Advertisement: Baruch College School of Public Affairs
Gotham Gazette
Topics / Tech / This Month's Article
Tech Newsletter
Sign up for our monthly Tech newsletter:

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:


Plain-text HTML

The Topic
Tech (shorthand for Technology and Utilities) refers to computers, telecommunications and the Internet, as well as public utilities such as cable, electricity and pay phone services, and the important issues that New Yorkers will increasingly face, including consumer issues, because of the growth of these technology-based industries.
The Context
Technology and telecommunications is economically vital to the success of New York’s largest and most important industries including finance, healthcare, higher education, media and the telecommunications industry itself. According to New York’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), in 2003, telecom carriers, cable companies, Internet service providers and publishers were a $23 billion industry -- over three percent of the city’s economy – employing 43,000 people. New Yorkers are tech savvy; more than two-thirds of us are online. Yet the speed with which new technologies and tech-related industries have developed means that many policy issues are only now beginning to be addressed, such as how to protect consumer privacy online, ensure equal access to new technology, bring government services to the Internet, allow online trading of digital music, and tax e-commerce. While the Internet began as free-wheeling, governments are looking more and more to regulate it, and New York will be among the first places in the nation to feel the impact of these decisions.
Con Ed Talks Continue

Tentative Deal Reach with Union and Con Ed

City Agencies Use New Wireless Network
The Department of Sanitation and other city agencies are using a new city $500 million high-speed wireless secure data network, one of the largest of its kind in the world. By the end of the summer, the network, known as Nycwin, will include about 400 cellular antennas covering 95 percent of the city. It is intended to allow city agencies to use network-connected hand-held devices and tablet computers to increase efficiency and flexibility.
More Delays for Cameras in Subways

New York Leads in Technology Jobs, Report Finds

Type Size: A A
printer friendly format

email this article

most emailed articles
digg this
stumble it
del.icio.us

Put Internet Access On The Trains

by Sarah Myland Kaufman
November 2004

As the Metropolitan Tranportation Authority struggles with its newest round of financial and political woes, the agency is failing to consider a ripe opportunity for peripheral economic development: providing wireless Internet access, commonly called Wi-Fi (for wireless fidelity) on its commuter trains, the Metro-North and Long Island Railroads.

Wireless Internet access is proliferating worldwide, increasing by 145 percent (80 million users!) in 2003, helped along by a propagation of new digital technologies -- WiFi is now available on laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile phones.

While users grow accustomed to having Internet access, they demand more connections, including on their commutes. Market studies repeatedly indicate that ridership would increase tremendously if Wi-Fi were provided. The resource is already being provided for public transportation and commuter rail users in such major cities as London, Paris, Seattle, the Bay Area, Tokyo, and Chennai, India. Lufthansa and other airlines are also already offering Wi-Fi upwards of six miles in the air.

New York City, in comparison, provides Wi-Fi on no transportation mode other than the Hampton Jitney and the LimoLiner luxury bus to Boston. The MTA has responded to queries that it has no intention of providing wireless Internet resources.

But the benefits to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s roughly 12 million monthly train riders would be plentiful. Businesspeople could increase their individual productivity during the ride, which may be up to two hours long from some locales. Sorting through a plethora of new emails on the way to work, accessing the company intranet, or using new Internet-based technologies to make discounted international phone calls, all heighten productivity - so much so that in Sweden, a group has begun advocating for employers to consider commuter rail time as work hours, since employees conduct such a large amount of work during their ride.

The MTA’s trains stop at 28 higher education campuses outside New York City proper. Because it is expected at most institutions that students receive information via email and/or course Web sites, these students surely would appreciate extra time for access. And the trains could also offer entertainment ranging from films, as provided for example by AtomFilms.com (headphones required, of course), to virtual visits to the art scene such as available at Swissart.net.

Expanding work or academic hours and providing such entertainment in this way could prove such a lure as to decrease automobile traffic into the city

Far from further isolating passengers from one another, it might actually have the absolute effect – creating a kind of on-board online community. Hooked-in passengers could participate in networked activities by sharing music (legally) using radio station-like playlist broadcast technologies, play trivia and video games against one another, or use a localized Web-based job-hunting/dating/classifieds service, in which the network matches up potential employees/singles/apartment hunters through pre-completed surveys. (With matches nearby and in-person, convergences would play out faster and more faithfully).

But What Would It Cost?

Expenses are difficult to quantify, but studies of other deployments show an investment by the MTA would hardly dent its new $200 million rainy day fund. If the project still seems too expensive, consider air conditioning, which was seen as an unnecessary investment by train operators in the 1930s and 1940s. No one now questions the necessity of having invested in air-conditioning, and the same will surely be true eventually of Wi-Fi as well.

What’s more, the MTA would quickly see a return on investments through new abilities to streamline its own processes, including enhanced train tracking, improved communications to headquarters and customers, heightened emergency communications resources (redundancy of communication modes is a key). Plus, the potential for mobile ticket collection (think a human EZ-Pass) would lessen paperwork and improve efficiency.

Revenue generation from Wi-Fi use would come in several forms. If the agency partners with one of the multiple wireless access providers, such as PointShot or Boingo, which require users to pay a relatively modest daily or monthly fee for unlimited Wi-Fi use, the agency could surely work out a financial gain. These returns are not minimal: Revenue generation from wireless hotspots is expected to reach $9 billion by 2010 according to industry research. Further income would be derived from direct online advertising, partnerships with music and movie downloading services, and subsidized Web-only discounts at locations serviced by the train line.

An investment in Wi-Fi then – both on the train and, ideally, at the stations as well – would generate revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and improve internal efficiencies. It would also help New York catch up to the other world-class cities that do this already. Is this likely to happen during its current period of fiscal chaos? No. But it would make sense to do so – for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to show its customers it is thinking about their needs.

Sarah Kaufman is a graduate student in urban planning (specializing in infrastructure) at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service

Other Related Articles:
Rating Health Care Behind Bars (2008-06-02)

Barred Medicine: Health Care on Rikers Island (2008-02-11)

Making Coney Island Green (2007-09-19)

Coney Island’s Summer of Reckoning (2007-06-11)

Will Voting Reforms Discourage Minority Voting? (2007-04-27)

Staten Island’s North Shore: A Heated Three-Way Contest (2007-03-26)

Staten Island’s South Shore: Mulia, Tobacco and Tabacco (2007-03-26)

React to this article on our Tech Message Board.

Visit the complete Topic Archives

Sites of Interest from Collegester:
Online Casino | Cross Tattoos | Place Your Link Here!