For lack of a better word, NYC subway system as a whole is, crappy.  I am not going to be a broken record complaining about the same thing over and over again.  (cos don’t get me started, I was late this morning because the 7 decided not to go into Manhattan~)  Despite its many flaws, there are some marginal improvements that creep into the system every once in a while.  The model R160 trains, the train arrival time displays on the L line, even the behind-the-scene line managers position are some of the improvements.  Now there’re yet another improvement that show up as a trial and hopefully it will expand to the rest of the system – train location display! It’s pretty much just a monitor showing a map of the line and where are the trains at that instant. You can see how useful this information is!  First of all, the train conductor always yelled there’s a train right behind us, this train is full, take the next train! Does anyone actually believe that? Now we can finally see if he’s lying or not!  Not only that, the officials in charge of the project hinted at the possibilities that the same information can be available online so that you can check where the trains are before you head down to the station!

The best news that come out of this story, however, is that to implement such a display system is actually cheap! All they did was to go to Circuit City and get a 42″ flat-screen TV for $999 and hook it into the system! We all know MTA is seriously lacking funding to do anything big (even the projects that already assigned big funding are in danger now~), so to be able to get something useful done and not cost the agency a lot of money, it’s a win-win situation for riders.

BTW, the train location display will be at the L line’s Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue Station in December, and even if they are going to expand the program, I suspect it will probably limited to the L line for a while, since it’s the only line with the computerized operating system so far. (The 7 line suppose to be the next to become computerized, but we’ll see how that goes~)

Related posts:

1. DC impressions: transportation deadmatch
2. New Subway Trains
3. Even newer subway car on the L
4. The 3 counters
5. Old technology finally reaches the L

Tagged: New York · Subways