M.T.A. HAL 9000 in the subway? Nope. It’s the M.T.A.’s new high-concept passenger intercom. It resembles a friendly robot, as if the Subway of Tomorrow had beamed back evidence of advanced technology to our primitive subterranean present. Its sleek, oddly humanoid body, stainless steel with a pulsing blue light at the top, looks as indigenous to the New York City subway as a Modernist sculpture.
Make your acquaintance with the “Help Point,” a next-generation subway intercom that allows passengers waiting on the platform to quickly and clearly contact station agents and subway personnel for travel information, emergency help or even a heart-to-heart chat (although transit officials may frown on that last option).
The device, developed over five years, made its debut on Tuesday in two stations on the Lexington Avenue line as part of a $600,000 pilot program to see if the machines can handle the punishing environment of the underground. Riders at the 23rd Street and Brooklyn Bridge stations can find the units mounted on iron support beams along the platform.
The idea, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is to vastly improve the ability of riders to contact subway authorities from the cellphone-less zone of a station platform.
M.T.A. An old-school subway platform intercom. They are not loved.The Help Point has two buttons — green for information, red for emergency — and is equipped with digital audio for a crisp signal, a stark change from the fizzy, squawking intercoms now installed in the system. (The current iteration, a dreary gray box that can be easily overlooked, is often criticized by riders for not working at all.)
With multiple Help Points installed in each station, emergency responders can decipher the exact location of the caller. A blue light pulsates atop the device when it is activated.
The intercom is the brainchild of Antenna Designs, the Manhattan design company that also created the MetroCard kiosk and the brightly lighted blue-and-steel interiors of the subway’s more modern batch of train cars. In 2006, the Help Point was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
“With its careful mix of easy visibility and non-alarming appearance, it sends the right message about its dual function,” the designers wrote in a description of the device. The “calming blue light provides a sense of safety and security during everyday activities, symbolizing the human presence that is always just a touch of a button away.”
Help Points could be expanded to stations throughout the subway system “if the pilot goes well,” according to the transportation authority, although officials did not offer a time line for that assessment.