The MTA has admitted that only 46% of the city's 4,100 subway cameras are hooked up to working recording devices, and that installing 910 more will end up costing them over $21 million—exactly the amount they saved by firing all those station agents! The four-year project faced problems because of tech glitches and software failure from TAP Electrical, who were hired to build a network to store the information from all 910 new cameras. That combined with different types of cameras with different hookups installed under different branches of the MTA has lead to an expensive and possibly dangerous security failure.
The 910 new cameras spread across 32 stations won't be wired for recording until next month, raising the cost to $23,000 per camera. Pressure has been put on the MTA to develop a working surveillance system in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt, as no images of the suspect were recorded. No images were recorded of a stabber who killed two people on the 2 train either. But one engineer working with the MTA said projects like these can't be rushed. He told the Daily News, "A lot of times you need to learn to walk before you run, but they want to start running before walking."
Almost 1,000 of the system's faulty cameras were installed by Lockheed Martin, though work has been stalled because the security company and the MTA are suing each other. The MTA also has plans to replace the TAP Electrical devices with equipment from Panasonic, but the whole project is still three years behind schedule.
