If you live in New York, you’re familiar with the city’s extensive and antiquated subway, and how you will immediately lose cell phone service as soon as you enter the depths of the underground metro system.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants that to change.
On Friday, Cuomo announced a city-wide proposal that will rapidly redesign New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to include WiFi hotspots, USB charging ports and mobile payment options.
“The MTA is absolutely vital to the daily functioning of New York City, but for too long it has failed to meet the region’s growing size and strength,” Governor Cuomo said Friday at an event at the New York Transit Museum. “This is about doing more than just repair and maintain – this is thinking bigger and better and building the 21st century transit system New Yorkers deserve. We are modernizing the MTA like never before and improving it for years to come.”
Cuomo’s proposal outlines the deployment of technological improvements across the city’s subway network, which will equip all 277 stations with WiFi service by the end of this year. Cellphone service will be available in the stations by early 2017. Cuomo’s plan will also include more countdown clocks to make public transportation in New York more seamless.
And you can say goodbye to MetroCards. The proposal promises to replace the MetroCard system with a mobile payment system that will allow travelers to simply wave their smartphone or bank card at a sensor-enabled turnstile. The new payment system will be implemented in the city by the end of 2018 and will be used by the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North later this year.
“The MTA is committed to meeting Governor Cuomo’s challenge head-on, eliminating every possible inefficiency to deliver these improvements faster, better and at a lower cost,” MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement. “We’ll accomplish this by incorporating the Governor’s suggestions to use alternative delivery methods such as design-build, leveraging private-sector expertise through public-private partnerships, and streamlining our procurement processes to ensure the entire MTA is focused on delivering improvements to the people who rely on us every day.”
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