[URBAN NOTE] "Where The Hell Are Those Subway Countdown Clocks We Were Promised?"

[rfmcdonald]

Gothamist's Jordan Fraade notes the problems of New York City's subway system in implementing countdown clocks network-wide.

Buried deep in the $32 billion capital plan that the MTA approved in September, $209 million was set aside for a project that could give New Yorkers who live on lettered subway lines a perk that numbered-line riders have enjoyed for half a decade: countdown clocks.

New York’s slow progress in providing real-time arrival information to riders is an enduring source of mystery. Subway systems in London, Paris, and Madrid already do it. Those that don’t, like Tokyo and Mexico City, literally run trains every one to two minutes. Boston and Washington, D.C. are also far ahead of New York in providing this information. Meanwhile, only 177 out of 421 stations in the NYC system have clocks. Certain lines have them, namely the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and L, and the rest don’t. What gives?

Like many quirks of the New York City Subway, the answer has to do with the system’s roots in three separate operators. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company, or IRT, built New York’s first subway lines in the early 1900s — now the 1 through 7 trains. Later, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) and city-owned Independent Subway (IND) built competing systems. After the city bought out the two private operators in 1940, it consolidated them into the public, citywide subway we know and love today, turning the BMT into the N/Q/R, J/M/Z, and L trains, and the IND into the A/C/E, B/D/F, and G trains.

The vast majority of the subway uses “fixed-block” signaling, which divides tracks into 1,000-foot portions and allows trains to pass through when the upcoming block is clear. Because fixed-block signals are not automated, according to a report by the Regional Plan Association [PDF], information about train movements can only be disseminated on a station-by-station basis, with the train dispatcher and station operator communicating verbally. There’s no way for a dispatcher to pinpoint a train’s exact location within a block — and no way to amass real-time data about those trains and send them to a central server.