Here's the century-old technology delaying the New York City subway every day

Advertisement

MTA subway CBTC video

MTA/YouTube

An MTA employee tracks trains by hand.

Advertisement

It's not just you. In New York City, subway delays are on the rise. In 2012 there were and an average of 20,000 delays per month. Fast forward four years to 2016 and that number has climbed to 70,000

Sometimes it's easy to miss, with shiny new touchscreen kiosks and promises of open-gangway subway cars, but the New York City subway runs on technology installed before World War II.

With 5.65 million people swiping their MetroCards every weekday, when something goes wrong the delays pile up quickly.

A crucial element of the MTA's plan to fix this is something called Communications Based Train Control. The technology is revolutionary for a system as old as New York City's, and installing it on a single subway line took six years and $288 million to complete.

Advertisement

In order to convince Albany to provide the $20 billion it will take to upgrade the whole system, the state-run agency took to YouTube to showcase its century-old signals, hand-controlled switches and what's being done to upgrade the aging system.

Scroll down to learn what's being done to improve what remains largely unchanged since its inception in 1904.