Lockheed Martin Is Hired to Bolster Transit Security in N.Y.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/nyregion/23cnd-mta.html?ex=1282449600&en=2d3e480d9cd730a8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Lockheed Martin Is Hired to Bolster Transit Security in N.Y.
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: August 23, 2005
Officials unveiled the high-tech future of transit security in New York City today: an ambitious plan to saturate the subways with 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors and to enable cellphone service in 277 underground stations - but not in moving cars - for the first time.
Moving quickly following the subway and bus bombings in London last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a three-year, $212 million contract to a group of contractors led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which is best known for making military hardware like fighter planes, missiles and antitank systems.
The authority abandoned its earlier reservations about cellphone coverage, agreeing that the benefits of allowing 911 and other calls during emergencies outweighed the potential costs and risks. It invited carriers to submit proposals by Oct. 12. The winning bidder, which would receive a 10-year license, would have to pay for the installation of the wireless network and would be required to disable all calls at the authority's request.
The surveillance and cellphone strategies - together with a police campaign begun last month to check riders' bags and packages - mark a leap toward what some critics have long said could not be done - turning the nation's largest transit system into a target with enough obstacles to deter potential attackers.
"We will try everything, and deploy all technologies possible, to prevent an attack from happening," said Katherine N. Lapp, the authority's executive director.
The new security measures will be in place in the subway, along with the authority's two commuter railroads and nine bridges and tunnels and busy transit hubs at Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station and Times Square. While transit agencies in Boston and Houston have experimented with so-called "intelligent video" software, and London has far more cameras, the New York plan marks the first time a transit system has tried to marry several advanced security technologies at once, experts said.
At the center of the effort will be a dense network of cameras that can zoom, pivot and rotate, all while transmitting and recording images of sensitive areas, from dark tunnels under the East River to bustling subway platforms in Midtown. Each camera will capture distances up to 300 feet and will cost about $1,200. A selected location could have 2 to 30 cameras.
Mark D. Bonatucci, a Lockheed Martin program director, who will oversee the effort and who plans to move to the New York area with about a dozen colleagues, showed off a bank of video screens that will be part of a new computer-aided dispatch system. He demonstrated how security officials, to be based at eight control centers, might respond to two scenarios.
In the first, a person tries to enter a secure facility using an expired electronic access card; a computer detects and signals the security breach on an aerial photograph of the area. Officials would pinpoint the site, watch the attempted entry on a video monitor and send a security officer to check out the situation.
In the second, a briefcase is left on a busy Midtown subway platform. As a camera beams live images, software can differentiate the moving people from the motionless package, sending off an alert about an unattended, suspicious object. Police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs would be sent to the platform.
The cameras will be installed in the next few "weeks and months," Ms. Lapp said, while the underlying software and computer systems are designed. The contractors will also devise a new radio communications system for the authority's 700-member police force, which patrols the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad. (The New York Police Department monitors the subways.)
A handful of subway riders interviewed at Times Square yesterday expressed strong support for electronic surveillance.
Rashida Padilla, 26, a business student at Monroe College in the Bronx, said the London bombings convinced her that the authority and the police should take strong measures to tighten security. "It's just scary," Ms. Padilla said of her daily commute. "I'm for anything that they want to do. It makes me feel more safe to have the searches and the cameras."
Jerry Monchik, 53, an electrician who lives in Staten Island and takes the No. 1 train in Manhattan, said that while terrorists "will do what they want to do, no matter what," it was comforting to know that more activity will be recorded in the subways. It will help with robberies and muggings, and if there is an attack, they can catch people more easily," he said. While most experts doubt that technology could stop a determined suicide bomber, Ms. Lapp said the emphasis on surveillance was the best approach now available. "Obviously, this system, we hope, will detect a terrorist before an incident happens - not just be able, for forensic purposes after an incident happens, to identify who the terrorist is," she said.
The Lockheed Martin contract, which includes optional extensions for maintenance work through September 2013, will focus on physical security. A second big contract, the details of which will be completed by the end of this year, will focus on equipment that can detect biological, chemical and radiological agents in the transit network.
Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., prevailed over two competitors: the Science Applications International Corporation, an employee-owned research and engineering firm in San Diego, and Siemens, the German electrical engineering and electronics conglomerate. The three firms submitted proposals on July 22.
Lockheed Martin, along with other defense giants like the Northrop Grumman Corporation, had participated in talks between the authority and a specialized Army unit in 2002 and 2003. Those talks ended because, the authority says, the military asked for too much control.
"We understand the need for immediate action to protect the M.T.A. operations," said Judy F. Marks, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, the business unit that will oversee the contract. "We also understand the need to expedite the movement of people and goods in the metropolitan New York area."
The system has limits. The cameras cannot determine whether a suspicious object has been left behind in a garbage can, for example. Hiring a military firm to create a security system is a fateful step in the authority's counterterrorism efforts, which have proceeded haltingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It budgeted $591 million for counterterrorism in 2002, but as of last month had spent only a fraction of that amount. It has come under pressure to move more quickly.
For the past 18 months, the authority has surveyed its universe of existing security devices, which include some 5,700 closed-circuit television cameras, many of them antiquated or even obsolete.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg issued a statement tonight praising the authority's actions. "I commend the M.T.A. for taking this important step to increase the security of our mass transit system, and urge them to make seeing it through to completion their highest priority. They need to move forward immediately with installing more cameras in subway stations as they are an important deterrent and will be an invaluable investigative tool for the N.Y.P.D."
Lockheed Martin will work with six partners, including Systra Engineering, a transportation engineering firm in Bloomfield, N.J.; the Intergraph Corporation, a software and data management company in Madison, Ala., and the Cubic Corporation of San Diego, a transportation and military business that helped establish the MetroCard system in the subways in the 1990's.
The other partners are Lenel Systems International, a security technology company in Rochester; Arinc, a transportation communications firm in Annapolis, Md.; and Slattery Skanska, part of the large Swedish construction firm Skanska.
Lockheed Martin Is Hired to Bolster Transit Security in N.Y.
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: August 23, 2005
Officials unveiled the high-tech future of transit security in New York City today: an ambitious plan to saturate the subways with 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors and to enable cellphone service in 277 underground stations - but not in moving cars - for the first time.
Moving quickly following the subway and bus bombings in London last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a three-year, $212 million contract to a group of contractors led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which is best known for making military hardware like fighter planes, missiles and antitank systems.
The authority abandoned its earlier reservations about cellphone coverage, agreeing that the benefits of allowing 911 and other calls during emergencies outweighed the potential costs and risks. It invited carriers to submit proposals by Oct. 12. The winning bidder, which would receive a 10-year license, would have to pay for the installation of the wireless network and would be required to disable all calls at the authority's request.
The surveillance and cellphone strategies - together with a police campaign begun last month to check riders' bags and packages - mark a leap toward what some critics have long said could not be done - turning the nation's largest transit system into a target with enough obstacles to deter potential attackers.
"We will try everything, and deploy all technologies possible, to prevent an attack from happening," said Katherine N. Lapp, the authority's executive director.
The new security measures will be in place in the subway, along with the authority's two commuter railroads and nine bridges and tunnels and busy transit hubs at Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station and Times Square. While transit agencies in Boston and Houston have experimented with so-called "intelligent video" software, and London has far more cameras, the New York plan marks the first time a transit system has tried to marry several advanced security technologies at once, experts said.
At the center of the effort will be a dense network of cameras that can zoom, pivot and rotate, all while transmitting and recording images of sensitive areas, from dark tunnels under the East River to bustling subway platforms in Midtown. Each camera will capture distances up to 300 feet and will cost about $1,200. A selected location could have 2 to 30 cameras.
Mark D. Bonatucci, a Lockheed Martin program director, who will oversee the effort and who plans to move to the New York area with about a dozen colleagues, showed off a bank of video screens that will be part of a new computer-aided dispatch system. He demonstrated how security officials, to be based at eight control centers, might respond to two scenarios.
In the first, a person tries to enter a secure facility using an expired electronic access card; a computer detects and signals the security breach on an aerial photograph of the area. Officials would pinpoint the site, watch the attempted entry on a video monitor and send a security officer to check out the situation.
In the second, a briefcase is left on a busy Midtown subway platform. As a camera beams live images, software can differentiate the moving people from the motionless package, sending off an alert about an unattended, suspicious object. Police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs would be sent to the platform.
The cameras will be installed in the next few "weeks and months," Ms. Lapp said, while the underlying software and computer systems are designed. The contractors will also devise a new radio communications system for the authority's 700-member police force, which patrols the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad. (The New York Police Department monitors the subways.)
A handful of subway riders interviewed at Times Square yesterday expressed strong support for electronic surveillance.
Rashida Padilla, 26, a business student at Monroe College in the Bronx, said the London bombings convinced her that the authority and the police should take strong measures to tighten security. "It's just scary," Ms. Padilla said of her daily commute. "I'm for anything that they want to do. It makes me feel more safe to have the searches and the cameras."
Jerry Monchik, 53, an electrician who lives in Staten Island and takes the No. 1 train in Manhattan, said that while terrorists "will do what they want to do, no matter what," it was comforting to know that more activity will be recorded in the subways. It will help with robberies and muggings, and if there is an attack, they can catch people more easily," he said. While most experts doubt that technology could stop a determined suicide bomber, Ms. Lapp said the emphasis on surveillance was the best approach now available. "Obviously, this system, we hope, will detect a terrorist before an incident happens - not just be able, for forensic purposes after an incident happens, to identify who the terrorist is," she said.
The Lockheed Martin contract, which includes optional extensions for maintenance work through September 2013, will focus on physical security. A second big contract, the details of which will be completed by the end of this year, will focus on equipment that can detect biological, chemical and radiological agents in the transit network.
Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., prevailed over two competitors: the Science Applications International Corporation, an employee-owned research and engineering firm in San Diego, and Siemens, the German electrical engineering and electronics conglomerate. The three firms submitted proposals on July 22.
Lockheed Martin, along with other defense giants like the Northrop Grumman Corporation, had participated in talks between the authority and a specialized Army unit in 2002 and 2003. Those talks ended because, the authority says, the military asked for too much control.
"We understand the need for immediate action to protect the M.T.A. operations," said Judy F. Marks, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, the business unit that will oversee the contract. "We also understand the need to expedite the movement of people and goods in the metropolitan New York area."
The system has limits. The cameras cannot determine whether a suspicious object has been left behind in a garbage can, for example. Hiring a military firm to create a security system is a fateful step in the authority's counterterrorism efforts, which have proceeded haltingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It budgeted $591 million for counterterrorism in 2002, but as of last month had spent only a fraction of that amount. It has come under pressure to move more quickly.
For the past 18 months, the authority has surveyed its universe of existing security devices, which include some 5,700 closed-circuit television cameras, many of them antiquated or even obsolete.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg issued a statement tonight praising the authority's actions. "I commend the M.T.A. for taking this important step to increase the security of our mass transit system, and urge them to make seeing it through to completion their highest priority. They need to move forward immediately with installing more cameras in subway stations as they are an important deterrent and will be an invaluable investigative tool for the N.Y.P.D."
Lockheed Martin will work with six partners, including Systra Engineering, a transportation engineering firm in Bloomfield, N.J.; the Intergraph Corporation, a software and data management company in Madison, Ala., and the Cubic Corporation of San Diego, a transportation and military business that helped establish the MetroCard system in the subways in the 1990's.
The other partners are Lenel Systems International, a security technology company in Rochester; Arinc, a transportation communications firm in Annapolis, Md.; and Slattery Skanska, part of the large Swedish construction firm Skanska.