleet procurements ongoing, and we won't have that going forward with door configurations unlikely to change in future orders since the current modern fleets will be at pretty much the most-accessible ideals for that.
 

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