New York
An Inside Look at the NYC Subway’s Archaic Signal System
Deep inside a subway station in Brooklyn, in a cramped, industrial room, Dyanesha Pryor pushes in a metal lever on a hulking machine that was installed nearly a century ago. A few hundred feet away, a signal light flashes red and a train that had been rumbling down the local tracks slides to a stop.
Ms. Pryor, a transit worker, pulls another lever and a section of rail shifts into place, allowing the local train to merge onto a shared track in front of a waiting express train. She then restores the signal to green and the local rolls into the station.
Ms. Pryor repeats this sequence — punctuated by the clank, clank, clank of the levers slamming into place — dozens of times over the course of the day in the hidden control room at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station.
Thousands of subway riders a day depend on Ms. Pryor for a smooth commute. But if she has to unexpectedly step away, even for a bathroom break, all express service is rerouted to the local tracks until she returns. “Everybody has to go local because there’s nobody here to move the levers,” said Ms. Pryor, 35.
About 85 percent of New York City’s subway system still operates with this analog signal system. The outdated equipment is no longer manufactured and has to be manually operated, around the clock.
It’s no surprise then that the system is a leading cause of delays. Over the past 15 months, it has led to average of nearly 4,000 train delays a month, according to data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the city’s transit system.
The subway has long depended on “fixed block” signaling, a method of maintaining safe distances between trains that uses track circuits to detect the location of trains, wayside signals similar to traffic lights and mechanical trips to stop trains that pass a red light.
The authority is replacing the system with a modern upgrade known as communications-based train control, or C.B.T.C., which is becoming the standard for transit systems worldwide, including those in London and Paris. It relies on computers and wireless technology — instead of people — to automatically control train movements.
But the system upgrade is at risk. The Trump administration is attempting to kill congestion pricing, a tolling program in Manhattan that would raise billions of dollars for the work. The M.T.A.’s next capital budget could also be in jeopardy, if Washington follows through on its threats to defund transit projects in New York State.
Ancient Signals
New York’s subway is vastly more complicated to run than other major subway systems because it never closes and its trains crisscross tracks. The city’s subway has more than 200 crossing points known as “interlockings.”
Much of the old signal system is run from a network of underground control towers that sit beside the tracks. Inside each tower are operators like Ms. Pryor who change signals and switches.
About 300 operators like Ms. Pryor are stationed at interlocking machines, but their ranks are thinning as the subway has gradually moved to centralized controls. The work pays around $40 an hour on average, according to a Transport Workers Union wage sheet.
While the signaling system still works most of the time, it has become more fragile and unreliable with every passing year. Equipment and parts break or wear out. In January, a relay failure at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station took about an hour to fix and delayed 25 trains.
“If you had a car from the 1930s and drove it every day you’d be lucky if it was still working like this, right?” said Salvatore Ambrosino, the M.T.A.’s chief officer for signals.
Fixed block signaling divides the tracks into blocks, or sections of roughly 1,000 feet on average, that carry an electrical current. When a train occupies a block, it cuts off the current, letting the system know its general position.
The system cannot pinpoint exactly where a train is, so a buffer of two or more blocks is maintained between every train to keep them at safe distances. But that limits how many trains can run at the same time. As subway ridership has grown, it has resulted in overcrowded cars and longer waits.
Modern Signals
The old signals are gradually being replaced with C.B.T.C., which keeps trains in constant contact with a centralized computer system that controls their every movement. This technology allows trains to run closer together, which means more trains on the tracks and faster service.
“Think of it like moving from a Walkman with all the moving parts to an iPhone that’s solid state,” said Jamie Torres-Springer, president of M.T.A. Construction & Development, which is overseeing the signal projects. “There’s no moving mechanical equipment — it’s all digital.”
In 2006, the L line became the first route to convert to the more modern system. The 7 line followed in 2018. Those routes now consistently have the best on-time performance.
C.B.T.C. has also been installed on sections of the E, F, M and R lines in Queens and the F line in Brooklyn.
The advantage of the new system is that computerized equipment is installed on every train to monitor its exact location and speed. The computers digitally manage signals and switches while routing the trains.
Mission Control
The home of C.B.T.C. is the M.T.A.’s Operations Control Center in Midtown Manhattan. Security is extremely tight and photos are rarely permitted.
Entering the control center is like walking onto the bridge of a spaceship. The nearly 21,000-square-foot room is almost half an acre in size with soaring 30-foot high ceilings. An entire wall is covered by a digital map showing trains moving in real time in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.
Between 75 and 90 M.T.A. workers are on the floor, day or night, surrounded by 432 computer screens. They keep an eye on train movements, stepping in only to troubleshoot. Each time another route is converted to C.B.T.C., more workers join them.
The next round of projects will bring modern signals to 66 miles of track in Brooklyn and Manhattan. These tracks are shared by six different routes — the A, C, B, D, F and M lines — and carry about 1.6 million daily riders.
C.B.T.C. will eventually be expanded to subway routes across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
But modernizing the signals, which have been called the subway’s central nervous system, is enormously expensive. While the transit authority has brought down costs significantly as the scale of work has increased, installing C.B.T.C. costs about $25 million per mile. The work also includes overhauling tracks and infrastructure and retrofitting trains.
M.T.A. officials are counting on $3 billion from New York’s congestion pricing program to pay for the new signaling system. But that funding is in question now that President Trump has vowed to kill the program.
The authority is also pushing for $5.4 billion to install C.B.T.C. on another 75 miles of subway lines in a $68 billion capital plan being considered by the State Legislature in Albany.
If the money does not come through, riders will notice it during their commutes, said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, which supports the signal upgrades.
“Modern signals mean faster, more reliable commutes,” he said. “Failure to update our antiquated signals means slower trains, more delays and explaining to your boss why you are late, again.”
This summer’s World Cup will bring millions of soccer lovers to stadiums across North America. But whether it lives up to organizers’ lofty expectations could come down to fans like Brett Shields and John Milce of New South Wales, Australia.
Both men are longtime supporters of the Socceroos, their country’s men’s national soccer team, and both have traveled to the World Cup before. But only one is planning to go to this year’s tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Mr. Shields, 59, is coming. He already has the proper travel authorization from past visits to see his daughter, who lives in San Francisco. He plans to stay with her and attend Socceroos matches there and in Seattle.
Mr. Milce, 76, who has been to six World Cups since 1966, is staying home. He said he had made comments online about President Trump’s policies and feared that he could be denied entry at the border because of the administration’s proposed social media checks and broader immigration crackdown.
“I’m not a poor man, but with the costs involved, it was too much to risk,” Mr. Milce said.
With the first kickoff less than 60 days away, tourism and hospitality leaders in the 11 U.S. host cities are watching international fans closely. The United States was the only major nation to register a decline in international tourism in 2025, and hints of lackluster demand have anxiety running high.
The research firm Tourism Economics projects that more than 1.2 million international visitors will travel to the United States for the World Cup. That includes nearly 750,000 who would not have otherwise come, amounting to a roughly 1.1 percentage point increase in international arrivals.
Still, the firm this month revised down its forecast for the rate of recovery from last year’s drop in tourists. Visa restrictions, fears of immigration agents (including at World Cup matches), an increase in phone searches at borders and, for fans, the exorbitant costs of match tickets and transportation are just some of the barriers keeping people away.
Mr. Shields said that if he didn’t already have his travel authorization and a free place to stay, “I doubt whether I’d probably travel over to the World Cup in the current climate.”
Safety Concerns and Travel Bans
The World Cup, which drew 3.4 million spectators in Qatar in 2022, is a blockbuster pretty much by definition, and organizers expect a large share of bookings, both domestic and international, to come in the final two months.
The U.S. Travel Association said this month that the World Cup has “extraordinary potential to deliver major economic gains” across the United States, but added that “safety concerns, policy perceptions and entry barriers could limit America’s ability to fully capitalize on the opportunity.”
In Seattle, the number of expected domestic World Cup visitors has grown by 30 percent since 2024, said Michael Woody, the chief engagement officer for Visit Seattle. At the same time, the expected number of international visitors has fallen by 17 percent, driven by a particularly sharp drop-off in Canadians.
Fans coming from countries like Haiti and Iran, on a list of 19 countries whose citizens Mr. Trump has barred from entering the United States, won’t be able to attend their national teams’ group stage matches at all. Supporters of soccer powerhouses like Ivory Coast and Senegal, among the 14 African nations whose citizens face tight visa restrictions, could be forced to post bonds of up to $15,000 to enter the country.
Adem Asha, 32, a Turkish citizen who lives in Slovakia, obtained a U.S. visa last year in order to watch Lionel Messi, of Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo, of Portugal, in what could be their last World Cup. But Mr. Asha, who was born in Syria, worried he could still be targeted by immigration agents. He decided this spring to call off his trip, a conclusion that left him “disappointed but also relieved.”
“I really don’t feel like going there, or spending that much money to go there, and then being denied at the port of entry,” said Mr. Asha, who said he did not consider going to Canada or Mexico because the matches he wanted to see, and the other sites he hoped to visit, were all in the United States.
Banking on Late Bookings
U.S. host cities are pinning their hopes on last-minute travelers. Zane Harrington, a spokesman for Visit Dallas, said he expected “a majority” of fans heading to the city to book their stays in the two months remaining before kickoff — or even during the tournament as teams advance out of the group stage.
Martha Sheridan, the chief executive of Meet Boston, the city’s marketing and tourism organization, said ticket sales for Gillette Stadium’s seven matches were “robust,” and that they were split roughly in thirds among New Englanders, domestic visitors from the rest of the country and international travelers.
Demand for hotels in Boston in June is up about 11 percent compared with the same period last year, she said. That increase was smaller than what her team had expected to see by this point when it began planning in 2024, she added, but she felt “very optimistic” that bookings would continue to rise in the coming weeks.
FIFA in recent weeks released blocks of thousands of hotel rooms across the three host countries, while local host committees downsized fan festivals in locations including New Jersey, San Francisco and Seattle, fueling discussion over whether demand was falling short of expectations.
But Jamie Lane, the chief economist and senior vice president for analytics at AirDNA, a company that collects and analyzes short-term-rental data, said it was common practice for major event hosts to scale back their room blocks as they make final preparations for staffing and sponsorships, and that the changes were not a sign of sluggish demand.
A spokesman for FIFA said the changes to fan festivals were not made in response to demand, noting that some of the events will now take place in several neighborhoods rather than in a large central location.
A Bigger, Less Predictable Event
Data published this month by AirDNA shows a rise in short-term-rental bookings, to varying degrees, in every host city. Bookings on group stage game days were up the most in Monterrey, Mexico, rising 564 percent, on average, compared with the same dates last year.
Bookings were up 209 percent in Mexico City, 171 percent in Kansas City, 152 percent in Miami and 52 percent in Toronto, according to AirDNA.
A range of factors, including which teams are competing and to what extent cities regulate short-term rentals, influence those figures. In San Francisco, where short-term-rental bookings were up 28 percent on group stage game days, Anna Marie Presutti, the chief executive of the San Francisco Travel Association, said she thought demand didn’t rise to its full potential because the war in Iran is complicating travel for fans from Jordan and Qatar, two teams that are playing there.
In New York, where short-term rentals are tightly restricted, hotel bookings during the World Cup period are “more or less the same” compared with the same period last year, said Vijay Dandapani, the chief executive of the Hotel Association of New York City.
International travelers generally stay longer and spend more money than Americans, giving them an outsize economic impact. An analysis published by Airbnb in February found that non-Americans coming to the United States for the World Cup planned to visit more destinations and travel three nights longer, on average, than Americans.
Sylvia Weiler, the president of global destinations at the travel marketing and data company Sojern, said the revamped structure of this World Cup — spread across three countries and featuring a record 48 teams — made it hard to project how travel patterns would play out as the tournament approached.
“We talk about what was expected,” Ms. Weiler said. “I would always put a slight caveat, because we did not know what to expect.”
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A 76-year-old man died on Friday after being shoved down the stairs at the 18th Street subway station in Manhattan, and the police arrested a suspect who had been arrested multiple times in recent months and had been discharged from Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward just hours before.
The victim, Ross Falzone, landed on his head at the bottom of the stairs and suffered a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib after a stranger rushed forward and pushed him, the police said.
Mr. Falzone had been walking north on Seventh Avenue toward the subway station in the Chelsea neighborhood on Thursday evening, said Brad Weekes, assistant commissioner of public information for the Police Department. Walking about 30 yards behind him was the stranger, according to surveillance footage from the scene, Mr. Weekes said. As Mr. Falzone reached the station, the man rushed forward and pushed him down the stairs. He was taken to Bellevue where he died shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday.
The death sparked outrage at City Hall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani quickly called for an investigation into how Bellevue handled the discharge of the suspect and suggested that institutional problems at the hospital might have led to the random attack.
“I am horrified by the killing of Ross Falzone and the circumstances that led to it,” Mr. Mamdani said in a news release on Friday, in which he ordered “an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy.”
Police identified the suspect as Rhamell Burke, 32.
In the three months preceding the attack, Mr. Burke was arrested four times, Mr. Weekes said, including an arrest on Feb. 2 in connection with an assault on a Port Authority police officer.
Mr. Burke’s most recent interaction with the police began at around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, when he approached a group of N.Y.P.D. officers outside the 17th Precinct station house on East 51st Street, Mr. Weekes said. He grabbed a stick from a pile of garbage on the street and approached the officers, who told him to drop the stick. When he did, officers placed Mr. Burke in a police vehicle and drove him to Bellevue, where he was admitted to the emergency room at around 3:40 p.m., Mr. Weekes said. Mr. Burke was taken to the hospital’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program for evaluation and treatment, Mr. Weekes said, and was released from the hospital one hour later.
He was just a mile and a half from the hospital when he encountered Mr. Falzone at around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, police officers found Mr. Burke in Penn Station, where they arrested him. He was in custody on Friday evening. It was unclear Friday if Mr. Burke had a lawyer.
The mayor said he had requested help from the New York State Department of Health, which will investigate the decision to release Mr. Burke from Bellevue and conduct a review of similar cases at the hospital. The state agency also will investigate psychiatric evaluation and discharge procedures across NYC Health and Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, according to the news release.
Mr. Falzone was a retired high school teacher who lived alone for many years in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. His friends were in shock on Friday about his death. They shared memories of an affable but private man who rarely spoke about his family or personal life.
Mr. Falzone had been recovering from a recent surgery and seemed more mobile and happy, said Marc Stager, 78, Mr. Falzone’s next-door neighbor on a tree-lined block of West 85th Street. He was known as a cheerful “yapper,” said Briel Waxman, a neighbor. He was the kind of New Yorker who enjoyed chatting with neighbors about historical details of his building and seeing performances at Lincoln Center with friends.
“He was always out and about,” said Ms. Waxman, 35, who often returned to her apartment at midnight or 1 a.m. to find Mr. Falzone arriving home at the same time. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m proud of you or embarrassed of myself,’” she remembered telling him.
Mr. Falzone had wide taste in music — opera, classical, jazz, pop — and neighbors could tell he was home when they heard notes escaping from under his apartment door, Mr. Stager said.
He was “a helpless old guy,” said Mr. Stager, who added that he was “disappointed and shocked, frankly, that somebody could do such a thing” as shove such a defenseless person down the stairs.
When Ms. Waxman moved into the building five years ago, Mr. Falzone was among the first people to welcome her, she said. He once brought a package to her door that had been delivered to the wrong unit and shared that what is now a blank wall in her apartment had once been a fireplace.
Ms. Waxman sat in her living room on Friday and cried as she talked, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She remembered Mr. Falzone as “just overall, nice, talkative, genuine human.”
A suicide note purported to be written by the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein while he was in jail in 2019 uses language that in some cases echoes his past writings to friends and family.
One phrase found in the apparent suicide note — “No Fun” — also appears on a handwritten page found in Mr. Epstein’s jail cell at the time of his death, as well as in emails he sent over the years.
And another saying in the suicide note — “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin!!” — appears in emails that Mr. Epstein had written to people close to him.
A cellmate claimed that Mr. Epstein left the suicide note before he was found unresponsive in their cell weeks before his death. The New York Times reported on the note last week and successfully asked a federal judge to unseal it.
If authentic, the note gives a view into Mr. Epstein’s mind-set before he was found dead at age 66 in August 2019. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
‘NO FUN’
A different handwritten note was found in Mr. Epstein’s cell when he died, and investigators believed it was written by him. In that document, Mr. Epstein complained about jail conditions — burned food, giant bugs and being kept in a locked shower. He concluded it with the underlined phrase, “NO FUN!!”
Mr. Epstein also used the phrase in emails when describing things he was unhappy about, or situations that had not gone his way.
‘watcha want me to do — bust out cryin’
Mr. Epstein used the phrase “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin” with friends, and in messages to his brother, Mark Epstein.
Like the note released by the judge, Mr. Epstein’s emails were often short, with staccato phrases and erratic punctuation. The emails were contained in millions of pages of documents the Justice Department released in response to a law passed last year requiring disclosure of records pertaining to Mr. Epstein.
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