Safety barriers on railway-station platforms in China are back in the public consciousness after a suicide earlier this week in front of hundreds of onlookers. The issues? Why are they not now standard equipment at all stations? Is it the cost?
本周早些时候，在数百名旁观者面前发生一起自杀事件后，中国火车站站台上的安全屏障重新回到了公众的意识中。问题？为什么它们现在不是所有车站的标准设备？是成本吗？
On 4 September, a man committed suicide by jumping from the platform at Tengzhou East Station in Shandong Province as a train entered the station. Not only did he pay the price with his life, but many trains were subject to delay, while passengers who witnessed the incident were left psychologically traumatised.
9月4日，山东滕州东站列车进站时，一名男子跳站自杀。他不仅为此付出了生命的代价，很多列车都晚点了，目击事件的乘客也受到了心理创伤。
The resulting public discussion is as to whether safety barriers should be near-universally installed at railway stations, as is common in Japan for example.
由此产生的公众讨论是，是否应该在火车站普遍安装安全屏障，例如在日本很常见。
Many stations in China have already taken the initiative. As the Yangtze Evening News reports, the cities of Zigong, in Sichuan province; and Kunming in Yunnan, have done so, as have many in more northern Henan Province. There, the barriers are installed along platforms at Zhengzhou East Station, Anyang East Station, Lankao South Station, Kaifeng North Station and Songcheng Road Station, among others.
国内不少电视台已经采取了主动行动。 据《扬子晚报》报道，四川省自贡市；和云南省昆明市以及河南省北部的许多省份都已经这样做了。其中，郑州东站、安阳东站、兰考南站、开封北站、宋城路站等站台均安装了护栏。
Platform-safety barriers come in various forms, but all share the characteristic that they are raised and lowered, as opposed to barriers on metro systems, which are doors aligned with the point at which trains stop. This cannot be done with traditional railway trains on account of varying train lengths, door positioning and the fact that they don’t always stop at the right place.
站台安全屏障有多种形式，但都有一个共同的特点，即它们可以升高和降低，这与地铁系统的屏障不同，地铁系统的屏障是与火车停靠点对齐的门。由于列车长度、车门位置各不相同，而且它们并不总是停在正确的位置，因此传统铁路列车无法做到这一点。
At Kaifeng North, where barriers have been in operation for over 2 years, they take the form of ribbons, whereas closer to home in Jiangsu, platform-safety barriers installed recently at Suzhou Station comprise long glass panels.
在开封北，护栏已投入运行两年多，护栏采用丝带形式，而在离江苏较近的地方，最近在苏州站安装的站台安全护栏由长玻璃板组成。
Looking to the experience of our neighbour to the east, suicides at stations in Japan was a major problem for many years. There, media discovered that among all railway lines in the country, between 2005 and 2014 only two had a zero-suicide rate. All stations on these two lines have platform-safety barriers.
看看我们东方邻国的经验，日本车站自杀多年来一直是一个主要问题。媒体发现，2005年至2014年间，全国所有铁路线中，只有两条铁路线自杀率为零。这两条线路上的所有车站均设有站台安全屏障。
But they come at a financial cost too. Back in China at Zhengzhou East, barriers installed to date have cost an average of almost ¥270,000 per platform. At big stations, several million renminbi shall need to be spent to achieve complete platform-wide coverage.
但它们也付出了经济代价。回到中国的郑州东站，迄今为止安装的路障平均每个平台花费近 27 万日元。在大站，要实现全平台全覆盖，需要花费数百万元。
Concerns away from cost are also pointed at the glass type of safety barrier. With trains passing through stations at very high speeds in close proximity to the barriers, many feel the integrity of the glass shall be degraded over time, potentially causing more injuries than they were designed to prevent.
除了成本之外的担忧也集中在玻璃类型的安全屏障上。随着火车以非常高的速度通过靠近障碍物的车站，许多人认为玻璃的完整性会随着时间的推移而退化，可能会造成比其设计目的更多的伤害。
