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The MTA's Oldest Controls Kept Going During the Tech Outage

Most of the Cuomo-era countdown clocks on the lettered subway lines failed; the old ones on the numbered lines did not.

The only portions of the MTA’s massive infrastructure that were apparently affected were its data feeds allowing the public to see in real time the location of buses, commuter trains, and subways on the lettered lines. Known as ATS-A, it feeds the green-and-red countdown clocks above the platforms and cues up the automated train announcements on the PA. Officials repeatedly promised the system would eventually come to the lettered lines, but that never happened for a variety of reasons. Instead, each train running on the lettered lines was equipped with a Bluetooth beacon (yes, the same technology that powers your wireless mouse) that trips a receiver as the subway nears a station, which then triggers the LCD screen over the platform to update.

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