NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The MTA’s subway information network, which currently carries information to more than 100 stations, is overbudget, not completely finished, and already technologically obsolete.
The MTA hasn’t finished a new subway communications network – and it’s already out of date.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority started the $370 million fiberoptic, information-carrying network in 2000 and expects to finish it this year.
But technological advances and hundreds of budget-busting, time-consuming changes have pushed the project $76 million overbudget.
“Due to technology evolution and other factors, many components in this network are at or nearing their end of life,” an MTA document from October says.
In the document, a request for information, the agency asked technology companies for advice on designing a “next-generation” communications network and fixing shortcomings with the existing one, which is up and running in much of the subway system.
The MTA on Tuesday stressed the existing network – called ATM/SONET and designed by Siemens Transit Technologies – is functioning and carrying beneficial data, like next-train arrival times, at more than 100 stations.
Still, City Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), chairman of the Council’s Transportation Committee, said that “the MTA needs to get its capital house in order …
“Delays don’t just add millions of dollars to projects. They also lead to products that are obsolete even before anyone hits the ‘on’ switch. That’s unacceptable.”
MTA documents say existing problems include:
* Some of the equipment no longer is being made, which could make it more difficult and costly to maintain or upgrade.
* The network may not have enough capacity for remote viewing of the growing amount of video from surveillance cameras.
“This will put a large strain on [NYC Transit’s] current network, which was not originally designed to support the video capacity needs,” the October document states.
The first phase of the communications system was to be finished in November 2006, at a cost of $112 million. It went intoeffect on the numbered lineslast August at a final cost of $148 million – four years late and $36 million overbudget, documents say.
The second phase of the project, for the lettered lines, began in 2004 and is slated for completion this year at a cost of $223 million, about $40 million higher than expected.
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