The subway gates nicknamed iron maidens (due to their resemblance to medieval torture devices) would become torture devices in emergencies because they would prevent passengers from evacuating quickly, city officials charged yesterday.

At a City Council hearing, council members demanded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority remove the floor-to-ceiling revolving gates that allow only one person to exit at a time. While the gates are the cheapest way to prevent turnstile jumping, council members warned that they could cost lives if riders needed to evacuate.

“Stopping fare beating has a huge impact on crime,” the chairman of the Public Safety Committee, Peter Vallone, said. “You’re using the most dangerous method in the history of transportation systems in civilized society to do that, when there are other ways.” He suggested installing cameras above turnstiles or keeping token booths staffed full time.

Mr. Vallone said the gates “violated every fire code since people got together in civilized society.”

The MTA began replacing regular turnstiles with the High Entrance/Exit Turnstiles about a decade ago. Today, there are more than 500 of the turnstiles — whose metal spikes earned them the nickname iron maidens — throughout the subway system. The older, black gates that act only as exits have been around for about 70 years.

Despite concerns, MTA officials said yesterday they plan to move ahead with their plans to install 66 more iron maidens in 15 stations over the next year and a half.

The recent addition of panic bars on emergency exits that allow a large number of passengers to exit at once means there is no reason to remove the iron maidens, a New York City Transit spokesman, Charles Seaton, said.

Governor Spitzer’s new deputy secretary for public security, Michael Balboni, has also called the HEETs a major subway safety concern.

Fire and police department officials also said yesterday they needed improved communication with transit security headquarters.

Last August, a breakdown in communication between the agencies led to a 20-minute delay in evacuating 4,000 passengers from a subway stuck on the Manhattan Bridge because of a track fire.

A firefighter called to the scene had begun evacuating the car before the Rail Control Center had decided how to deal with the situation, a high-ranking transit authority official disclosed yesterday.