The MTA’s plan to modernize alerts on the G prepare will take longer than deliberate, transit officers mentioned Monday, with an anticipated months-long delay to replace gear on the subway system’s latest prepare vehicles.
Transit officers mentioned Monday that the radio transceiver system used to find trains on the L line, the No. 7, and parts of the F prepare — the signaling system referred to as Communication Primarily based Prepare Management system or CBTC — is already rising out of date. In consequence, the re-signaling efforts underway on the G line will likely be delayed as work begins to retrofit even the latest prepare vehicles to make the most of newer 5G transceivers.
“That will take longer than the work we are doing on the G [line] itself,” Jamie Torres-Springer, MTA’s development head, instructed the company’s board Monday. “Putting CBTC into full operation on the G line overall will take longer than anticipated, but there are no additional disruptions to riders associated with this.”
The G prepare — recognized in transit-speak because the Crosstown Line — has been present process main renovations for greater than a yr. The method concerned main outages final summer time, and scattered evening and weekend outages this summer time.
The G line with new R211 fashions in latest weeks. (Evan Simko-Bednarski/New York Each day Information)
In the meantime, officers quietly moved the latest prepare vehicles, the R211s, onto the tracks of the G final month.
However even these vehicles, contemporary out of the ultimate meeting facility in Yonkers, do not need radios new sufficient to speak to the signaling system MTA’s development workforce is constructing beneath Brooklyn.
Officers mentioned Monday that the wi-fi community at present in use on CBTC strains just like the L, the No. 7 prepare, and parts of the F is already sufficiently old that they aren’t assured that producer Siemens will proceed to supply help or spare components for very lengthy into the longer term.
“When we started off Crosstown, we realized nobody is developing the communication system,” mentioned MTA’s deputy chief growth officer Mark Roche. “Siemens, who designed it and provided it, no longer even invests in it — there’s no updates to the software, there’s no updates to the hardware.”
“We made the decision at the beginning of Crosstown to change the communication system.” Roche added. “The fact that we made the decision to build the program properly is going to make that project slightly delayed.”
The MTA board’s Capital Program Committee voted Monday to approve a $47 million modification to a contract with Hitachi on Wednesday that might pay the agency so as to add up to date 5G wi-fi radios to the system’s R211 prepare vehicles.
Torres-Springer and different MTA officers characterised the delay as small. CBTC is anticipated to return on-line north of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station by the tip of 2027, and between Hoyt-Schermerhorn and the southern G prepare terminal at Church Ave. by the tip of 2028.
In it’s month-to-month report Monday, nevertheless, engineers with Michael Baker Worldwide, the MTA’s unbiased engineering guide — tasked with providing an unbiased evaluation of the company’s capital tasks — estimated the challenge may very well be delayed into summer time 2029 if third get together contractors like Hitachi couldn’t meet their deadlines.
Initially Revealed: July 28, 2025 at 5:37 PM EDT
