Sub Optimal

“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.” For anyone with deep fears that AI is taking over everything, the way the NYC Subway is operated may come as a relief. Some of that relief may be thrown off track when you learn that vast swaths of the subway still rely on signal equipment from the Great Depression. From the NYT (Gift Article), a really cool, Inside Look at the Subway’s Archaic Signal System. (I still haven’t gotten over the fact that they stopped using tokens.)