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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City's subways — the nation's biggest mass transit network — serve more than 6 million daily riders who depend largely on a signal system that dates back to the Great Depression.
Antiquated electro-mechanics with thousands of moving parts are still critical to operations. Dispatchers still monitor most trains from 24-hour underground "towers," and they still put pencil to paper to track their progress.
That eight-decade-old system is slowly being replaced by 21st-century digital technology that allows up to twice as many trains to safely travel closer together. But there's a big caveat: It could take at least 20 years for the city's 700 miles of tracks to be fully computerized.
Of the subway system's almost two dozen major lines, just one, the L linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, currently operates on new, computerized, automated signals. And the modernization of the No. 7 line from Manhattan to Queens has begun, to be completed by 2017.
So, for at least the foreseeable future, New York subway riders can expect the snags, weekend shutdowns and overcrowding they have become accustomed to.
"We're at the physical limits of what the original technology can carry," acknowledges Adam Lisberg, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the New York City Transit's subways.
Read more here. (AP)
Note that they are upgrading not because of safety, but because of capacity.
Antiquated electro-mechanics with thousands of moving parts are still critical to operations. Dispatchers still monitor most trains from 24-hour underground "towers," and they still put pencil to paper to track their progress.
That eight-decade-old system is slowly being replaced by 21st-century digital technology that allows up to twice as many trains to safely travel closer together. But there's a big caveat: It could take at least 20 years for the city's 700 miles of tracks to be fully computerized.
Of the subway system's almost two dozen major lines, just one, the L linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, currently operates on new, computerized, automated signals. And the modernization of the No. 7 line from Manhattan to Queens has begun, to be completed by 2017.
So, for at least the foreseeable future, New York subway riders can expect the snags, weekend shutdowns and overcrowding they have become accustomed to.
"We're at the physical limits of what the original technology can carry," acknowledges Adam Lisberg, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the New York City Transit's subways.
Read more here. (AP)
Note that they are upgrading not because of safety, but because of capacity.
