Making investments in New York City’s century-old subway system

Jamie Torres-Springer joined the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2021 as president of Construction & Development after serving as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Design and Construction for nearly four years. Torres-Springer has helped the MTA implement its OMNY contactless payment system, upgrade its signal technology across multiple train lines and contribute to the expansion of the Second Avenue subway line. He is currently working on introducing AI-driven sensors that can help predict when subway equipment needs to be fixed and when a station is experiencing extreme temperatures. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the more notable technological investments that MTA has made in the past year or so?

We’re really committed to using advanced technology in a whole lot of different ways in our system and expanded that over the last year and longer. It’s a really interesting challenge. I often say somewhat facetiously that any old genius can invent an iPhone but to incorporate a new technology into a 100-year-old system is where the real genius takes place. 

I put our technology investments in three different categories: There’s things that improve the customer experience; things that improve the operation experience for our customers; and then there’s improvements for safety and security. There’s been a lot going on in the last year. What’s most top of mind for everyone is moving to this new tap-and-go contactless payment system in OMNY, which will enable us to sunset MetroCard starting at the end of this year. That’s been a huge technology deployment in our system from installing validators back in 2019 and 2020, but we’re also putting all the completed systems into place that allows everyone to use OMNY. We’ve been migrating our reduced-fare customers, students, Fair Fares customers, (Access-A-Ride paratransit service) customers and people who get their subway rides through pretax benefit cards to tap-and-go, which is happening this year. Two-thirds of our customers are using OMNY, which is a 20% increase since last year.

As of last fall, the MTA had fully installed 5G wireless connectivity on the 42nd Street Shuttle. Are other lines scheduled to add this in the coming years? Which other lines already have 5G?

Don’t forget we’ve already installed high-quality cellular service at all of our stations, which we have more than 200 of. We have a public private partnership with Boldyn to fit out all of the miles in our entire subway system. That’s a billion dollars of value that we get out of that at no cost to riders.We’re in the midst of getting the crosstown G line done. We’ll have our first underwater river tunnel, the Joralemon tube, which people use to take the 4/5 to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, is underway. The next is the 4/5 line from Grand Central Terminal to Yankee Stadium.

Are there any operational benefits for the MTA of expanding high-speed internet access beyond New Yorkers simply being able to check their email and surf the web while commuting?

Yes, for sure. There’s always the benefit of having cellular technology for MTA workers. The way this works is that Boldyn pulls fiber optic cable and installs coaxial antennas, and a certain number of strands are available for MTA use. That affects countdown clocks, help point (intercoms), OMNY itself and security cameras in every single subway car. All of that will be able to access that technology to be able to communicate.

The technology varies, but the bottom line is that the communications connectivity was not as fluid which means the information would not be up to date. When people post a picture on social media of a countdown clock that says there’s no train coming for 15 minutes but there’s a train in the station, it’s because of that lack of connectivity. As we build out fiber throughout this system, we’re enabling much better communications connectivity for our customers. The same systems are feeding information into the MTA app, as we build out our communications backbone, that information becomes much more timely and accurate and that’s a huge benefit to our customers.

Can this be utilized to help with crowd control on subway platforms? 

With the whole area of safety and security of the system, technology is a huge opportunity for us. We’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in security cameras and the communications backbone that enables cameras to feedback to the right places. We’ve done work in the last few years, we’ve released a track intrusion strategy and platform crowding is a big variable for that.We’re piloting right now some machine learning technology that can take a camera feed from the platform that can enable it to detect erratic behavior, and whether someone is posing a danger to themselves or others and get that information to first responders much more quickly. We have a great number of cameras installed throughout the system that would enable us to install it safer.

If the federal government is successful in terminating the congestion pricing program in Manhattan, what would that mean for investment in next-generation technologies to improve public transit? 

Very much. Our entire capital program does get a lot of funding from the federal government and it’s very important that this funding continue to be able to build out all these projects. This gets done with larger projects of work, when we make a station ADA accessible we’re including technology in it. All of this work needs full funding of the next capital plan in order to continue.

Are there any other customer-oriented technological upgrades that can significantly improve the commuting experience, like the advent of countdown clocks nearly two decades ago? Other manifestations of real-time tracking across the system?

I think it’s still a little underappreciated how advanced the MTA app is to give people accurate information about train arrivals.

Are there any technological upgrades that customers have asked the MTA for that are in the works?

The thing we haven’t talked about that customers desperately want is building out the new signal technology throughout the system, known as communications-based train control. In the first 20 years the technology was available, we only got the L and No. 7 trains done, but now we’ve got five other lines in progress and a whole bunch more funded in the capital plan. That technology enables us to run more frequent and reliable service. That’s the most important technology we’re advancing in the system.

What projects have come out of the Transit Tech Lab that we actually see today? Has the program proved to be beneficial to advancing the MTA?

One of the things they’ve focused on is climate-related solutions. We’re testing technology with a Transit Tech Lab participating to reclaim heat in our subway stations and use it for energy purposes elsewhere. That can have the potential for a cooling effect in our stations, which I don’t have to tell you is a real issue in the summer.