Trespassing on metro tracks

In metro traffic, the most common threat to safety is trespassing on the tracks. Common reasons for trespassing on the tracks is often taking a shortcut or the retrieval of an object that has fallen on the tracks. Station areas do not contain technical solutions that prevent people from trespassing on the tracks. Unrestricted access to the tracks also makes vandalism possible.
The Metro organisation has tried to manage the problem through monitoring. However, based on the investigation, this is not sufficient to prevent trespassing on the tracks.

Metropolitan Area Transport Ltd investigate solutions that improve the efficiency of monitoring and prevent unauthorised access to the track area.

Platform doors preventing access to the track have been tested at Helsinki metro stations. However, they were dismantled at the end of the automatic metro project. Similar solutions are in use at metro stations in several cities. Solutions based on different technologies, such as light curtains, have also been introduced in recent years.

According to Metropolitan Area Transport Ltd, the metro environment is covered by relatively extensive camera surveillance, but it does not currently have much analytics or automation that would support human surveillance. In order to implement reactive surveillance, Metropolitan Area Transport Ltd has decided to carry out a systematic pilot to supervise the track areas around metro stations using modern camera surveillance technologies and to use it as a basis for preparing a statement on requirements for making decisions on more extensive investments. So far, some control point-based technical pilots have been carried out, but the wider project has not progressed.
The future need for arrangements to prevent access to the track area, i.e. mainly platform doors, will be assessed after the metro train control has first been renewed to the GoA2 level in the ongoing METKA project. Potential transition to a higher GoA3 or GoA4 level of automation will be considered separately. Platform doors are seen as a realistic option to consider only in the systems featuring a higher level of automation.