News
Driving blind: NYC subways steered by 1930s tech, paper maps and a lot of hope

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By Stephen Nessen
Published Jan 14, 2025 at 6:01 a.m. ET

The safe movement of subway trains on and off the Manhattan Bridge in downtown Brooklyn relies on what was once one of the most state-of-the-art, sophisticated systems in the world. ... But that was the 1930s. ... Nearly a century later, the technology that direct trains through the array of tracks known as the DeKalb interlocking looks like it belongs in a museum.

Each day, around 350,000 people ride the B, D, N, Q and R lines that pass through the interlocking. Regular commuters in Brooklyn are likely familiar with the area — it’s where trains frequently pause for seconds or minutes near the DeKalb Avenue station so others can pass. That delicate dance is managed by MTA staff behind a locked door, operating equipment invented when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in the White House.

The MTA says it urgently needs to bring the transit system into the new millennium, and is asking Albany lawmakers to approve a $65 billion modernization plan to help. Fulfilling that plan would almost certainly require the imposition of new taxes. Some $5.4 billion of that money would go toward upgrading signals on sections of the A, N, Q, R, W, J, Z and Rockaway shuttle lines, which would make the room at DeKalb obsolete.

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Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email snessen@wnyc.org.