Cameras to Monitor the New York Subway

The largest subway system in the United States still does not have protection cameras inside its subway cars. Cameras will start filming inside two New York subway cars (as a pilot test) to monitor passengers. The MTA hopes to see a reduction in graffiti inside its trains, which costs the agency $1.8 million per year to remove.

Many transit systems, though, which already use cameras within its vehicles still have some intolerable amounts of graffiti and scratchiti. Whether or not the cameras will

actually reduce the number of graffiti incidents is debatable. Having cameras on transit, however, has had some successes in identifying suspects of crimes. Here are two:

- The men allegedly responsible for the 7 July 2005 attacks on London’s transportation system were identified by CCTV footage.

- Police were able to identify four suspects from the 21 July 2005 attempted bombings on the London’s transportation system.

Photo courtesy of the New York MTA.

Original post by Alexander Lew