Maybe I'm missing something here, but Chicago has had this for the CTA for years. What's the big deal? Is it because New York has such an expansive subway system that this is such a big accomplishment?
MTA Releases Subway Time App
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Re: MTA Releases Subway Time App
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
What legacy system could possibly prevent one from simply recording the position of every train every few seconds? This is not a particularly difficult problem for a billion-dollar business to solve.
One built in 1904. The control systems of the MTA are purely electromechanical. It goes way beyond what one would normally call a "legacy system". You can't record the position of trains because there is no way to snapshot the whole system. Only the signal tower local to that section of the system is aware of what's going on in its zone. This is a vestige of the design where there was no reasonable way to centralize…
I don't care about the signal towers or how old the system is. The point is that the technology for identifying the location and speed of a few hundred giant hunks of metal moving around on fixed tracks is trivial and does not need to interact with the old system (or humans) at all. Just tag each train with a few RFID's, and stick in a few hundred miles of wiring into the tunnels.
I mean, are you telling me for a 100 million dollars this couldn't be done?