Sliding step for the disabled in the railway vehicle

Abstract

In the platform of the urban transit system, a certain gap is inevitably made between the subway vehicle and the platform, and the gap gets wider in the curved area of the platform. This gap contributes to decrease passengers' safety. Especially, it endangers children's safety. Nowadays plug-in type doors are installed in the newly designed urban transit system. It is worldwide trend to reduce the noise coming from the outer side of vehicle. But this plug-in door basically needs wider gap between door and platform and it maybe raise a serious accident. Sliding step is suggested to minimize gap and to overcome this safety problem at platform. In this paper, we presents development process for sliding step, trends of sliding step, development plan, technical description and etc. In this study, we has considered safe operation of the subway vehicle when sliding step are operated closely related to the doors, and explored the possibilities to put it into practical use.