According to developers, now no one will be able to forget their belongings for long - the system will automatically raise an alarm. As Associated Press writes, by 2008 a single updated security system will be created in the subway of the largest metropolis in the United States.
The new equipment will appear not only at stations, but also on metro bridges and in tunnels. It will also be installed on the suburban train lines Metro North and Long Island Railroad, which are an integral part of the New York subway system. However, subway representatives are not saying exactly where the cameras will be installed. But they did describe how the system works. According to Katherine Lapp, executive director of the subway service, the software will allow the security system to independently integrate the information it receives when transmitting it to the center of mobile subway security units. For example, if the equipment detects unattended items on one of the platforms, an alarm will sound in the command center.
The new security system will cover more than 700 stations of the New York subway and transfer points from the railroad. Surveillance cameras will not be installed either in trains or buses. The total cost of the project is $212 million, and the implementation is entrusted to Lockheed Martin Corp. According to Judy Marks, executive vice president of the company, work on installing the new system will begin immediately and be fully completed in three years.
According to experts, the modernization of the subway surveillance system is the largest anti-terrorism program since 2002, when New York authorities allocated $591 million for these purposes. As Katherine Lapp admitted in an interview with a CBS correspondent, the reason for the upcoming update was a series of terrorist attacks in the London subway in July 2005, which claimed the lives of 52 people.
The Russian capital's metro is also being equipped with a video surveillance system. True, there are already cameras in the Moscow metro now. But they monitor passengers only at stations and in the passages between them, and even then not everywhere. There is no question of any software - the picture is recorded on a tape, which is viewed if necessary. In the near future, video from cameras will be broadcast online so that dispatchers can immediately correctly assess the situation. Gradually, the entire subway will be switched to such a system.
In addition, as Dmitry Gayev, the head of the Moscow subway, said, within a year and a half video surveillance systems will be installed in all cars of the Moscow metro. And by the end of 2005, video cameras will appear in all cars on the Circle Line. “We will also install video cameras in all passenger areas where there is no permanent presence of police officers,” Gayev said. “In addition, a stable information transmission system will appear in the metro, which does not exist today. However, we cannot guarantee that terrorist attacks like the London ones will not be repeated in the Moscow metro.”
According to Gayev, the system still will not save from suicide bombers. “But thanks to video surveillance, we will be able to prevent, for example, the planting of explosive devices,” the head of the Moscow metro emphasized. In 2005, 1.7 billion rubles were allocated to ensure security in the Moscow metro, and a total of 2.5 billion for the program.
In turn, the Interior Ministry proposed equipping the subway with special equipment such as metal detector frames that can determine the presence of explosives. One such device, developed at the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Special Equipment and Communications, has already been offered to the management of the capital's subway. Specialists say it is so sensitive that it detects not only the explosives themselves, but also traces of them on clothing and the human body, even from two or three days earlier. However, Gayev is wary of the idea of installing such detectors in the metro: “Metro stations pass 30,000-50,000 people during rush hour. We would stop the city. Therefore, in no subway in the world that has suffered serious terrorist attacks, neither in New York, nor in Tokyo, nor in London, nor in Paris, are these systems installed — otherwise we would simply have to close the subway and forget that it exists.”