HI-TECH HOPES
MTA tests new system to speed subway service
THE MTA has started top-secret testing of technology that could make subways run more efficiently, the Daily News has learned.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority hopes the technology — known as ultra-wideband radio — will be the fix for their signal woes, transit officials told The News.
The technology, in its early proof-of-concept phase, could let the MTA pinpoint trains’ locations, allowing them to run closer together and boosting service. It could even let riders use their cell phones inside subway tunnels between stations.
The radio technology would accelerate the MTA’s efforts to modernize its century-old, failure-prone signal system — an endeavor that has so far proved costly, time-consuming and disruptive to riders.
“It cost twice as much and took twice as long because it required fixing an antiquated (signal) system and then putting it out of operation,” said Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association. “The sooner and faster and cheaper it could be done, the better.”
Transit workers this month installed two wireless devices for ultra-wideband radio along the F and G lines on Brooklyn’s Culver line test track, which runs between the north end of the Fourth Ave.-Ninth St. station and the south end of the Church Ave. station.
According to transit officials, agency brass including MTA President Patrick Foye and Acting NYC Transit President Phil Eng are involved with the testing. Foye was at one test run on Brooklyn’s Culver line on Dec. 15, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to transit sources.
“Our experiment with ultrawideband, if successful, will allow the MTA to skip 20th century technology with a 21st century solution,” MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said in a statement to The News. “I’m highly optimistic about the possibilities.”
The MTA is testing the new technology while seeking a faster way to bring the subway’s aging “fixed-block” signaling system into the modern era.
Only the L line uses communications-based train control technology and the MTA has been slow to add it elsewhere. It would take the agency at least 50 years and $20 billion to bring it to every line, according to one estimate from the Regional Plan Association.
This month, MTA officials announced the agency was blowing its end-of-year deadline to get the computerized signaling system running on the No. 7 line. It’ll now be ready by June.
Modernizing the signal system is one of three categories in Gov. Cuomo’s “Genius” transit challenge, where each winning idea comes with a $1 million prize.
MTA officials decided to dust off an old idea of using ultra-wideband radio as early as June, after Lhota took over as chairman and brought in new executives.
The value of tapping into ultra-wideband radio technology is its ability to transmit large amounts of data, without requiring a lot of power, according to Susan Beardslee, senior analyst with ABI Research, a marketforesight advisory firm. The technology has been approved for commercial use since 2002, and it has military and medical applications, she said.
“The systems can manage a complex flow of information, quickly, consistently and with precision,” she said. “Speed, location and obstacle-detection could be three major usages within rail transport.”