MTA Technology

Late last summer, before Jay Walder took the reins at the MTA, I wrote a long piece about how the transit authority was struggling to cope in an age of open information. The MTA, I claimed, had overstepped its legal rights in a pair of showdowns with iPhone app developers who were exploiting schedule data for the benefit of commuters, and instead of fighting with these programmers and entrepreneurs, I believed the MTA should be working with them to make more transit information available.

When Walder came in and the MTA unveiled its new website, it was clear that the agency was on the verge of an information revolution. With the new site design came mounds of publicly-available transit data that developers coud use as they see fit. “We need to get out of our own way and instead get out in front of the data sharing revolution,” Walder said at the time. “By making access to our data directly from our website, we are encouraging the developer community to do the work we can’t to create apps that benefit our customers at no cost to the MTA.”

Now, the agency is set to work with these developers to get a better sense of about the future of open transportation data. The MTA and Google will be hosting an Unconference for Developers on May 5 at Google headquarters in Chelsea. Anil Dash will host the event, and it will include a panel discussion, breakout sessions and, reportedly, the release of more transit data. Panelist speakers will include Walder, Derek Gottfrid of The New York Times, Bernhard Seefled from Google Maps and Nick Grossman from OpenPlans.

For more on the MTA’s push for open data, check out this amNew York piece, and to register for the conference, follow these directions on the MTA’s site. I’m amidst my finals this semester right now, but I’ll try to have a report from the conference late next week. This is a very positive step forward for the MTA, and I’m looking forward to the results of this unconference.

For the better part of two years, new LCD displays have set wrapped and unused at Brooklyn stations along the IRT lines. At Bergen St. and at Grand Army Plaza, at Eastern Parkway and at Kingston Ave., these countdown clocks have been idle, a reminder of promises of MTA technology to come.

Today, Transit announced that four stations along the 2 and 3 line in Brooklyn are now enjoying the countdown clocks. The PA/CIS system has been activated at Bergen St. (above), Eastern Parkway-Brooklyn Museum, Nostrand Ave. and Kingston Ave. with more stations to enjoy countdown clocks in Kings County over the next few months.

The Public Address Customer Information Screens are a part of a project nearly ten years in the making. It was originally funded under the 2000-2004 capital plan, and the A Division rollout won’t be completed until the spring of 2011. In addition to arrival information, the screens can also allow Transit to provide important audio and visual messages to customers in the event of an emergency. All information originates from Transit’s Rail Control Center.

Since the MTA announced a 2011 completion date for the project in October, we’ve seen the clocks debut along the 6 as the rollout has continued incrementally. Soon, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s IRT stops will enjoy the necessity of late-20th Century technology as well. One day, peering into the tunnel to look for a train will be the wave of the transportation past.

Photo via Twitpic and courtesy of New York City Transit.

After years of planning, the MTA has taken another step forward in its quest to bring wireless Internet access to hundreds of thousands of daily commuters who use the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North. On Friday afternoon, the agency published a request for proposals (PDF) asking for wireless carriers to submit their plans for installing and operating a wifi system along the commuter rail lines. This move comes slightly over seven months after the MTA issued an RFEI for the project, but despite, according to The Post, looking to get a network off the ground before the end of the year, the MTA faces some high hurdles yet.

The RFP itself is fairly straightforward. The MTA is looking for a company to install and manage a wifi network that would reach all stations and trains that run along the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road routes. Additionally, the authority is requesting plans to wire Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal as well. The network must also coexist peacefully with the MTA’s own radio-based operations and with Amtrak’s wireless access points as well. It must be able to support the bandwidth demands of every person who wants to use it, and it must also come with a guarantee of on-time installation and service activation.

If those demands — fairly typical in an RFP — weren’t enough, the MTA has requested that the network be installed at no cost at all to the cash-strapped authority. Considering that the MTA is allowing potential providers to determine whether or not they would charge for the service, by foisting installation costs onto the provider, the MTA is nearly guaranteeing that wireless service will not be free. Meanwhile, as Wi-Fi Net News points out, this proposal comes with a host of other problems. Glenn Fleishman, who doesn’t expect the MTA to receive a single response to this RFP, writes:

The MTA wants a service provider who would operate a network to bear all the expense of installation and operation (including railroad labor costs for same), provide 24×7 customer support, and uninterrupted service. But the proposal is pretty muddled. While digital advertising (changeable signs on board trains and at stations) should be part of a bidder’s thinking to minimize the cost in installing such systems, there’s no spec for those systems. A bidder can build a bid partly around offering such services. The MTA also likes bids in which the authority shares in revenue.

I don’t see how this could fly. No sensible firm would propose taking on all this expense without any assurance of revenue beyond the public Wi-Fi side of the system. Despite the large number of passengers, many of those most likely to pay already have 3G service on smartphones or through laptop cards. There’s no operational services component, and that should be the baseline for any new rail RFP of the last five years…The system described would likely cost many tens of millions of dollars to build to the specifications that the MTA is requiring, without any substantial potential to reclaim that as revenue.

The MTA expects all proposals in by close-of-business on May 17, but as Fleishman does, I too have a hard believing a reliable company will step up to the plate. The RFP discusses the numerous infrastructure issues surrounding installation, and if the MTA wants uninterrupted service from New York to Montauk or the far reaches of Orange and Rockland Counties, these plans simply seem untenable. “Because of the complexity of the system, including overhead catenary electrical systems, buried lines, protected watershed and River view sheds, new WiFi infrastructure/towers along the right of way may prove to be very difficult to approve or implement,” the document says of the Metro-North territories, “so alternative approaches should be considered to make the system operable.”

I’ve long urged the MTA to explore a wireless solution for its commuter rail lines. After all, commuters could become quite efficient if they have uninterrupted high-speed Internet access during long commuters. Yet, with such high demands and high costs associated with installation, this RFP may very well be the closest the MTA comes to a wireless solution for the foreseeable future.

At 145th St., old signs are used to test a new real-time technology. (All photos courtesy of New York City Transit)

As Jay Walder settles into his role as the MTA’s newest CEO and Chairman, he has pushed the MTA to deliver more real-time train information. For an agency long criticized for its inability to adapt new or not-so-new transit technologies, Walder’s desire for more information has challenged the agency to come up with new solutions to old problems.

Lately, that focus has been on delivering better train arrival information to customers. Generally, aspects of transit technology that make commuters’ rides less stressful — such as countdown clocks — have been slow to come to New York. Yet, the agency is now engaged in a $200 million project to bring those countdown clocks to the A Division stations — that is, the city’s numbered subway stations. As these plans came to light in the fall, Transit could not commit to bringing the same technology to the lettered lines that make up the subway’s so-called B Division routes.

Recently, though, with a little innovation, the agency has debuted a poor man’s version of countdown clocks at some B Division stations. At a cost of just $20,000, six stations along the A and C lines in Washington Heights and Harlem will participate in a trial program that uses preexisting technology to bring real-time train arrival information underground. However, because the technology isn’t nearly as advanced as that deployed along the A Division lines, riders will receive less detailed information than the signs currently in place in the Bronx provide.

According to an agency press release, this makeshift system uses previously installed electronic signs in some stations and basic audio announcements at others to give customers at 181st, 175th, 168th, 163rd, 155th and 145th Sts. a few minutes’ notice of incoming trains. At 181st and 175th Sts., only audio announcements will be available while at the other four stations, screens will provide arrival information as well. Riders will now how many minutes and how many stations away the next trains are.

Unlike the A Division system which receives information via Automatic Train Supervision software, this simpler system relies upon the MTA’s old signal system’s track circuits to keep abreast of train movements. As of now, the technology can provide only information on a specific track and not specific trains as ATS can do. For instance, as the pictures demonstrate, the signs will say only that a train is arriving on the express or local tracks. For stations served by one line only, this won’t lead to much confusion, but where two or more routes share the same track, the signs will be somewhat less helpful.

“This is another part of the initiative to offer real time train arrival information to our customers, but here we are going about it in a different manner using existing infrastructure rather than waiting for the installation of an entirely new communications system,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said. “We looked at the equipment that was already in place and we have designed a pilot that responds to Jay Walder’s call to find affordable ways to make customer improvements as quickly as possible.”

Another benefit of this system is its cost. As The Daily News reported, this pilot cost just $20,000 to install, a mere fraction of the $200 million A Division price tag. A system-wide roll-out would of course cost more, but this pilot offers up substantial savings to a problem deemed intractable a few months ago.

After the jump, more pictures of the new signs at 145th St.

A snow thrower at the Howard Beach station in Queens helped keep the above-ground subway tracks cleared of snow. (Photo courtesy of NYCTSubwayScoop)

When Mother Nature decides to dump a foot of snow on New York City, travel becomes treacherous. Street corners turn to snow-blocked slushy pits; cars inch slowly down slippery streets; the subways run at slower speeds. Everyone is cold and wet, and they all just want to get to where they have to be.

For New York City Transit and the MTA, the weather has posed problems in the past. Most notable was an August 2007 storm that knocked out nearly every subway line. The subsequent panic and search for information also killed the MTA’s website for a few hours that day. Straphangers couldn’t get up-to-date information on service changes, and millions of New Yorkers were left searching for answers.

That day served as a catalyst for the MTA. Never again could the agency be left without a communications plan. Never again could the agency fail at providing up-to-date route changes and comprehensive travel information. That day, in fact, spurred the MTA into action, and as real-time Internet-based communications has exploded over the last few years with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, among others, the MTA has vastly improved its web presence.

Yesterday’s snow storm is the perfect example of the way the MTA communicates and how things have improved in just over two and a half years. As snow set in on Tuesday night, the new-look MTA website was updated to feature a prominent winter weather advisory, and the individual agencies hosted their own inclement weather plans as well. People navigating to the MTA’s site could easily and rapidly figure out how the storm was impacting the subway system.

Meanwhile, for those who dug a little deeper, the MTA and its agencies communicated via social media outlets as well. The NYCT Subway Scoop Twitter feed kept its followers up to date on storm preparedness and service changes. NYCT Bus Stop had the latest on surface transit, and MTA Insider served as a clearing house for the latest on Transit, Metro-North and LIRR. Amidst the storm, MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder took the time to record a video update on the status of MTA service.

Of course, many of these outlets have only a limited reach. To find the MTA and Transit on Twitter, one must first be on Twitter and following these accounts. The social media accounts, however, are linked from the MTA’s website, and after years of corporate silence from the MTA in light of weather disasters, this transparency and outpouring of information is welcome indeed.

Right now, the information is out there, and people who navigate to the website looking for the latest won’t find the same 404 errors we used to see. Today, the MTA can feel good about its efforts at improving. It may just be one small area of customer service, but it shows a level of care and attention to its customers that has long been lacking at the authority.

The countdown clock rollout along the MTA’s A Division stations continued this past weekend as two more stops along the 6 line in the Bronx are now enjoying the real-time train arrival message screens. Buhre Ave. and Middletown Road, two lightly used stations along the IRT Pelham Line saw their PA/CIS systems activated on Friday.

With PA/CIS at these two stations now online, Transit has activated screens at seven of the 152 stations set to enjoy the new technology by the end of the first quarter of 2011. At numerous other stations throughout the system, the screens sit wrapped but unused as Transit continues to install the underlying software and accompanying communication systems. Officials at Transit say that PA/CIS will be activated at other stations not necessarily in the Bronx or along the 6 line as soon as everything is in place.

The new iteration of the countdown clocks features automated in-system announcements as well as screens in the fare control areas so that straphangers know how long they will have to wait before swiping in. Each screen features the next two trains to arrive and can be used to display and announce information related to service delays and emergency situations. For now, Transit has activated these clocks only at low-ridership stations, and Buhre Ave. and Middletown Road — the 367th and 405th most popular of the system’s 422 stops — fit that bill. I’m looking forward to seeing these debut at some of the more higher trafficked stations throughout the city.

Anyway, the photos come to me via New York City Transit, and the one below shows the clock at Middletown Road in the fare control area. As this system slowly comes online, New Yorkers can finally enjoy transit technology that others throughout the world have experienced for over a decade.

The MTA this afternoon launched its redesigned website, and while this technological innovation drew headlines earlier today, the real story is one of data. With the new site, the MTA made its scheduling data free to the public. Developers and riders alike now have nearly instant access to the agency’s schedules, and the number of mobile applications and novel online uses of this data should expand exponentially now.

“One of my first priorities when I came back to the MTA was to improve the way we communicate with our customers,” MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder said. “We have completely overhauled the MTA’s outdated website format by putting the customer first with clear, easy-to-find information to help navigate our transit system.”

For most users, the obvious changes are user-friendly, visual and for the better. Front and center is a real-time service status information box with updates on service across the subways, buses, commuter rails and bridges and tunnels operating by the MTA. These updates will tell us if the lines are operating with “Good Service” and any unexpected “Delays,” “Planned Work,” or “Service Changes” will link users to the service advisory.

The home page is, while still a little cluttered, simply easier to navigate. The Plan & Ride box is in the upper left corner with options to use the MTA’s own TripPlanner as well. The maps are easy to find, and the links on the left side have been selected to provide those who surf with the proper guidelines. The Accountability and Transparency section has been overhauled too, and it will grow tougher for politicians to claim that the MTA is not providing information to the outside world. The MTA too has fully embraced social media and social networking.

The Straphangers Campaign praised the new site for just these innovations. “Its revamped website makes it easier for riders to plan their trips and avoid delays, for the public to keep track of what the agency is doing and for those working to develop new computer applications to make life easier for riders,” Gene Russianoff said in a statement.

Behind the scenes, though, much of the website content remains the same. It’s easier to find, for example, the Second Ave. Subway project page, but the presentations, updates and documents are still thrown together in a somewhat organized list. In a way, it reminds me of that 2008-era line about putting lipstick on a pig. Still, we shouldn’t scoff at the organization and streamlined navigation options on view in the menu bar. The new site adds structure where before there was little.

The real story though is how the MTA, with one flip of the switch, has gone from being the largest transit agency in the nation with no open data to being the largest in the nation providing free access to scheduling data. “While the new Resource Center will launch with existing service and schedule data, the intent over the longer term is to identify and make available other data about the MTA system and its operation,” the agency said in a press release. “That should lead to new and exciting apps that will provide improved information for customers.”

Walder echoed these sentiments. “We need to get out of our own way and instead get out in front of the data sharing revolution,” said Walder. “By making access to our data directly from our website, we are encouraging the developer community to do the work we can’t to create apps that benefit our customers at no cost to the MTA.”

To accomplish this release of data, the MTA and Google worked together to redefine Google’s Transit sharing parameters. The data has been released in the new General Transit Feed Specification format and should provide developers with their own playground for transit data. For more on this story, check out coverage The Civic Hacker. They run down the good of it, the areas the need work and the next steps.

“Google applauds the MTA’s efforts to open up their route and schedule data to all app developers,” Joe Hughes, lead developer of GTFS at Google, said. “Transit agencies around the world are finding that open GTFS data means more and better apps for transit riders, at no additional cost to the agency.”

For an agency long used to being the butt of punchlines concerning transit data, this new website is a true step in the right direction. As customers get used to the changes, the MTA’s developers will have to respond to feedback and criticism. Only then will we know for sure if the agency has embraced technological innovation, but today’s reveal was a good step in the right direction.

Forget CBTC subway cars with air brakes and automated announcements. Forget countdown clocks and contactless fare payment cards. This news tonight — news that the MTA will unveil a redesigned and updated website on Wednesday — is, ladies and gentlemen, the surest sign that the agency is starting to get serious about technology.

Since 2003, the MTA’s website has received nary an update. Web 2.0 with all of its interactivity and customer interaction took over the Internet, and the MTA’s site remained materially similar to its late-1990s iterations. Since I’ve started blogging in November 2006, we’ve seen the MTA’s site suffer through some growing pains. A July 2007 power outage that curtailed service along the East Side IRT and sent users to the agency’s site led to an outage, and the August 2007 flood and subsequent traffic spike knocked out the agency’s site as well.

Meanwhile, the agency’s regional and national competitors have recently unveiled new site designs. In Washington, the WMATA’s site redesign earned rave reviews, and recent NJ Transit and Port Authority site overhauls have also been well received. Still, the MTA’s site, a mish-mash of boxes and links and agencies, lumbered ever forward.

When new MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder assumed the reins in October, he knew he wanted to overhaul the agency’s site, and this week, in conjunction with his first 100 days in office, Walder will flip the switch on a new site. “We’re not cutting-edge; let’s not kid ourselves. But we’re getting closer,” Walder said to The Times today. “The idea here was not to break new ground; the point was to provide good service to our customers. Customers want to be able to find out how to get from point A to point B; they want to see right away whether or not the train or the buses they’re looking to get on are on schedule.”

The MTA’s site is popular, second only to Amtrak among the nation’s transit providers. At its peak, the agency sees 1.8 million unique users per month and over 25 million page views. Now, it will be better, and Michael Grynbaum offers a first look:

Real-time information on delays and service interruptions — difficult if not impossible to find on the current site — is the first thing that catches a viewer’s eye. A widget on the home page compiles continually updated service status for every subway, bus and commuter rail line in the region, along with nine of the bridges and tunnels operated by the authority.

The information is color coded (red for delays, green for good service) and divided into categories (subway, rail, bus) by tabs, similar to a Web browser that allows users to toggle through multiple pages. At a glance, readers get a sense of whether the F train back to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, for instance, will be smooth sailing or an underground maelstrom.

Also prominent on the new home page is a feature called “Plan & Ride,” which lets users find door-to-door directions across several modes of transportation. The feature is similar to HopStop.com and the authority’s own TripPlanner application, although entering a search sends users directly to a Google Maps page…

The authority already licenses its scheduling data to Google, and Mr. Walder said that it made more financial sense to take advantage of an already popular outside service rather than to continue investing in a proprietary application.

The new site, says The Times, will also “make it easier for outside software designers to get free access to system timetables and routes.” The MTA has long been criticized for its approach to scheduling data and other route information, and I recently wondered when the authority would catch the open information bug. The answer, it seems, is soon.

When it goes live, the new site will still be a work in progress, and some web designers wish it could be “sexier.” Still, mobile versions for Blackberry and iPhone are in the works, and Transit has embraced Twitter. I’ll have a full review of the new site when it goes live, but I’m very encouraged by this news. A website redesign has been a long time coming for the MTA, and it shows a commitment to communication and customer service that had been, for a few years, lacking. Hopefully, this new site design is a sign of things to come.