Don't think you're crazy if you get the eerie feeling you're being watched on the subway. The system will be keeping an eye on you come December.
The MTA will start running one subway train with security cams in each of its cars by the end of the year, according to a published report. And no matter where you sit, the cameras will be able to see you; they will provide a view of every corner in every car.
No one's going to be sitting there monitoring the surveillance all day long, but MTA officials say it might make crooks think twice before doing anything illegal. The train, which will run on a "letter" line to be determined, will have a digital surveillance system that generates a computer-based log of events that authorities can check after a crime or emergency, according to The New York Post.
Think about all the allegations of crime on the subway – theft, assault and groping, to name a few. Surveillance cameras would be pretty helpful in determining whether any crimes actually happen, and if they did, who was responsible for committing them.
"It will also help us get better information on how to deal with a situation should something occur in the post-9/11 world," MTA board member Norman Seabrook, who chairs the agency's Safety and Security Committee, told the Post.
The single train is part of a pilot program to test whether all trains in the city should be outfitted with digital surveillance systems to discourage criminality.
Officials wouldn't say how much it'll cost to hook up the one train, nor do they plan to disclose which line it will run on. But it wouldn't be cheap to outfit all city trains with the surveillance systems – and the cost could be the biggest roadblock to doing so.
"The question we have to wrestle with is what is the cost and how that cost is handled and whether or not we can maintain the storage that having data requires," NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges told the Post. "This is not an inexpensive endeavor."
The newest subway cars are equipped with the computer wiring needed to hook up the surveillance system, so they'll be the ones that get the cameras, the Post reports. They're currently in use on the E, F, L, M, J, Z, N, Q and W lines.
Surveillance cameras have already been added to some MTA buses, primarily the ones that run in Manhattan. Some buses on Brooklyn's B46 line, which runs one of the highest-crime routes in the Big Apple, were outfitted with cameras earlier this year.
Bus operator Edwin Thomas, 46, was driving on that line when a crazy passenger stabbed him to death late last year.
