At first glance, MARTA's new electronic train station gates seem more than up to the task of preventing fare evasion.
The gates stand nearly 6 feet tall and are made of stainless steel and a super-hard, virtually unbreakable form of plastic. It's a formidable barrier — especially compared with the creaky, thigh-high turnstiles they are replacing that were a breeze to hop over.
There's only one problem: The gates stop about 15 inches shy of the ground, making it far too easy for those seeking a free ride to scoot underneath, some MARTA board members say.
Did anyone actually take a look at the hardware before it was installed? No problem, you may think, just replace the doors with ones that are longer thereby reducing the gap. Well...
It might be difficult to revamp the gates to eliminate or reduce the gap, Thoms said, noting that the design limits how long the arms can be.
"We went as low as we possibly could with these gates," she said.
Looking at the picture of the gate included on the article page, the gap does appear to be big enough to crawl under, but you're really going to have to *crawl*, going flat on your belly or your back. So I will say that the new gates will probably reduce fare evasion noticeably. Also, upon further examination, it looks like it would not be a problem to mount some sort of extension to the bottom of the gate doors to cover most of the gap.
