This little fella isn't getting electrocuted anytime soon. (Photo by flickr user Ludovic Burtron)
In my idle moments while waiting for a subway, I’ll often scan the tracks looking for some four-legged friends. I’ll watch as rats, ubiquitous everywhere underground in New York, scurry along the subway tracks looking for food. They dart over tracks and duck under the third rail, sometimes hopping atop it, sometimes scampering beneath. Even as the vibrations from approaching trains cause them to dart away, they avoid electrocution. It is a marvel of the subway ecosystem, but how do they do it?
Well, in this week’s FYI column in The Times, Michael Pollak has your answer:
They don’t form a grounding connection between the third rail and the track bed, transit officials said. “In order to be electrocuted you need to complete a circuit, which means you need to touch the third rail and the ground,” said John Campbell Jr., assistant chief electrical officer for New York City Transit. “It’s the same reason birds can sit on live uninsulated electric lines and not get electrocuted: there is no path for the current to flow.”
If a rat, bored with jumping, were unwise enough to reach up and touch the live part of the 600-volt third rail while keeping its other paws on the ground, it would be toast. But rats don’t do that. In most cases, either their bodies are not long enough to form a grounding connection, or their travels do not give them any reason to climb that way.
Pollak also spoke with a mammalogy expert at the American Museum of Natural History who doubts rodents’ needs to jump up on the third rail in the first place. After all, they are nimble enough to just go under. So while electrocution won’t solve the subway rat problem, perhaps, then, the MTA should just pick up the trash instead.
11 comments
Rats have been living in the NYC subway for over a hundred years now, and are able to turnover a new generation in under a year. They likely are pretty well adapted to the day-to-day hazards of the system.
You know, if you stand on top of the wooden or sometimes plastic covering, there’s no danger from the third rail. You could have one foot on the ground too. The charged part of the rail is *underneath* that covering. You’d have to come up against it sideways or from below to complete the circuit.
What if a person were to touch the 3rd rail with the rubber sole of their shoe with one foot while keeping the other foot on the ground? Would the juice flow or not?
Probably. Even though rubber is an insulator, I doubt the rubber in the shoe can prevent the flow of 600 (?) volts of electricity.
It would definitely flow. Rubber isn’t a great insulator for High Voltage current; cars routinely get struck by lightning.
Rubber impedes the flow of electricity to the ground but not enough to prevent you from getting electrocuted.
MTA track workers have boots with material that (it says it does) provides protection from 600+ volts. I got a pair, they’re pretty damn rough, I can’t tell what the material is, but they just have a generic Gore-Tex label on them and cyan-green soles. Also a pretty nice steel toe. I’m sure they’re available for purchase, or at least some version of them. I have a family member who works for electrical maintenance department.
So basically, the answer is to just wait until the rats get big enough to touch the third rail and the ground at the same time. The way the MTA has been leaving piles of garbage in the corners of stations, that shouldn’t take very long…
Someone needs to market a peanut butter flavored strip for the underside of the third rail. Tongue on 600 volts sounds positively sizzling.
Peanut Rail?
The underside of the third rail is safe. The top part is where the electricity flows; that’s why there’s an extra rail above it covering it – it’s for safety in case people fall down.
Why do people complain about rats in the subway and then feed pigeons in the park?