#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK DRIVER#
#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK MANUAL#
#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK SERIES#

Scott LynchĢ018: The rollout of CBTC on the 7 line is completed. An accident at the Union Square subway station, pictured here, led the MTA to consider implementing CBTC in the transit system. These precautions, however, have significantly added to many of the chronic delays straphangers experience today.Ģ009: The L line becomes the first in the system to be fully outfitted and operational with CBTC.

#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK DRIVER#

This catastrophe finally leads NYCTA to consider automating trains.ġ993: The safety of the L line’s signal system is questioned following a crash where one train rear-ended another, sending 45 people to the hospital.ġ995: Following a crash on the Williamsburg Bridge in which a J train hurtled past an ancient red light and into the back of an M train, killing the driver and injuring 54 straphangers, maximum train speeds were reduced and “grade-time” signals were installed to further limit train’s speeds in the name of safety. Key dates in subway signal historyġ904: Block signaling is used on the city’s first subway line, the IRT Lexington Avenue line.ġ962: An experimental automated train is destroyed in a fire at Grand Central, delaying the installation of a modern signal system in NYC, despite the technology being adopted for transit systems elsewhere.ġ970: The practice of keying-by-“slowly moving past a red light if the track ahead was clear,” as the New York Times put it in 1973-is made illegal, making red signals mandatory with no exceptions and increasing the amount of delays caused by signal problems.ġ991: In 1991, a drunk motorman speeds through a signal, causing a subway to derail near the Union Square subway station, killing five. CBTC was recently rolled out along the 7 line, but the implementation didn’t go quite as smoothly as anticipated. It’s also far more precise than its manually operated counterpart: It’s currently in use on the L line, which “consistently operates with an on-time performance higher than 90 percent, roughly 30 percentage points better than the system as a whole,” as Aaron Gordon recently reported.

The equipment involved in CBTC is less visible and far more durable, making it less vulnerable.

#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK MANUAL#

While block signaling relies on manual operation, CBTC uses automatic, computer-based signaling. Much of the current system was installed from the 1930s to the 1960s, and requires custom replacement parts to be made in-house because the machinery is so outdated. But this method is imprecise, and because of the age of the signals, subway personnel do not actually know the exact location of the subway cars using block signaling. Fixed-block signals are visible from subway platforms, and the information they provide to train operators are based on the location of the most recent train to have passed-this is known as a moving block system. Hermann / MTA New York City TransitĪs with streets, subways have blocks, each typically some 1,000 feet long. An interlocking signal mechanism at the New York Transit Museum, located in a decommissioned subway station. It has two schemes: A Division and B Division, which were put in place when the subway was privately owned and operated by three separate companies (before the MTA was even a thing). The subway uses two kinds of signal systems: Automatic Block Signaling and Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC).īlock signaling-the kind seen in the MTA video above-is a manually operated method that has been in use since the subway’s inception. “It works, but it’s an antiquated way to run a subway,” Wynton Habersham, the former MTA head of subways, says in the video. Some of the signals that are currently in use throughout the subway system are extremely outdated- this MTA video shows the signal system at the West 4th Street station, which dates back to the 1930s. You’ve likely seen a subway signal on your commute: They look like traffic lights, and use the same color pattern-red: stop, green: go, yellow: proceed with caution-to let train operators know if it’s okay to move in and out of a station. Trains operating at the established speed limit can, in theory, cruise along without issue trains that travel above the limit will have their emergency brakes automatically triggered when passing a signal. This is a safety protocol that impacts each train’s speeds and times. In a nutshell, the signal system regulates the amount of space physically allowed between trains. It’s a complex topic, so read on for an overview of how signals work, and what the MTA is doing to get them to work better.

#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK SERIES#

Welcome to Subway 101, a new series in which we attempt to demystify the complex, enormous, and often-frustrating New York City subway system.

J line subway new york