Sometimes new technology and transit goes haywire, as seen earlier this morning when a reboot caused turnstiles to lock up and prevent entry. In most cases the turnstiles are supposed to fail open. However, it seems an oversight was made during the engineering process which caused them to fail closed.

New technology isn’t always terrible, though! One thing MTA has been working on has been improving the signals they use for maintaining traings. Over the past five years the MTA has been replacing the existing infrastructure with newer digitized versions. Some of these signals were a century old. Because of this, trains can safely increase speeds!

If you take the R line in the city, for instance, trains have sped up 15mph all the way to 50MPH in some areas! Even dangerous areas like near the Brooklyn-Bridge/City Hall station they were able to increase speeds because of this.

Some of this has also allowed for new kinds of data to be recorded. Many of these points help with logistics and planning for maintenance work and train routes. However, others enable things like the really cool live MTA map that shows where trains are in real time along the routes!