What to Know
- It was the second similar issue in less than a week for a rush hour NJ Transit train
- In the first case, the open door was in the vestibule area; in the second, a missing safety bar created a wide gap between cars
- NJ Transit said the safety bar appeared to have been tampered with, and its investigation is ongoing
A New Jersey Transit train thundered along the tracks with a missing safety bar, the second similar issue in less than a week, video from a rider shows.
Rider Gabriel Gall said he was on the 6:32 p.m. Northeast Corridor train from Newark Penn Station to Trenton Monday when he noticed the gap between cars. He took an 8-second video, which clearly shows the train barreling along at a high rate of speed between stops, a glaring opening between Gall's car and the next.
Gall tweeted the rush hour train was "standing room only" at the time and asked NJ Transit, "Can you tell me why there is no door here?"
NJ Transit quickly responded via Twitter, asking Gall for information on his car number and other details. A follow-up tweet from NJ Transit said the information had been "passed along to our team for investigation."
NJ Transit later told NBC 4 New York that there should have been a safety bar in place; it said someone appeared to have tampered with the bar, and its investigation is ongoing.
It was the second such ride in six days for rush hour commuters on the high-trafficked Northeast Corridor line. Last Tuesday, May 16, rider Jeffrey Spitery captured video of his train cruising along with a door ajar, this one in the vestibule, not between cars as was the case with Gall's trip.
Spitery's video showed "a door wide open with people standing next to it while we were thundering down the track," he tweeted at the time. Passengers were seen moving about the vestibule, the wind generated from the moving train whipping their hair. Spitery said the train cruised along for about eight stops -- roughly 30 minutes -- like that.
In Spitery's case, NJ Transit said it immediately pulled the train out of service and a thorough investigation was underway. The transit agency told NBC 4 New York that a train is not supposed to move if a door is open.
CORRECTION (May 23, 2017, 2 p.m.): An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of the missing safety. It was a bar, not a door.
