N.Y. transit authority's radios swamped by interfercne

The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) invested some $140 million in a radio communications system to improve the ability of teh authority to respond to and cope with disasters. Trouble is, the system is disrupted so often by interference that New York City transit police refuse to use it.

Mobile Radio Technology’s Mary Rose Roberts writes that Hauppauge, New York-based E.A. Technologies, a company that develops communications networks for public transit systems, was awarded the contract in 2000. The contract called for the installing a fiber-optic communications network for the New York subway system which would provide reliable radio communications between street level officers and those assigned to the underground subway. It also was to integrate the city’s fire department communications. The system was installed in late October 2006 — two years behind schedule — combining existing police antennas, amplifiers, and antenna cables to transmit radio signals from street level throughout the underground rail. It works by bouncing a signal from antenna to antenna and using myriad amplifiers to strengthen the signal as it moves throughout the subway system.

Trouble is, the system has not yet been turned on because the same signal also can enter the tunnel system through pedestrian staircases, which causes interference, according to an MTA report. In addition, the MTA found antenna cables covering seventy-two miles of the subway system had deteriorated to such an extent that they could not carry a signal. According to news reports, it will cost the authority an additional $36 million to repair.

The new radio system may not be working, but it itself was part of of a ten-year plan to update an antiquated radio network that often left transit police officers and street officers unable to communicate with each other. You may recall that6, previously, police officers patrolling the subterranean rail lines depended on a VHF radio system that was incompatible with a UHF system used by officers who worked above ground.

Note that while the MTA awaits police department approval to activate the new radio system, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DITT) is working on a futuristic wireless data system for first-responders throughout the city. The DITT awarded Northrop Grumman a five-year, $500 million contract to build a wireless broadband network dedicated to first responders and other city agencies. Northrop chose IPWireless’ mobile telecommunications system for the wireless high-speed data and video network, which currently is being field-tested in Manhattan.