M.T.A. Seeks Designs for Cameras to Be Installed Inside Subway Cars

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has asked two subway car manufacturers to come up with designs for digital security cameras that could be installed inside the cars, officials said yesterday.

Images from the cameras could be used in criminal investigations and could also help investigators in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Michael Lombardi, senior vice president for subways of New York City Transit, said the authority had asked Kawasaki and Alstom, the two companies that are producing the latest model of subway car, known as the R160, to propose ways to add security cameras to the cars. The request was made within the last two months.

He said the authority would review the designs and ultimately seek to test them in a small number of cars, to see if the cameras would withstand the bumps, jolts, dust and stop-and-go conditions of the subway system.

Mr. Lombardi said there was no timeline for the program, adding that any decision on the cameras would hinge in part on the cost.

The authority has ordered a total of 660 cars from the two manufacturers and has options to order up to 1,040 more. The authority has already received 110 cars as part of the first order.

Mr. Lombardi mentioned the cameras during a discussion of subway car purchases at a meeting of a committee of the authority’s board that oversees long-term spending projects.

At the meeting, Norman Seabrook, a board member, proposed installing security cameras that could send live images from a subway train to a central command center in case of an emergency.

Mr. Lombardi said that such a system would be technically difficult to build in the subway system and that the costs would be prohibitive.

If some sort of camera system could be built and installed on subway trains, it would become part of an overall effort at the transportation authority to bolster security after the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001. The authority has been installing security cameras in commuter rail and subway stations, and last November, officials announced plans to install digital cameras in 450 Manhattan buses.

“The goal is to examine where the technology is and whether it’s feasible to do it,” said Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit. “We’ve done that for buses, we’ve done that for stations. Now we have to do that for subway cars.”

In an interview after his presentation at the meeting, Mr. Lombardi said the cameras would store images for a period of time and if a crime were reported, the stored data could be retrieved. He said they might be designed with the capability to download the data via a wireless connection, although that would not include the ability to send live images.

The authority has experimented with surveillance cameras in trains before.

In 2000, amid concerns over crime and vandalism, the authority ran a six-month test of a subway car system using cameras that recorded onto videotape. Mr. Lombardi said the system would have been very expensive to operate, and it was eventually abandoned because there seemed to be little need for it at the time.

“The crime got really reduced, and we didn’t think the terrorists were coming,” he added.

He said that the authority decided to revive the idea after bombings on trains in London and Madrid.