Tick-tock on letter line clocks

THERE’S A LIGHT at the end of the tunnel for lettered-line subway riders who don’t know when their train is coming.

The MTA is drafting a plan to put countdown clocks in letter line stations where riders can currently only guess how long they’ll have to wait for a ride.

For more than two years, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been testing different technological options that would be less costly than the countdown systems it installed on the numbered lines.

“Countdown clocks have been a major success on the [numbered lines],” a transit source said. “Everybody likes them. Something needs to happen on the [lettered lines].”

NYC Transit division staff are preparing a report detailing how the agency intends to give train arrival information to riders and improved train tracking capabilities to the rail control center “in some level, shape or form” for lettered lines, NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast said.

A complete rollout would take years, Prendergast said, but MTA brass want progress “sooner rather than later,” the source said.

The MTA spent hundreds of millions of dollars to overhaul the signals and install countdown clocks over the last several years at 150 numbered lines stations. Countdown clocks first appeared on the L line in 2007 as part of a separate project.