By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The MTA is ordering 340 new subway cars equipped with surveillance cameras, the New York Post reported Tuesday.
"Future cars will be camera-ready," MTA spokesman Paul Fleuranges told the Post. "The hardest part of retrofitting old cars to run the lines is that it involved taking the car apart."
The new trains are expected to save money, as rewiring old cars would reportedly be a costly and tedious process.
The move will bring New York closer to London's subway system, which has a famous “ring of steel” network of cameras throughout its metro.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the Brits in May to check out London’s security system.
The mayor is pushing for a New York City system based on the Ring of Steel, which could bring 3,000 surveillance cameras to our subway in five years.
Outfitting the first 290 cars with cameras will cost around $748 million, the Post said.
There are expected to be 34 trains with the camera system by 2015.
The video won’t be watched live, but could be used afterward in the case of a crime or terrorist activity in one of the cars.
