Tired of subway delays? The MTA wants to fix that by strapping Google smartphones to New York trains
Rob Sarno has been with the New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for 14 years. As assistant chief track officer, he assists maintenance and emergency response — which also meant teaching artificial intelligence systems what a damaged rail sounds like last year.
For a few months starting in September, he helped a pilot program between the MTA and Google Public Sector, the search giant’s division that works with government agencies and educational institutions. The project involves retrofitting Google’s Pixel smartphones to certain subway cars to collect sounds and other data and feed it into Google’s Cloud. The data is then analyzed to spot patterns that could indicate track defects before they become a problem.