MTA Soliciting High-Tech Ideas to Keep Tracks Clear

The MTA is looking for high-tech ways to spot people and objects in the path of trains — in hopes of cutting down on both deadly collisions and frustrating delays stemming from track intruders.

Following a months-long surge in the number of people trespassing on the tracks, the MTA last week issued a request for information to the railway and technology industry on how to deploy “track intrusion detection systems” in subways and on commuter railroads.

MTA officials noted that the technology must be able to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects and set off an alarm for anything larger than 12 inches in diameter that presents a safety risk.

It must also detect and identify what’s on the tracks from up to 600 feet away in underground and open-air stations and provide, the document says, “visual indications for Station Personnel, Train Operators and First Responders.”

“Any technology, through artificial intelligence, machine learning, thermal sensing, or other means, that can specifically detect and differentiate a human versus a non-human intrusion, would be most advantageous,” the MTA wrote.

A viable solution would “detect intrusions regardless of lighting or weather conditions or the frequency of train movements” and withstand temperatures that top 120 degrees, as well as “high steel dust concentrations, water conditions and high vibrations.”

On the Wrong Side

It’s the latest phase in the MTA’s long-running effort to develop a detection system and follows a 2014-2019 pilot program that used lasers, thermal cameras and microwave scanners to alert train crews and the rail control center when a person or object went from the platform to the tracks, crossing what agency documents called an “electronic curtain.”

If crossed, MTA documents say, the technology from the earlier program would trigger “audible and visual notification” at the rail control center and alert an approaching train operator with strobe lights mounted in the tunnel.

The equipment is no longer in use, an agency spokesperson said, adding that it “showed some promise,” but that challenges remain, including how to integrate detection systems into stations.

A source familiar with that pilot program told THE CITY that four systems were tested at a Lower Manhattan station, where cameras showed that many of the people who went onto the tracks did so to switch platforms.

“What we learned was the number of people that realized, ‘Oh shoot, I’m on the downtown side and not on the uptown side,’” said the source, who did not want their name published. “So people go on the tracks so they don’t have to pay to get back in again.”

Slow Ride to the Future

The search for technological advances comes amid a surge in “persons on roadbed” incidents.

MTA data provided to THE CITY this week shows people trespassed onto the tracks 116 times in December, resulting in 2,093 delays, up significantly from August, when…