At La Guardia, Newark, and JFK, there were long lines, delays, and delays. New York 1 had a challenging time getting Pat Kiernan's morning show to run. The Manhattan criminal courtroom was unable to handle arraignments. The DMV did not fulfil its intended role of advancing paperwork. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority pulled through during the worst tech mess in recent memory. Its thousands of underground cars, passenger trains, and buses kept running, transporting about 5 million New Yorkers to work and other important places.

Laughing At Tech, Bill Gates.Photo byChoice Isy From Flickr

The huge transport system, often criticized for moving too slowly, was the only thing that worked pretty well on Friday morning. On the platform formerly known as Twitter, some users, including myself, jokingly posted, "MTA this AM: Can't crash computers you don't have!" accompanied by a picture of the Battlestar Galactica, an interplanetary aircraft carrier that escaped a rebellion led by intelligent robots due to its lack of internet connectivity, making it immune to hacking.

You presented a compelling argument that encapsulates the essence of the MTA's operation: The agency has been very slow to move into the future. This is one reason why no one wants to upset the railroad. They can be counted as follows: The MTA has four lines.

The Late 1990s And The Early 2000s

The construction took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The system, which displays locations on the No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 trains, is quite ancient. It took 11 years and about $230 million to build and put in place. The switches that control train movements connect to the MTA's old stoplight-style signals.

A complex and powerful network enables dispatchers in the central Rail Control Center to track the location of trains at all times and reroute them as necessary. It tells the green-and-red countdown clocks above the platforms what time the next train is coming and tells the PA system when a train is coming.

Officials kept saying that the system would finally reach the lettered lines, but for a number of reasons, it never did.

The countdown clocks stopped working.

The countdown clocks that did break are much more recent. This is where Andrew Cuomo's iron hand comes into play. As governor, Cuomo ordered the MTA to install countdown clocks on lettered lines after years of riders' complaints.

In a hurry to finish, the MTA put together a system that wasn't very well thought out. The system lacks integration with mechanical signals, does not manage switches, and does not establish a connection with the PA. Instead, each train that ran on the lettered lines had a Bluetooth beacon (yes, the same technology that powers your wireless mouse) that told a receiver when the tube got close to a stop.

This caused the LCD screen above the platform to show the latest information. The system uses Bluetooth to estimate a train's path and travel time before its next stop.