Just swipe the card: as in the New York subway using OS / 2

Vintage technology for decades worked in the structures of the New York subway - and sometimes surfaced in unexpected ways. An article for OS / 2 fans

New Yorker and the tourist come to the 42-street subway station, also known as Times Square. Sounds like the beginning of a joke. Actually no: one of them is glad that he got there; the other is terribly annoying. One knows how to get out of there with maximum speed. The other is not - he does not speak English. New Yorker and the tourist are different people, but at the moment they are one. Both are subjected to the vagaries of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the unbelievable reliability of the average success of the early 1990s operating system.

On an average working day in 2016, the New York subway transported 5.7 million people [for comparison: in the Moscow metro this figure is 6.7 million / approx. trans.]. It has been the highest average since 1948. If you ask the average New Yorker, he will most likely say: “That's it?” Disbelief is understandable, since there are 8 million permanent residents in the city, and during peak hours or holidays, the number of people sometimes swells up to 20 million. like to catch a taxi.


Turnstiles of the New York subway

It is difficult to bet on the future, but the MTA, in fact, was engaged in precisely this

In March, Tedium wrote about IBM's high stakes on microkernels for operating systems, which also included a version of their well-known OS / 2 OS. It describes in detail what losses the company suffered because of this rate. However, IBM's confidence in the success of its OSes has made other companies make similar assumptions.
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However, the biggest bet was made by MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which needed to come up with a way to get rid of tokens and go into an era in which everything should be digital. The result was the iconic MetroCard card. A thin slice of yellow plastic with a noticeable black stripe has become the main subject in the wallets of New Yorkers since its release in 1993.

The history of the current method of access to the New York subway is interesting in details of the public infrastructure and how it serves the public. But before that it will be useful to understand how the current system appeared. Because when you build something as important as the New York subway, it should eventually work as intended.

You, in fact, have only one attempt - and any mistakes are likely to turn into billions in repair costs and annoyance of millions of people. Among the many choices, one of the most reliable choices has become one of the biggest mistakes of IBM.


Five special MetroCards cards dedicated to David Bowie and paid for by Spotify. A few weeks in the fall of 2018, the company turned the Broadway-Lafayette Street / Bliquer Street station into the West Village into a pop art monument in honor of the artist who lived nearby. In addition to using the back side of MetroCards for advertising (and where without it), the MTA constantly offers special editions of cards for sponsorship of major brands. Variants of Supreme cards cost a lot of money, but sometimes the MTA scores on brands and just does something cool.

Like an IBM OS, blown up by a fuss, but not becoming something special, found a home for itself and served millions

The article about OS / 2 mentioned many interesting details about microkernels and other things, but in this article the fact that this OS still had its supporters was the most relevant to the topic. Well, where do without it.

The reason MTA ultimately decided to use OS / 2, digitizing some aspects of the underground, reflects the hype that accompanied the launch of the OS in the early 1990s. However, conversations and development began a few years before. Without much adverts, Microsoft and IBM worked on the next generation of operating systems. Although the current history of the story assumes that Gates and Microsoft made IBM with their MS-DOS, at that time IBM was clearly considered different.

Instead of mourning lost profits, IBM seemed to be aware of a lack of knowledge, and began developing the next-generation operating system from fundamental fundamentals, first with Microsoft. This initiative, as you might have guessed, ended for IBM in approximately the same way as the MS-DOS story. However, in a very short amount of time in the late 1980s, the directors of the MTA were just looking for ways to give up the tokens in the subway and replace them with prepaid cards. The advantages were obvious - it made it easier to raise the fare and enter the zone payment. Passengers had the opportunity to choose between a single trip or a round trip, and an unlimited version appeared for a certain period of time.

To enter this revolutionary update, MTA turned to a reputable company, IBM. It made sense at the time.


OS / 2 version 2.1

OS / 2 and MTA consultant Neil Waldhauer said in an email: "It was several years during which you could make a career bet on OS / 2."

To understand why, you need to understand that time. Waldhauer continues: “It has been a development since when there wasn’t Linux and Windows yet. OS / 2 seemed like a safe choice for the future. ”

For lack of options, MTA chose the best. And it worked for several decades as one of the key software components in a rather complex system.

He could have survived further, as Waldhauer says: “Let me say that while MetroCard will be supported by the system, OS / 2 will continue to work.”

A very interesting point, since the MTA is just in the process of abandoning MetroCard in favor of various forms of contactless payment. The transition should improve work efficiency and help the MTA collect additional revenue.

It sounds interesting, but it’s easy to see the problems in this - if you study the strange feature of the current MetroCard system.


My MetroCard, the June version of the "Gay Pride Month". Interestingly, it will last four months longer than the standard MetroCard, which can only be used for a year.

Mysterious magnetic stripe, and how it affects people's lives

In short, the transition from tokens to MetroCard took years, and was far from smooth. Tokens officially ceased to use in 2003. By that time, MetroCards accepted at all stations of the city - but no one liked it.

Getting into the subway is usually easy, but there are complaints about posting cards everywhere. And many problems, to all appearances, were related to stupid cliffs of communication between different parts of the system. Although OS / 2 is used to connect different parts of the subway system to a large mainframe, the standards for incoming components were not the highest. Turnstiles in any station of NYC are notorious for their capriciousness - but they were able to work with the system from IBM.


ATMs also used to rely on OS / 2

Despite the failure of OS / 2 in the consumer market, it was incredibly reliable, which ensured its long life in industrial and industrial systems - and ATMs were one example of the application. Waldhauer said: “Remembering all the operating systems used in the MTA, I can say that OS / 2 is probably the most reliable part of the system, with the exception of the mainframe.” It is still used in the NYC subway, in 2019. IBM has long abandoned it, and even allowed another company to maintain software for it in 2001. (Today, a company called Arca Noae sells the officially supported version of OS / 2, ArcaOS , although most of its users are in a situation similar to the MTA).

OS / 2 in the NYC subway plays the role of a conductor. It helps to integrate the various parts used by people with parts that people do not use. Waldhauer notes: “There are no OS / 2 applications in the system that users would work with. OS / 2 is mainly used as an interface between a complex mainframe database and simple computers used daily in the subway and buses. But in general, computers on OS / 2 are spread throughout the system. ”

We are talking about OSes, designed in the late 80s, released in the early 90s, as part of the complex relationship between the two tech giant. MTA had to ignore much of this story, because it had already made a decision, and changing the course would have cost a lot of money.

Coordination of the backend and the devices New Yorkers encounter and tourists happen to be ridiculously uncoordinated. If you want to imagine this, go back to Waldhauer: “I have a feeling that the developers planned that MetroCard would work with the mainframe database, and some random electronic devices would link all this together.”


Tokens of the New York subway, by date of use, from left to right: 1953–1970; 1970–1980; 1979–1980; 1980–1986; 1986-1995; 1995–2003.

Let's talk now about the magnetic stripe. The black bar below any MetroCard, regardless of branding, should just work. How it actually works is, for obvious reasons, a secret.

“People hacked into MetroCard,” said Waldhauer. “If you can look at magnetic coding, then the bits are so large that you can see them in a magnifying glass. Magnetic stripe encoding is so secret that I have never seen it. It's amazing what people can do for a free trip. ”

Does it matter today? Yes, in principle, it does not. MTA made it clear that it was going to make contactless payments, as it did with the Oyster Card in London. However, this process has its own problems. They even hired the former head of the London system, and set the ultimate goal of completely getting rid of MetroCard.


The newly launched OMNY system, which will roll out in the next few years

In the future, people will be able to enter the subway of New York in the same way as the turn on the roller coaster in the Disneyland. This process will require a person to have with him a device connected to the Internet that will take you through the turnstiles, whether it is a telephone or a smart watch. If you're lucky, we will have a new system with MetroCard. But there is no guarantee of this.

Practical and technological needs that created the subway in New York, affect virtually all residents of the city. New Yorkers are switching to new payment methods, and those who can pay for it will do just that. And the rest will sit at home.