Subway Security

A rendering of the Help Point intercom system from 2005. (Via Antenna Design)

Earlier this summer, the city’s two free daily newspapers — Metro and amNew York — reported on a new initiative by New York City Transit that would bring high-tech intercoms into the subway system. Billed as a way to improve passenger safety while lending the subways the aura of security found on a college campus, the new Help Point intercom system received its formal unveiling yesterday. While Transit officials promoted it as a brand-new high-tech solution the long-standing problem of unobservable subway stations, it is actually a design five years in the making.

As anyone who has been on a tour of a college campus knows, these blue-light intercoms are exceedingly simple. One button — the red one — will connect passengers to emergency services while the green button will provide a direct line to a 24-hour information hotline. These intercoms are, said the MTA, “reliable, highly visible and easy-to-use.” The emergency calls will be routed to the authority’s Rail Control Center while information inquiries will be fieled by Travel Information personnel or station booth workers.

“We have designed the HPI to be a major step beyond the Customer Assistance Intercoms that passengers may see in stations now,” Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said. “Make no mistake, this device represents impressive 21st century technology and it demonstrates our ability to incorporate it into a system that is more than 100 years old.”

During the presentation to the board on Monday morning, Transit officials stressed the so-called Help Point Intercom system’s unique appearance. These six-foot-tall metal poles feature a blue light on top and will placed on station platforms and mezzanines. The units can be mounted vertically on station walls as the rendering above shows or placed against a platform column as a free-standing device. They will be equipped with loop technology for the hearing impaired and will be “camera capable.”

As with every new technology, the MTA will introduce these intercoms via a pilot program later this year. The futuristic-looking devices will be installed at 23rd St. and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall along the East Side IRT routes, and while the authority doesn’t know yet how much a system-wide installation would cost, NY1’s John Mancini says the pilot, which will place intercoms every 150 feet, is being funded with $10 million from the capital campaign. The pilot, says The Daily News, will officially launch before the end of 2010.

Now, ostensibly, these new intercoms are designed to make up for the decrease in station agents but also to supplement the existing agents’ ability to monitor their stations. Since the station agents cannot leave their booths, their visibility is limited to the fare control areas and any part of the platform in front of them. At many stations, nearly none of the platform then is visible, and riders are left without recourse in half-empty stations. These Help Point Intercoms are designed to alleviate those concerns, and it’s a project that’s been on the drawing board since the early part of the 2000s.

In fact, these Help Point Intercoms were at point an item of pride for designers and Transit officials. In 2005, Transit first contacted Antenna Designs to develop a Help Point intercom prototype, and the new version is materially similar to the first design. As Antenna Designs said then:

The Help Point Intercom (HPI) is a customer information and emergency intercom system for the New York City Subway stations. In case of an emergency, a customer can directly contact an agent at the emergency dispatch center twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Further, customers can talk to a live customer service agent for real-time transit related information.To further enhance security and discourage tampering, each HPI is equipped with a built-in video camera.

The HPI is a beacon in the station environment, making it easy to spot and instantly recognizable, not only in an emergency, but at any time when information is needed. With its careful mix of easy visibility and non-alarming appearance, it sends the right message about its dual function. Partly designed as an ambient light fixture, the HPI’s calming blue light provides a sense of safety and security during everyday activities, symbolizing the human presence that is always just a touch of a button away. Its clear identity avoids confusion with any other station or platform equipment (such as train related signals.)

The HPI has a modular design which allows it to be configured as a wall mounted, column-mounted or freestanding device. A simple interface makes it easy-to-use. When activated, buttons illuminate to indicate connection, and there is sound feedback. The HPI is ADA compliant and features high contrast, large type labels with Braille. Gesture, proportion and material finish make it an elegant piece of public equipment, yet it is durable, vandal resistant and easy to maintain.

This similar-sounding device won a Bronze medal at the 2006 IDEA Awards and has been a part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection since 2006. It was also included in an exhibit at MoMA in 2005 entitled SAFE: Design Takes on Risk.

So as we fast-forward to 2010, the MTA has the need, the will and the money to realize a design that garnered praise five years ago. The current MTA intercoms are seemingly broken more often than not, and with fewer station agents in the system, ensuring customer safety has become a paramount concern for Transit officials. As long as the new technology can work seamlessly, straphangers should be safe. “These HPIs,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said, “are another example of how the MTA is using technology to fundamentally change the way that our customers experience the transit system each day.”

After the jump, a picture of the prototype Transit officials unveiled at MTAHQ on Monday morning.

Over 500 subway cameras in three key stations are now hooked into the NYPD’s Ring of Steel monitoring system, the MTA and Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday. As part of the MTA’s boondoggle of a camera program, live streams from 507 new security devices in Grand Central, Penn Station and Times Square will feed into the NYPD’s Command Center down near Wall St. to assist the cops in fulfilling the goals of their Manhattan Security Initiative.

“The safety and security of our customers is the MTA’s top priority, and I am thrilled to partner with Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly to keep customers safe at our busiest transit hubs,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay H. Walder said in a statement. “This is one more step in finally putting the proper focus on technology at the MTA. For too long, the MTA has failed to deliver on key technology projects, but you can see that changing all across our system.”

The Mayor, who hasn’t found the willingness to foot the bill for transit upgrades, nevertheless pledged dollars to keep his security efforts running. “We will take whatever steps necessary, regardless of cost in Federal or City funds, to protect New York from terrorists,” he said. “Access to these cameras is a big step in providing the NYPD with the tools it needs to keep transit riders safe – something we urged during the mayoral election campaign last year.”

According to the Daily News, this camera program will serve as the NYPD’s own version of the MTA’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign. The technology used at the monitoring station includes the ability to sound the alarm if an unattended bag is spotted or if people are “entering restricted areas.”

These camera, said the MTA, are just one part of the agency’s Integrated Electronic Security System. While the 507 at the transportation hubs will be monitored, not all of the MTA’s other 3200 feeds will be. Walder did say that cameras at other key stations including those in Lower Manhattan will eventually feed into the NYPD’s system.

For the MTA, this announcement served as a milestone of sorts as the surveillance project has been best by legal, technical and economic problems. Originally designed by Lockheed Martin, the cameras were to be in place years ago, but the two sides engaged in a bitter legal dispute when the contractor claimed it couldn’t access certain areas and the MTA claimed Lockheed missed deadlines. “For too long, the MTA has failed to deliver on key technology projects,” Walder said. “But you can now see that changing all across our system.”

Still, while 1400 have installed over the past six months, more are on the way even as civil liberties groups view these surveillance programs with wary eyes. “Do we really believe that 500 video cameras in three hubs is really going to ramp up our security and not undermine individual liberty and is better than putting more cops on the street?” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said to the Wall Street Journal. “New York City is going to be a go-outside-at-your-own-peril kind of place in no time. Maybe it already is.”

Amidst concerns over a porous subway system, the MTA is planning to equip the upcoming R179 order of new rolling stock with security cameras, Tom Namako of The New York Post reported today. While the system’s preexisting rolling stock will not be retrofitted with cameras, each of the 340 new cars that make up the R179 fleet will have the necessary technology built in so that the MTA can simply put the cameras, shown at right, into the new cars.

“Future cars will be camera-ready,” Paul Fleuranges, a Transit spokesman, said to The Post. “The hardest part of retrofitting old cars to run the lines is that it involved taking the car apart.”

The MTA is currently running one train on the E line that’s equipped with an in-car camera surveillance system, but that car is just a part of a 12-month pilot program. As Namako notes, by ordering the R179s with the ability to install cameras, the MTA may be leaning toward approving this pilot program on a wider scale. The cameras, said Fleuranges, “will be part of the infrastructure, in case we want to go that route.”

As part of the pilot program, four cars along the E are each equipped with a set of four cameras, and the cars with cameras are identified with a decal, seen here at left. The camera sets are linked into one DVR system, and the four cameras are tied into a network controller unit that transmits the signals between cars. The cameras are placed to “effectively cover the passenger area,” according to Transit, and while the agency stressed that the cameras are for recording purposes and not live monitoring, it’s unclear how Transit plans to make use of the footage. The police have yet to request the video feeds.

As with many MTA pilots, the camera program was in development for years. The MTA first announced plans to create what many call a ring of steel in March 2007, reiterated a commitment to the pilot in April 2008 and again in August 2009 before installing the surveillance equipment this February. Various other cities, including Washington, DC, and London, have long outfitted their subway cars with such technology, and it has been used as both a criminal deterrent and a tool for identifying perps and terrorists.

The MTA is gearing up to install a series of intercoms every 150-200 feet along platforms at stations without agents, but what happens when this technology goes down? That’s the question Pete Donohue at The Daily News asks in a story on intercom repairs today.

Donohue leads with a number: Currently, he reports, the average repair time for MTA intercoms sits at 11 days, and a few MTA Board members aren’t happy with the news. “That’s just terrible,” Andrew Albert said. “It’s unacceptable. There’s a real safety concern. What if someone is attacking you, God forbid.”

But the numbers tell a different story. Many times, intercoms reported broken are working just fine, and a few balky units have brought down the systemwide average. Writes Donohue:

Between January and June, reports of faulty intercoms led to 1,264 “trouble tickets” requesting attention by repairmen, according to data NYC Transit provided last week. Workers doing the followup inspections found the equipment actually was functioning 72% of the time, according to the agency data. Inspections confirmed malfunctions 350 times, or 28%, according to NYC Transit.

A spokesman late yesterday indicated the problem was not as widespread as the data suggested. Intercoms near turnstile banks are fixed on average between 36 and 48 hours after a problem is reported, the spokesman said. The systemwide repair average of 11 days was inflated by problems with aging units in five stations, the spokesman said. The agency has begun replacing the 20 to 30 units in one station and plans to do the others in the coming weeks, the spokesman said.

Of course, questions still remain over the effectiveness of intercoms, and much depends upon one’s own concept of personal safety. Having intercoms along the platform edge in spots that were generally not visible to station agents should increase safety on deserted platforms. But these intercoms must be working, and someone who can dispatch emergency responders must be on the other end of the “talk” button. What works on wide-open college campuses can work in the subways as well.

Updated (Friday, July 30 at 12:12 a.m.): With its history of technological problems, the MTA didn’t have much public trust when officials said this week they will replace station agents with remote monitoring equipment. Yet, the Board voted yesterday to axe 200 station agents, and now the authority is moving full speed ahead with plans to equip subway platforms — not even under the purview of those fired agents — with intercoms and working cameras.

This week, Heather Haddon of amNew York had two updates on the state of safety technology. First, she reported on how 990 cameras went live in fare control areas at 31 stations late last month. These cameras had come under fire after the MTA had installed them but could not activate them. The rush repair job, she notes, cost $22 million, and there are still 1100 cameras that are out of service. The MTA is working to fix those.

Last night, Haddon added to her week of safety with a report on new intercoms. Although approximately 20 of the MTA’s 953 passenger emergency intercoms break per day, the MTA has fanciful plans for an intercom system. Within 45 days, says Haddon, the authority will install “a better intercom system…with the brightly lit devices to be installed every 150 feet along stations. The intercoms will have separate buttons for emergencies and information, and automatically report technical malfunctions, officials said.”

In other words, this new system sounds like — and as the rendering from Metro shows, looks like — security features found on college campuses across the country. Now, the MTA just has to make sure it remains operational. If so, this new security system could act as a greater deterrent than the station agents did.

Could a station agent — barred from leaving the booth — have prevented this robbery? (Photo via Campaign to Take Back Our Transit System)

After engaging in some political theater last week when it hosted court-mandated public hearings, the MTA Board is set to vote on the proposal to axe 240 station agents and shutter dozens of booths throughout the system. As John Mancini at New York 1 reports today, the board is a foregone conclusion, and the authority will also vote to approve a proposal to raise the fares as planned in 2011.

Already, transit activists and union supporters are up in arms over the two developments, and both groups have reason to be. The union is trying to save jobs while transit activists fear that the double whammy of service cuts in June and fare hikes in January will lead to more animosity from a public deeply skeptical of the MTA. “Last month, we had the deepest service cuts in a generation and now we’re being asked to pay more as riders for our subways and buses. It’s just not fair. It’s not mass transit if the masses can’t afford it,” Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives said to NY1.

While we could debate White’s assertion that the masses can’t afford it, his point is a good one. We are being asked to pay more for less. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debate over station agents. Or at least that’s what the TWU wants subway riders to believe. In an article in this week’s Downtown Express, John Bayles goes in depth into the station agent/subway safety argument. It’s one I’ve rehashed on numerous occasions, but Bayles’ article has some revealing statements from public officials and city politicians.

City Council representative Margaret Chin wants to keep station agents so they can help evacuate Lower Manhattan in the event of another once-a-decade terrorist attack. “In the tragic event of another attack in our community, these workers would be crucial in directing passengers to safety. Closing the booths at the Fulton St./Broadway-Nassau and Wall Street stops is particularly worrisome,” she said at one of the public hearings. “These areas of Lower Manhattan remain prime terror targets, with the subways themselves a likely target. Imagine the grizzly scenario: hundreds of passengers stranded in the subway stops, with no cell phone service — and now no means of communicating with authorities.”

Chin ignores the fact that every station will have at least one worker at all times and that emergency personnel will still be dispatched to the stations in the event of a disaster. It sounds good, though, to play into public fears over personal safety.

John Samuelsen, who makes well over $100,000 a year as president of the TWU with close to another $20,000 in other compensation, chose another approach. He attacked the MTA Board member’s personal wealth and the CEO’s salary. “It is a travesty that Jay Walder and the other fat cats on the board are sitting on this money,” he said, referring to money going toward capital construction and other union jobs. Unfortunately for Samuelsen and the TWU, those jobs aren’t from his union, and so he could care less if the authority needs that money to keep the trains running.

The shuttering of the booths is a foregone conclusion though. The MTA Board is going to vote on it on Wednesday, and in Albany, Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Assembly, said he would not pass the legislation requiring that the MTA keep the booths open for three years. He recognized that such an unfunded mandate would not serve the overall good of straphangers. “I am concerned that this legislation would force the MTA to make up lost savings through deeper service cuts or a higher fare,” he said. “The simple fact is New Yorkers cannot afford another fare hike or more cuts in service.”

So the debate rolls on. Some people think station agents who are barred from leaving their booths serve a safety function. Others recognize that the MTA is up a creek without a paddle. No matter the temporary cost savings, the truth is that the subways will cost more, and straphangers will enjoy more crowded trains that run less frequently with fewer workers in the system. For that, we have only Albany to blame.

Since the FBI stopped Najibullah Zazi and his co-conspirators from carrying out a potential terrorist attack on the New York City subway system, New Yorkers have had to come to grips with the reality of a porous subway system. With hundreds of miles of track stretching throughout five boroughs and access that costs one swipe of a MetroCard, New York’s subways — just like those in London, Madrid and Moscow — is open and insecure. We might rely on a catchy slogan to keep straphangers on their collective toes, but securing the subways requires a massive interagency effort that involves paying attention to chatter while keeping a close eye on the goings-on underground.

As the MTA has adjusted to life in post-9/11 New York City, its own security measures have been halting. A plan to equip every station with security cameras has been plagued with massive budget overruns. It’s beyond schedule and now the subject of a legal fight between Lockheed Martin and the MTA. Still, as the authority has promised to get some camera system online this year, the agency needs all of the support it can get from the federal government.

With that in mind, then, it’s dismaying to read that, due to the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has been forced to cut back its grants this year, New York City will be receiving fewer DHS dollars for security measures. According to numerous reports that cite a courtesy memo distributed to lawmakers this week, DHS is cutting its grants to New York City’s mass transit security fund from $153 million to $111 million. No one is happy.

“For the administration to announce these cuts two weeks after the attempted Times Square bombing shows they just don’t get it and are not doing right by New York City on anti-terrorism funding,” Chuck Schumer, New York’s senior senator, said.

Although lawmakers and New York officials have known since late last year that cuts would be forthcoming, both the timing — President Obama is due into the city later today — and the 27 percent reductions could not be worse. “We are hoping for substantial additional money from the feds to help protect our mass-transit system,” Mitchell Pally, a member of the MTA Board, said to the Wall Street Journal. “Any reduction is a concern, especially in these days when we don’t have enough money to begin with.”

Department of Homeland Security officials were quick to defend the cuts. New York City alone, they say, receives 11 percent of DHS funding, and the city took in $457 million in DHS grants last year. “DHS is actively engaged in supporting New York City’s first responders and overall preparedness for acts of terrorism and other disasters through an array of grant programs,” Matthew Chandler, a DHS spokesman who blamed congressional budget cuts for the reduction, said.

With the averted Times Square bombing fresh in the minds of city residents, New Yorkers can’t be too pleased with the news and for good reason. The New York City subways carry the bulk of the nation’s public transit riders, and although we hate to admit it, the infrastructure remains an appealing target for any potential attack. Even as New York remains vulnerable, we should learn our lessons from Europe, and DHS should ensure that transit security funding is not scaled back.

In Glasgow, a familiar anti-terrorism slogan has lost its edge. (Photo via Andrew in Amsterdam)

When two street vendors in Times Square noticed a parked car with smoke seeping out of it a few weekends ago, they did what any concerned citizen would do and called 9-1-1. The NYPD evacuated Times Square, and instead of a car with an electrical or gas fire starting, they found a vehicle packed with potentially explosive materials and alarm clocks rigged as a bomb. The bomb squad disarmed the device, the FBI caught their man and the law enforcement and anti-terrorist system worked.

As the story unfolded, the focus eventually turned to a slogan familiar to millions. Since 2003, the New York City subways have been covered signs with a simple request, now trademarked by the MTA: “If you see something, say something.” Ostensibly, this slogan is about awareness in a post-9/11 world. If citizens remain alert and see something — whatever it might be — that appears out of the ordinary, they should, as anyone with a civic duty would, say something about it. They could tell an MTA employee or, better yet, a police officer. Just don’t, urges the longer prerecorded announcements on new train cars, keep it to yourself.

Over the last few days, the widespread use of this slogan has gained some publicity. AdAge published a profile of those behind it on Monday, and The New York Times followed suit in yesterday’s paper. The phrase came to the MTA shortly after Sept. 11 from the desk of Allen Kay, an ad executive at Korey Kay & Partners, who has, according to Manny Fernandez of The Times, coined 80 slogans for his company’s clients.

“The model that I had in my head was ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships,’” Kay said. “I wasn’t born during World War II, but I sure knew the phrase and so did everybody else. In this case, I thought it was ironic because we want just the opposite. We want people to talk. I wanted to come up with something that would carry like that. That would be infectious.”

Initially, Kay wanted to launch a public campaign in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but the MTA believed the public would grew too scared and shy away from mass transit. Instead, they wanted until 2003 when they launched the now-ubiquitous campaign of posters and PSAs, and since then, the authority has spent between $2-$3 million in Homeland Security grants on their advertising campaigns.

While some read Orwellian overtones into it — “The phrase has come to mean, ‘Go get the cops.’ It’s not an invitation to citizen engagement. It puts everybody under suspicion,” civil liberties advocate Bill Dobbs said — the phrase has achieved global recognition as well. After securing the trademark three years ago, the MTA has granted the use of the phrase to 54 organizations worldwide free of charge. The MTA, however, has requested that those agencies who do use the phrase with their permission keep the message on point. “The intent of the slogan is to focus on terrorism activity, not crime, and we felt that use in other spheres would water down its effectiveness,” Christopher Boylan, an agency spokesman, said to The Times.

Yet, despite the hoopla surrounding the phase, I can’t help but think it’s almost unnecessary. On the one hand, very few people have responded to the MTA’s directive. In 2007, for instance, the authority claimed that 1944 riders out of the 1.5 billion who used the system saw something that warranting saying, and investigation into those figures revealed that few were terrorist-related. Meanwhile, the cops disputed those numbers at the time and said that fewer than 50 had actually called to report suspicious activity.

Furthermore, as Dobbs, the advocate who fears Orwell, said, “Common sense saved the day in Times Square, not an ad campaign.” Two people who see a car with smoke coming out of it should call the cops, in other words, because it’s what people are supposed to do in a society wary of terrorism or not.

It’s hard to deny that the MTA has coined a catchy phrase. It’s six words that remind people to stay aware of what’s going on around them, and it applies in any scenario. Despite my slight skepticism, it worked a few weeks ago in Times Square, and as long it catches a potential act before anything worse happens, it should stick around for years to come.