By Forum Staff
Governor Kathy Hochul, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday unveiled a new public information campaign against subway surfing in partnership with the City Police Department, City Public Schools, and the City Department of Youth & Community Development.
The new campaign centers around and is designed and spoken by New York City teenagers – putting the youth voice front and center in a peer-to-peer effort to deter this dangerous behavior among young people.
The NYPD is contributing to the campaign by deploying officers to stations on outdoor elevated lines and by conducting home visits with youths who have been observed riding outside of trains.
In 2023, there have been five fatalities due to suspected subway surfing, compared to five total fatalities between 2018 and 2022. The MTA has documented over 450 instances of people riding outside of trains between January and June in 2023.
The campaign announcement was made outside the 33 St–Rawson St 7 line subway station – the site of a tragic incident on Thursday, June 29, in which a 14-year-old from Brooklyn died after falling while attempting to ride on top a 7 train. The 7 line experiences the most subway surfing incidents in the transit system.
MTA data shows that dangerous riding outside of subway trains occurs predominantly in the afternoons during warmer months when school is in session, indicating that it has essentially become a dangerous form of after-school activity. In anticipation of an uptick in incidents in September upon the start of the new school year, Hochul, Adams, the MTA and City partners on Tuesday launched a multi-layered campaign, “Subway Surfing Kills – Ride Inside, Stay Alive,” across various communication platforms, to include public service announcements in stations recorded by students; digital signage across stations; student-created graphics and animations; posters and banners across stations and distributed in schools; physical palm cards distributed at schools and in stations; school swag including planners, pens and pencils, notepads and sticky notes; social media posts across platforms including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube in the form of posts, reels/shorts and influencer collaborations; distribution of new student MetroCards accompanied by a “Ride Inside, Stay Alive” palm card, and anti-surfing messages on the back of some MetroCards for sale in station MetroCard vending machines.
The MTA partnered with NYC Public Schools and DYCD to identify students from schools across the city who created the new campaign. Students from the High School of Art & Design in Manhattan created graphics, animations and artwork that will be seen throughout the subway system and on social media.
A group of middle school and high school students from the Academy of American Studies in Long Island City, the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, IS 318 in Brooklyn, and DYCD summer programs went to MTA headquarters last month to record announcements explaining the dangers of riding outside of trains. Eight announcements, recorded in both English and Spanish, will be heard throughout the transit system beginning this week.
Because teenagers frequently post videos of themselves surfing to social media, the MTA has been asking that social media companies including Meta, Google and TikTok reduce access to these videos. Since this past spring the social media companies have removed more than 3,000 videos and photos showing subway surfing. Those companies also are making space on their platforms available to help distribute the new messaging campaign.
