Update 11:26 p.m.: A long time ago, all the way back in August of 2005, the MTA unveiled plans to install security cameras in subway stations as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The cameras were supposed to be installed and fully operation within three years which would put this project’s completion date in, oh, about six weeks.
Well, as astute riders may have noticed by now, the vast majority of subway stations do not have cameras and those that do had them long before 2005. While the MTA promised a pilot program for cameras in subway cars a few months ago, New York City is a long way away from seeing and being seen by surveillance cameras in the subway stations.
Today, the news got a little worse — or better, if you feel these cameras are an intrusion of privacy — when the MTA conceded that the project still has a steep mountain to climb. And according to a few anonymous agency officials, the original timeline for this project was overly ambitions. Who woulda guessed?
William Neuman has the story:
Aging fiber-optic cable in Brooklyn and Queens has become the latest obstacle to a planned high-tech system of surveillance cameras meant to safeguard the subway and commuter railroads, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials…
On Wednesday, the authority’s board authorized the replacement of 84,000 feet of old fiber-optic cable, which was installed in the late 1980s. The replacement will cost $5 million and is being done as part of a separate project to build out the subway’s data network.
According to a board document, tests on the cable showed that it had “many broken fibers unsuitable to carry the high bandwidth required” to transmit large amounts of data, which hindered the surveillance camera project. The document did not say how long it would take to replace the cable.
The anonymous officials conceded that the MTA’s ambitious plans may not even be realized for another two or three years. There is no longer an internal timetable however, and the MTA must first replace a fiber optics cable outside that, according to Neuman, runs along the J/Z line from Broadway Junction to Sutphin Boulevard and along the E to Union Turnpike.
So as we sit here in 2008, and it looks like our subway stations won’t have security cameras until nearly a full decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist and attacks, around six or seven years after the Madrid Metro bombing in 2004 and five or six years after the London Undergound attacks. Point fingers anyway or bemoan the presence of cameras in the stations, but no matter how you slice or dice it, that’s quite the response time.
8 comments
Cameras don’t prevent terrorism _at all_. When the perpetrators are hoping to die in the attack, it doesn’t have any deterrent effect.
This is another privacy attack, just like having NYPD cameras in the streets.
-Chris
I think you’re confusing two issues in this article. The August ’05 effort was to equip the stations with cameras, and many do have them installed now, though they are obviously behind schedule (big surprise). The pilot program for the subway cars is a more recent effort. Indeed, the fiber optic cables have nothing to do with the on-board cameras.
Thanks, Max. I’ve attempted to clear up some of that confusion with an update.
With any luck, the cameras will get axed at the next budget cut, and our privacy will remain uninfringed marginally less infringed.
I’ve seen cameras installed at several stations such as Junction Blvd and Bowling Green. Not sure if they’re hooked up or not but they’re around.
Chris, I completely agree.
Nowadays those security cams would more likely scare off stabbers, flashers, muggers, purse snatchers, rapists, & gangs on the prowl than terrorists. Six out of seven ain’t bad.
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