The New York City Subway

[Ninjahedge]

The homeless might like it because of the sleep-friendly side benches......

[krulltime]

CRIME-CAM PLAN FOR SUBWAY CARS





By JEREMY OLSHAN
May 23, 2006

Next stop, candid camera.

Closed-circuit TV cameras may be installed on thousands of subway cars to deter graffiti and other crimes, transit officials said yesterday.

The MTA is considering a variety of technologies currently used by transit systems in London, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Australia, said Mike Lombardi, vice president for subways.

With major incidents of graffiti, window "scratchiti," and acid etching up nearly 400 percent since 2004, and much of it being done while the trains are in service, the digital cameras could save the agency millions, Lombardi said.

Although much of the subway system still employs 19th-century technology, the MTA has slowly been working on a variety of upgrades, from automatic train control to cellphone service to real-time train information.

The cameras are a natural fit, MTA board members said.

"It could probably stop other crime as well, and perhaps they could catch a terror suspect," board member Andrew Albert said.

Straphangers may also get an added sense of security from knowing the cameras are there.

"Some people feel insecure in a lonely subway car, and perhaps a camera will make them feel a little better," Albert said.

The agency has been quoted prices by various companies, but is looking for ways to narrow the scope of the system and cut down on the cost, officials said. Lombardi cautioned the project was still in the very preliminary stages.

"We still want to see what's out there and whether they really work," he said. "And then how much money that will be. Then we might put it out for bid."

The system would complement the 2,328 cameras already in use at 276 subway stations, officials said.

Additional cameras are also being added near the turnstiles at 60 stations.

Installing cameras in trains is no problem - the project is focusing on establishing a means of digitally recording and cataloging the data.

Unlike the MTA's $300 million anti-terror camera project, these cameras would not transmit unusual activity as it happens, but provide a record for later investigation.

Several hundred cameras have already been installed as part of that anti-terrorism project, which is due to be completed in 2009, MTA officials said.

The subway-crime camera initiative has been prompted in large part by the scourge of graffiti inside and outside of the cars. Glass-etching paste, which can be purchased in art-supply stores permanently damages windows.

Windows on the 1,800 newest cars have been lined with Mylar, which can be replaced much more cheaply.

The agency is considering a program to replace the windows on more than 5,000 subway cars, at a cost of $10 million, and then include an annual $5 million in the budget for the Mylar.


Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[BigMac]

McGraw Hill Construction
May, 2006

New York's Subway System Finally Starting Major Expansion

By Tom Stabile

Infrastructure designers and contractors around New York endured a tense wait for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new capital program to take shape last year, but the bumpy ride may have been worth it. The MTA's subsidiaries have since unleashed dozens of projects, including major jobs to expand the region's transit capacity.

The logjam broke after New York's state legislature and Gov. George Pataki agreed to fund a $21.2 billion 2005-09 capital program for the MTA last year. Voter approval of a $2.9 billion transportation bond on the ballot last November provided an extra boost, said Mysore Nagaraja, president of the MTA's Capital Construction Co., which oversees large-budget efforts, including two - East Side Access and the Second Avenue Subway - that split $900 million from the referendum.

"That was voted for overwhelmingly - by 55 percent - and gave a mandate that the projects are important," he said. "The confidence level for funding from both the state and federal perspectives is up."

New York City Transit is another busy MTA division, with more than $2 billion a year in the new capital program for bus depot, rail yard, fan plant, station rehabilitation, signal, track, and tunnel lighting projects in the five boroughs, said Cosema Crawford, the agency's chief engineer.

"It's good work across all disciplines - a lot of deep excavation work, complex logistics work," she added. "It's a great capital program for contractors of all sizes."

New Work Expands System's Reach

The MTA's docket has three high-profile projects, two to expand the city's subway system for the first time in decades, and the third to transform commuting patterns for thousands of suburbanites.

One is an extension of the Flushing line, known as the 7 train, from its terminus at W. 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. It will head west and south to the Jacob K. Javits Center on W. 34th Street and 11th Avenue. New York City is footing the $2 billion bill, which does not include funds to acquire land, such as a planned staging site on W. 26th Street, Nagaraja said.

The MTA plans to award a $350 million to $400 million contract by year's end to tunnel from 26th Street north to W. 41st Street and 10th Avenue. A contract to build the 34th Street station would follow next year. The agency is also hiring a construction manager consultant this fall.

"My goal is by 2011 to finish the whole thing," Nagaraja said.

The 7 line will have to work around various underground features, said David Donatelli, project manager for New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, the design consultant. Those include the 8th Avenue subway; Amtrak's West Side rail yards, access tunnels, and open tracks; infrastructure for the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority Bus Terminal; the viaduct supporting 11th Avenue; and a planned $6 billion commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey that would end at 34th Street and 7th Avenue.

"We will have to make sure that the other features are shored up properly," Nagaraja said. "But we will be digging deep."

Another subway expansion has a much larger reach - the $16 billion Second Avenue line planned to one day stretch 8.1 mi. from 125th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem down to Hanover Square near Wall Street. Aimed at easing congestion on the Lexington Avenue line on Manhattan's East Side, the four-phase project would start next year with construction of a leg from E. 96th Street to E. 63rd Street, where it would link to an existing station, said David Palmer, a principal with London-based Arup, a lead firm on the joint-venture design team.

The job will involve a cut-and-cover dig for a station at 96th Street and mining with TBM and other deep excavation equipment for stations at 72nd and 86th streets, Palmer said. Three tracks heading south into the 72nd Street station will fan out to four on the other side, added Don Phillips, an Arup principal.

"You have to plan for crossovers between the tracks at both ends, which means you have to mine larger caverns," he said.

Preliminary engineering and environmental approvals are complete on the first $3.8 billion, 2-mi. phase, Nagaraja said.

"My hope is that next spring we'll have the tunnel contract," he added.

The first leg would finish in late 2012 or early 2013 to serve an expected 202,000 riders, Nagaraja said. The design effort so far has cost $400 million, and funding for the rest of the first phase would come from $1 billion left over from the 2000-2004 capital plan, $450 million from last November's referendum, $1.5 billion in federal money, and future MTA funds.

The significance of adding a new line led the MTA to ask its design team to also develop modern systemwide station construction guidelines. The template will also apply to the 7 line expansion.

"One of the things we tried to do is make the space as attractive as we can - it has to function well day and night," Phillips said. "For instance, the platforms will be column-free spaces so that people can see all around the train arrival area."

The project brought together DMJM Harris and FXFowle, both based in New York, Arup, and others. They took roost in an MTA office, drafting preliminary and conceptual designs over three years, said Sudhir Jambhekar, a FXFowle principal.

"It was an amazing collaborative process," he added. "Projects of this nature are led by serious engineering decisions, so we had to be cognizant of that as we designed stations and streetscapes."

At some point, the teams on Second Avenue may cross paths with crews working on another MTA project - the $6.3 billion East Side Access program that will bring Long Island Rail Road trains, which currently head straight to Pennsylvania Station on Manhattan's West Side, into a new station complex deep under Grand Central Terminal on the East Side.

The busiest phase is approaching with the planned award next month of a $380 million contract to bore 1 mi. southward from the existing 63rd Street rail tunnel - which connects to Queens under the East River - in order to reach Grand Central in a deep dig under existing subway lines. Nagaraja said he also expects to award a $90 million contract next month to build rail infrastructure under Amtrak's Sunnyside Yard rail complex in Queens.

Nagaraja said he hopes to clear up East Side Access funding by locking in an expected federal contribution this year. His agency has spent about $1 billion so far and has $1.1 billion on hand in funds from the last capital plan and the November referendum. He expects the federal government to contribute $2 billion.

Another East Side Access contract for a $150 million chilling and ventilation facility on E. 50th Street in Manhattan, set for award next year, will end a bitter fight with neighbors, who objected to the planned seven-story height. Nagaraja said the solution to move three to four floors underground and add a park added $50 million to the tab.

"It was frustrating," he said. "But it's a good design that's friendly to the neighborhood."

Upgrading the Core Infrastructure

Expanding a 100-year-old transit system may capture the imagination, but the MTA is also deep into efforts to maintain or upgrade its bus and rail infrastructure. That translates into scores of big projects.

A signature effort is New York City Transit's $260 million Grand Avenue Bus Depot in Queens, which began in December 2003 under the last capital plan. The work is under a design-build contract with Granite Construction Northeast of Mount Vernon, N.Y., as contractor and Gannett Fleming of Camp Hill, Pa., as engineer, said the transit agency's Crawford.

"We wanted to go quickly, and design-build allows that," she added. "We like to use it when we're off the right of way."

The 560,000-sq.-ft. depot, slated to open in August, will hold 200 buses and 27 maintenance bays and have green features, including a 200,000-gallon underground rainwater collector tank to supply bus washing water, a 200 KW fuel cell on the roof, and natural lighting.

Another big upgrade in Manhattan is creating the Fulton Street Transit Center - an $847 million subway complex that will greatly ease transfers, said Arup's Palmer, whose firm is designing the project.

"Now, you have 11 lines and six stations where you go through a rabbit warren to get around," he said. "The goal is to open up the space and make it all visual."

The 215,000-sq.-ft. job will open up the maze by demolishing old corridors, adding new passageways and mezzanines, and building a grand entry hall with a glass-domed atrium designed by London-based Grimshaw Architects - all while keeping the stations open for 275,000 riders. The construction managers, Bovis Lend Lease and Parsons Brinckerhoff, are both based in New York.

Nagaraja's office scaled back the project last year after work had begun. The original $750 million budget is now $847 million, but includes $150 million for land buys, he said. It is funded by federal redevelopment money for Lower Manhattan.

Two contracts are under way. Citnalta of Bohemia, N.Y., is general contractor on a $35 million reconstruction of two station areas, and Slattery Skanska of Whitestone, N.Y., is general contractor on a $133 million pedestrian tunnel to connect the complex to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's planned World Trade Center transit hub. A contract to demolish several buildings to make way for the main hall is slated for award in June.

"By the end of this year, almost all of the contracts will be out," Nagaraja said.

A $106 million rehabilitation of the Columbus Circle subway station in Manhattan is also starting this spring. It entails rebuilding the roof, upgrading platforms, and adding a new entrance, which alone will require digging up W. 60th Street, driving soldier piles, and installing a precast deck to temporarily support the road, said Rich Ocken, vice president for Judlau Contracting of College Point, N.Y., the general contractor.

"There's a lot of staging and mobilizing on this job because at Columbus Circle you can't close anything," Ocken added.

Other big jobs wrapping up include:

- a $192 million overhaul of 4 mi. of elevated track and 10 stations on the White Plains Road line in the Bronx. Judlau is rebuilding mezzanines, canopies, wind screens, and guard rails, while also installing several elevators, Ocken said.

- installation of communication-based train control on the Canarsie line, known as the L train, to replace 70-year-old signal systems. CBTC will run trains by computer for parts of routes, allowing for closer train spacing, while funnelling train location data to the agency's command center and eventually to passengers. A Siemens, Union Switch, and Railworks joint venture is adding train and switch equipment, software, and systems for the $287 million job finishing in August.

© 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

[TonyO]

^ That's a great article. I didn't know Columbus Circle has a station upgrade in the works.

[lofter1]

Per Columbus Circle Station: As of this week it seems that work has started on the west side of Broadway between 60th / 61st -- big highway barriers topped with cyclone fencing have been placed along that entire block, taking up 1/2 of the sidewalk and extending out into the first lane of Broadway.

[Eugenious]

They didnt mention anything about the Smith/9th St station rehab on the F culver line, is that still going forward?

That station is in need of MAJOR repairs, they have a prime opportunity there because it's the highest elevated station in the system and it awards views of the whole ny skyline that you cant get anywhere else.

[pianoman11686]

New York Daily News

Oh, L, not enuf trains!

BY PETE DONOHUE

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, July 7th, 2006

The $443 million fleet of subway cars on the L line is just 4 years old - but it's already too small to handle a growing ridership.
The Transit Authority had projected that 212 Kawasaki-made R143 subway cars would be enough to accommodate ridership demands for years to come, according to a TA report.

But L-line ridership - fueled in part by the popularity of Williamsburg, Brooklyn - has risen higher than the TA expected, leading the agency to conclude that the "R143 fleet is now not large enough," according to a TA report.

Scrambling to find a solution, the TA plans to put an older subway-car model on the L line to supplement the existing Canarsie, Brooklyn, fleet, and also divert another batch of cars being built to the Canarsie line.

A TA spokesman couldn't say when service would be boosted. It will take at least several months - and at least $320,000 in signal-related work - before the older cars can operate on the rails along with the newer high-tech rigs that were put in service between February 2002 and July 2003.

The L line runs between Eighth Ave. in Manhattan and Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie.

Neighborhoods along the route, including Williamsburg, have become increasingly popular as rents in Manhattan have steadily risen. Between 2000 and 2005, ridership on the line increased by more than 16%.

But service has not kept pace, resulting in jam-packed trains. The frequency of trains during rush hours and many off-peak hours has remained unchanged.

"It's horrible," said Teresa Toro, chairwoman of Community Board 1's transportation committee. "It's just too crowded."

She blames the TA and the city, which has encouraged development in Brooklyn, with not accurately projecting the strain on the subway system and ensuring enough trains could be placed in service.

"They dropped the ball," Toro said.

L-train riders, meanwhile, will not get real-time arrival information via platform message boards until September or so, the TA said. The TA had previously said the communications upgrade, which would take away some of the uncertainty associated with subway travel, would go online this month.

L line track record

Annual ridership for the L line, not including major transfer stations:

1994 . . . 16,968,025

1996 . . . 18,107,243

1998 . . . 21,196,693

2000 . . . 26,155,806

2005 . . . 30,452,319

Time between scheduled trains:

Morning and evening rush hours: 4 mins.

Midday: 8 mins.

Overnight: 20 mins.

Five busiest stations in 2005:

First Ave., Manhattan

Bedford Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Rockaway Parkway, Canarsie, Brooklyn

DeKalb Ave., Bushwick, Brooklyn

Graham Ave., East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Copyright 2006 The New York Daily News

[TonyO]

Inside the MTA's Fight Against Subway Flooding

By BRADLEY HOPE, Staff Reporter of the Sun

If anyone despairs when reading the weather report first thing in the morning, it's assistant chief Peter Velasquez, Jr. the head of the hydraulics department of the New York City Transit Authority.

On a dry and sunny day his department's 700 or so pumps, at about 280 locations, push 13 million gallons of water out of the subway system and into New York City's sewers. That's the equivalent of all the wastewater produced by the city of Boca Raton, Fla., every day.

And on a wet day?

"It's more water than I can measure," Mr. Velaszquez said.

This year, 9.63 inches of rain have fallen in Central Park, about five inches more than the average rainfall for the city. For the 170 workers in the hydraulics department - one of the smallest in the authority's force of 34,000 workers - this spells hours of scrambling to floods and overflows.

When water rises near the electrically charged third rail, it creates dangerous conditions for trains. There are no sensors in the subway tunnels to notify transit officials that there is flooding, so the hydraulics department relies entirely on reports called in by conductors, platform personnel, and customers. This was the case on the morning of July 5, when an inch of water fell on the city, resulting in suspensions on three subway lines for more than an hour.

The first problem for a responding hydraulics gang is just getting to the location of the "water condition," a supervisor, Gliden Arroyo, said.

"You have to remember, we are using the same system that delays customers," he said. Workers may move to a flood by taking trains, trucks, buses, or by walking. "We have to get there by any means necessary," he said.

With water touching the third rail, a puddle can become a 600-volt landmine. Transit workers follow strict procedures to avoid getting hurt.

Most "conditions" like last week's are caused by a backed-up drainage pipe or water coming in at a rate faster than the pumps can get rid of it. Lately the influx of free newspapers at subway stations has compounded the problem by clogging drains throughout the system.

A condition like last week's is meager in comparison with some floods in the city's history. The worst condition Mr. Velasquez has seen was in Harlem in the early 1990s, where a broken water main flooded a station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue up to the stairwell. Scuba divers had to be called in to shut down the main, and the Transit Authority had to bring in its most powerful weapon: one of two diesel-powered train cars outfitted with pumps that can get rid of 2,700 gallons of water a minute. It took an entire weekend to pump out the water, Mr. Velasquez said.

The department has an arsenal of smaller pumps as well, from special lightweight aluminum 100-gallon pumps, to the 600-gallon pumps that take an entire gang to pull onto a subway platform.

Thunderstorms they can handle, Mr. Velasquez said. It's the unexpected and the expansive disaster that he fears most. A hurricane could cause massive flooding throughout the subway system.

"At some point, it would be too much to handle," he said. "You've got rain plus wind. It basically would shut down the system. You hope not. You pray that it doesn't."

A terrorist threat like the plot against the PATH train tunnels reported last week are yet another concern. Mr. Velasquez said the Transit Authority has detailed plans for dealing with all types of emergencies.

"All we can do is prepare," he said. In the meantime, his workers are continuing their 24-hour a day maintenance of the pumps, some of which are more than 100 years old.

[Kris]

July 12, 2006
New Subway Payment Method Is Tested
By THOMAS J. LUECK

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, working with Citigroup and MasterCard, began a six-month experiment yesterday that will allow subway riders to use specialized bank cards or payment tags instead of MetroCards. The test, paid for by the two financial service companies, is taking place in 30 stations on the Lexington Avenue line between 138th Street in the Bronx and Borough Hall in Brooklyn. At the stations, customers can tap or wave their Citi credit cards, MasterCard debit cards or bank-issued payment tags to gain entry through specially equipped turnstiles. The test is intended to “evaluate the potential of contactless payments to simplify fare payment for customers,” said Peter S. Kalikow, the authority’s chairman.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[TonyO]

NY Post

TRAIN-TRACKING HQ

PEEK AT SUBWAY SYSTEM'S NEW $100 MIL NERVE CENTER

By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter


IN THE CONDUCTOR'S SEAT: The Rail Control Center on Manhattan's West Side, where operators will eventually be able to determine trains' precise locations in the city's subway system.

August 14, 2006 -- This is the subway's brain.

Tucked inside a building on Manhattan's West Side, the new $100 million Rail Control Center looks more like NASA's Mission Control or the Pentagon's situation room.

But from this massive football-field-size nerve center transit officials can monitor - and soon will be able to control - the entire subway system.

When it is fully operational - in 2010 at the earliest - dispatchers will be able to track the precise location of every train, communicate directly with operators and conductors, or reroute a line, transit officials said, in a process called Automatic Train Supervision.

"Currently, console dispatchers have to contact field personnel over the radio," a transit official said. "ATS will be a sea change in rail-control operations - for the first time in the IRT's [numbered lines] 102-year history [dispatchers] will have real-time information on train movement."

Dispatchers will know instantly when a train is behind schedule, or when the distance between trains needs to be adjusted to increase service.

Transit officials are highly secretive about the center - which would be the largest and most advanced rail-control system in the world - because it could be a terror target, sources said.

The subway has always depended on its three rails - two to guide the path of the train, and the third to deliver the 600 volts necessary to power the trains.

But the subway of the future will depend on an imaginary fourth rail - a data line - to provide the rail-control center with live information.

As a bonus, it will tell straphangers when the next train will arrive.

At the old subway-control center in Brooklyn, there was no way to identify trains or tell their precise location.

And it allowed only one train at a time onto 600-foot blocks of track, giving dispatchers just a vague idea of each train's location and preventing trains from being run closer together.

Right now, the new center is running much the way the Brooklyn one did, while its more advanced functions are being tested.

The subway's number lines are set to go online this fall. The letter lines will take longer to complete, officials said.

The new center will work to automate much of the subway functions currently performed by hundreds of employees, transit workers said.

"They are going to be able to cut back on a lot of dispatchers," one union member told The Post. "But what happens if the system goes down?"

Getting the Rail Control Center up and running has not been easy. When Rapid Transit Operations initially moved to the new center last year, technological snafus forced them to retreat to Brooklyn.

But a successful test on May 20 allowed a return to the new digs.

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

[Eugenious]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/ny...ece&ei=5087%0A

By THOMAS J. LUECK
Published: August 18, 2006

City Subways Put New Cars Into Service as a Test Run


New York City Transit showed off its newest subway cars yesterday, putting a newly minted 10-car train into passenger service for a 30-day test on the N line.


The cars, costing $1.44 million apiece, and manufactured in Yonkers by Kawasaki, are the first to be delivered as part of a $952 million order by the transit agency for 660 cars. Kawasaki is to produce 260 of the cars, and Alstom, a French conglomerate, is to make the other 400.


A similar 10-car train of Alstom cars is scheduled to begin a 30-day test on the Q line on Aug. 25. If the tests are successful, the transit agency said it would schedule delivery of the rest of the cars with the goal of having all 660 cars in operation by 2008. The new cars would replace outdated equipment that has been in service for 40 years, but no decision has been made as to which lines the cars will be assigned.


“It feels really good,” said Shawn Daley, 24, among the first to board a new car yesterday as he traveled home to East Bushwick from his job in Manhattan as a night shift supervisor for United Parcel Service.
“I just want to see how fast it gets me home,” he said.


The new cars, identified by the transit agency as R160’s, are similar in many ways to R142’s, which are already in service on most of the system’s numbered lines, and the R143’s, which are in use on the L line. With advanced suspension systems and sound-absorbing materials, they are quieter and smoother than older cars in the subway fleet, and they supplant crackling, hard-to-hear announcements with automated voices.
Computer chips that monitor the R160’s should enable workmen to make repairs more quickly than on older subway cars, officials said.


“The idea has been to come up with a car that is easy to maintain, efficient to operate and offers a bright, customer-pleasing environment,” said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit, a division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has the option to buy up to 912 more R160’s.


A new feature in the R160’s is a system of three display panels in each car indicating the station where the train is stopping, which stops are next and which connections are available. Instead of the digital panels in some other cars, which plot the line’s entire route and indicate station stops with flashing dots, the R160’s have a digital map display that scrolls through the names of stations and can be reprogrammed for use on any subway line.


They also have video screens that Mr. Reuter said would be used to display public service announcements. There have been relatively few problems with delivery and use of cars built by Kawasaki, but Alstom has been plagued with setbacks in the manufacture of its cars.


Last year, Alstom was given a seven-week extension to deliver a test train to New York City Transit engineers after two of its car shells were damaged during shipping from a plant in Brazil to another plant used by Alstom in Hornel, N.Y. Other shells that were made in Brazil were rejected after inspectors for New York City Transit found welding defects.

[ablarc]

The cars, costing $1.44 million apiece, and manufactured in Yonkers by Kawasaki, are the first to be delivered as part of a $952 million order by the transit agency for 660 cars. Kawasaki is to produce 260 of the cars, and Alstom, a French conglomerate, is to make the other 400.

...There have been relatively few problems with delivery and use of cars built by Kawasaki, but Alstom has been plagued with setbacks in the manufacture of its cars.

Last year, Alstom was given a seven-week extension to deliver a test train to New York City Transit engineers after two of its car shells were damaged during shipping from a plant in Brazil to another plant used by Alstom in Hornel, N.Y. Other shells that were made in Brazil were rejected after inspectors for New York City Transit found welding defects.

The French trains are defective, the Kawasakis are not. Why are they buying more Alstoms? Why buy any at all? Doesn't Kawasaki have the capacity to make them all? Or is this a sweetheart deal for Alstom?

“It feels really good,” said Shawn Daley, 24, among the first to board a new car yesterday as he traveled home to East Bushwick from his job in Manhattan as a night shift supervisor for United Parcel Service.

“I just want to see how fast it gets me home,” he said.

The feelgood aspect is taken care of by the fact the cars are new --that is until the vandals etch the windows.

But why can't technology be applied to making these things go faster and more often? Signalling systems?

The new cars, identified by the transit agency as R160’s, are similar in many ways to R142’s, which are already in service on most of the system’s numbered lines, and the R143’s, which are in use on the L line. With advanced suspension systems and sound-absorbing materials, they are quieter and smoother than older cars in the subway fleet, and they supplant crackling, hard-to-hear announcements with automated voices.

We need to content ourselves with modest improvements.

“The idea has been to come up with a car that is easy to maintain, efficient to operate and offers a bright, customer-pleasing environment,” said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit

Not a word about speed.

A new feature in the R160’s is a system of three display panels in each car indicating the station where the train is stopping, which stops are next and which connections are available. Instead of the digital panels in some other cars, which plot the line’s entire route and indicate station stops with flashing dots, the R160’s have a digital map display that scrolls through the names of stations and can be reprogrammed for use on any subway line.

Hot dog!! Just what we've been waiting for!

[TonyO]

The feelgood aspect is taken care of by the fact the cars are new --that is until the vandals etch the windows.

You'll notice that the mylar coverings (same for these new trains) on the 4-5-6 trains work well...I haven't seen any etched windows on those trains.

[ablarc]

You'll notice that the mylar coverings (same for these new trains) on the 4-5-6 trains work well...I haven't seen any etched windows on those trains.

How long do you figure it'll be before the vandals scope out how to get past the vinyl?

Or cook up some new horror?

Anyway, my point was that the newness will wear off the cars in time, and then what will we have left to admire? The message boards?

Oh...maybe the vinyl guarding the windows!

[Eugenious]

How long do you figure it'll be before the vandals scope out how to get past the vinyl?

Or cook up some new horror?

Anyway, my point was that the newness will wear off the cars in time, and then what will we have left to admire? The message boards?

Oh...maybe the vinyl guarding the windows!

The reason they have Kawasaki and Alstom making the cars is to theoretically make sure there is more then one supplier so there is no monopoly and some kind of competition out there, I think this works more in theory as in practice as both companies have no incentive to compete with each other as both are guaranteed orders.

The Subway system is archaic at best, the trains are slow, the stations are dirty and ugly. If you expect anything else you're dreaming, this is new york buddy.