By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
All metro stations in Seoul will have platform screen doors by the end of the year, Seoul City said Tuesday.
So far, the doors have been installed at 92 stations in total, but installations at the remaining 173 stations have been delayed for budgetary reasons.
The city expects the doors to cause a decrease in the number of people committing suicide by jumping in front of the train and to make underground air cleaner.
``We received the approval to use a supplementary budget from the National Assembly last month,'' the city said in a statement. ``The installations at all Seoul subway stations will be completed by the end of the year, a year earlier than the original target of December 2010.''
According to Seoul Metro, 272 people fell on the subway tracks in the capital between January 2004 and August 2008 ― 172 bekillng killed after being hit by a train. Of them, 239 were attempts at suicide, while the others were accidents.
The Ministry of Environment confirmed last year that the amount of fine dust found in platform air was twice as much as the average in other above-ground public facilities.
pss@koreatimes.co.kr
