New York (AP) – Ka’von Wooden loved the trains. The 15 -year -old man had an encyclopedic knowledge of the New York metro system and dreamed of becoming a train operator.
Instead, one morning in December in 2022, Ka’von died after climbing on the roof of a J movement in Brooklyn, then came across the tracks while she was heading for the Williamsburg bridge.
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He is one of the more than a dozen New Yorkers, many young boys, who were killed or seriously injured after falling excessive trains. The other risks include being crushed between the train and the walls of the tunnel and being electrocuted by high voltage metro routes. “Subway Surfing” dates back a century, but it was powered by social media.
Two girls were dead on Saturday
Early Saturday morning, New York police found two dead girls – aged 12 and 13 – in what was apparently a metro surf game that became mortal, the authorities said. The president of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Demetrius Crichlow, said in a statement that “putting itself at the top of a metro car” Surf ” – is suicide”.
The authorities have attempted to solve the problem of public awareness campaigns – including a news with the award -winning rapper at the Grammy Award Cardi B – and in deployment of drones to catch strong feelings in the act. But for some, a more fundamental question is not addressed: why are children like Ka’von capable of climbing on metro cars in the first place?
“When Ka’von died … literally two weeks later, another child died. And another. It makes no sense,” his mother told, Y’Vonda Maxwell, told the Associated Press, saying that the officials of transits and the police had not done enough. “Why wouldn’t my child have been the end?”
MTA says he is studying the problem
Making trains more difficult to climb and trains of trains that are easier to detect with cameras and sensors, could be part of the solution, according to some experts. The MTA, which exploits the metro system, said it was studying the problem. But he has not yet pointed out a new wide deployment of technology or physical barriers that could make people more difficult to go up to trains.
In June, Crichlow told a press conference to present a new public awareness campaign that the MTA experienced pieces of circular rubber tubes designed to prevent a person from being able to climb between two cars at the top of a train.
He was piloted between two cars to ensure that she would integrate in the tight spacing of tunnels and that he would not decompose or would not harm services or riders, he said.
“So far, the equipment seems to be holding up,” he said.
Six deaths last year after the metro surfing
Six people died on metro trains in the city last year, against five in 2023.
Tyesha Elcock, the MTA worker who exploited the train that Ka’von led the day of his death, is one of those who think that the more should be done to prevent deaths.
The first sign of problem that day was when the train brake on the train started, she said.
Elcock discovered Ka’von’s body between the seventh and eighth train cars. A group of sad teenagers on the train clearly indicated what had happened. “Have you all left your friend there?” she asked them.
Elcock said that another operator traveling in the opposite direction had seen Ka’von on the roof of the train and reported it by Radio. Due to the unequal radio service, she said, she did not get the warning.
But she thinks that a even simpler solution could have saved Ka’von’s life: locking the doors at the ends of metro cars. This would reduce access to the narrow gaps between train cars where metro surfers use handles to climb the roof.
“Locate it when we are in service so that people cannot climb and be at the top of the train,” said Elcock.
MTA leaders said they were looking for possible means to prevent metro surfing, including engineering solutions, but the agency refused to put one of its safety experts available to an interview.
In 2023, Richard Davey, then the MTA buses and metros chief, said that managers “weighed” the door locking option between cars – which is now only done in a handful of trains from the 1980s. But he said that the locking doors “bring its own risks”. Some New Yorkers have complained that the locking of passages between train cars could prevent them from escaping in another part of the train in an emergency.
By questioning the members and journalists of the municipal council last year, MTA officials excluded certain other physical interventions, in particular by creating more obstacles to prevent access to the tracks, or by putting blankets on the gaps between train cars to prevent potential surfers from climbing.
“Listen, you must be able to work above a train car,” said Janno Lieber, CEO of MTA, at a press conference, adding that you cannot “cover it with barbed wire”.
MTA asks social media companies to help stop the trend
The MTA asked the social media companies to remove the glamor videos from metro surfing and reported in June that in 2025, more than 1,800 videos had been deleted.
It is also promoted public service announcements by saying to people to “ride inside, to stay alive”, in voices of local teenagers and, with city schools, published a campaign on the theme of comics last summer designed to show the dangers of metro surfing and the impact on loved ones.
More than 300,000 New York schoolchildren use the metro to go to school and come back every day.
The NYPD indicated that arrests of alleged metro surfers had increased to 229 last year, against 135 the previous year. Most were boys, with an average age of about 14 years, according to the police. The youngest was 9 years old.
Branislav Dimitrijevic, engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said that the renovation of trains to prevent access to the roof would be expensive.
“There are so many stories in transportation where things can be corrected, but they cost a lot of money. And then you ask the public:” Are you ready to (pay) to resolve us this problem? But your taxes would increase enormously. “And people say” no, “said Dimitrijevic.
Dimitrijevic suggested that MTA could be able to install cameras and use artificial intelligence to detect cyclists trying to climb a train. Andrew Albert, a non -voting member of the MTA board of directors, said that he had questioned the agency about the plausibility of physical sensors but had not received an answer.
The NYPD has patrolled popular metro surf routes with field response teams and drones, reporting in July that it had used them to perform 200 rescues, mainly adolescents. But missions cannot be everywhere at the same time. They also say that they make home visits to the houses of metro surfers they have identified.
Trains in some other cities, such as Hong Kong and Dubai, are not easily climbed. They have rationalized bodies, lacking outdoors and do not open between cars.
Some rail systems have used extreme tactics to prevent people from getting on trains. In Indonesia, railway officials have once installed suspended metal plagues to try to dissuade passengers from driving at the top of train cars to avoid overcrowding. They also tried to spray runners with red paint and hit them with brooms.
The MTA has bought some new metro cars which do not have the outdoor gaps operated by metro surfers, but they represent only a ribbon of the number currently in service, and will not be deployed on popular lines to surf any time.
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An underposition of this story was corrected to show that there were six deaths last year, not this year.
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The journalist of Associated Press Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
