Signal technology rolling out on New York’s subways is too far behind the curve, Gov. Cuomo gripes.
“There’s better technology out there” than the communications-based train control system at the center of NYC Transit President Andy Byford’s plan to upgrade the subway, Cuomo said Thursday to a room of Manhattan big-wigs at an Association for a Better New York lunch.
Cuomo wants the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to more aggressively pursue ultra-wideband technology, a higher-tech communications-based train control system that he hopes is more efficient and cheaper to install.
The new tech has been tested on the subway over the past year, and the state’s new budget requires the MTA to look into its feasibility.
Lower-tech versions of communications-based train control are already installed on the L and No. 7 subway lines. It gives dispatchers more precise locations of trains than the subways’ current system, and could even allow trains to run automatically, without train operators.
The technology — transit officials refer to it by its initials, CBTC — is a big improvement from the century-old signaling system that limits subway operations.
Cuomo wants to go all-in on the even newer, ultra-wideband tech.
“Vendors are installing technology they designed in the ’80s,” said Cuomo. “If you can figure out how a car can fly… you have to be able to have technology where on train can tell you where the other train is.”
But MTA officials — including NYC Transit president Andy Byford — are more cautious.
“CBTC is a proven, mature product,” Byford said Wednesday. “If ultra-wideband proves to be what we think it is and it’s complimentary to CBTC, we can do this resignaling even more quickly.”
“Our issue with CBTC is that essentially it’s a global duopoly,” said MTA Vice Chairman Fernando Ferrer. “We’ve got to find a way to do it better, to do it faster. Ultra-wideband shows promise.”
There is only one firm that has successfully tested an ultra-wideband option on the subway: Illinois-based Metrom Rail, which was awarded $250,000 by the MTA last year for winning the agency’s Genius Transit Challenge.
“This system can be installed in at least 50% less cost than a traditional CBTC system,” said a source familiar with the company’s technology. “It can improve headway allowing trains to move closer together than traditional systems with the highest degree of safety and reliability.”
