New York’s low-key senior senator, Chuck Schumer, is urging the MTA to speed up its plans to make both Metro-North and the L.I.R.R. Wifi-enabled, which would mean wireless Internet for all those suitably equipped for it.

Schumer, who would go to the opening of an envelope, held his press conference at Bronxville train station…no word if he ducked into J.C. Fogarty’s for a pint afterwards.

Where my Wifi at?

Schumer wants to know why the transit system’s broadband study is taking so long.

The Journal News reports:

“Why is Metro-North lagging behind? We don’t know,” Schumer said at the Bronxville station. If the MTA passes a plan quickly enough, Schumer said, it may be able to obtain federal stimulus funds for the work under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Rail systems in places like Boston and San Francisco already use or are setting up wireless Internet services. Amtrak is testing a system on its Acela Express trains that run between Washington, D.C., and Boston, passing through New York City.

“They’re almost inevitably an overwhelming success,” Schumer said.

The MTA responded that it just recently placed ads soliciting bids from Wifi providers, which are due in in September. Schumer concedes the rollout will take a few years, but says he’d like to see a pilot program in place in a few months.

Grand Central debuted wireless internet at the Station Master’s office waiting room in May 2008.

Paul Vitale, vice president of government and community relations for the business council, said the MTA should be out in front, providing wireless Internet before others.

“We should be a trendsetter,” he said, “not a follower.”

[image: takeahoodback.com]

Our fellow Metro-North blogger Station Stops wonders why Metro-North doesn’t offer hotspots for wireless webcrawling. He notes that the Gotham Gazette addressed this issue with a well-researched article way back in 2004, when laptops were the size of suitcases and hotspots were something only women over the age of 50 got. (Sorry, sorry.)

Writes the Gazette:

The resource is already being provided for public transportation and commuter rail users in such major cities as London, Paris, Seattle, the Bay Area, Tokyo, and Chennai, India. Lufthansa and other airlines are also already offering Wi-Fi upwards of six miles in the air.

New York City, in comparison, provides Wi-Fi on no transportation mode other than the Hampton Jitney and the LimoLiner luxury bus to Boston. The MTA has responded to queries that it has no intention of providing wireless Internet resources.

Station Stops’ short answer seems to be a dash of ignorance on Metro-North’s part as to what its riders want, some serious financial hurdles, and the simple fact that the seats typically don’t offer enough room to flip open a laptop.

…here’s another killer on the New Haven Line: Only the face-to-face seats near the exit doors allow enough forward space to even *open* a notebook computer. Wifi on today’s New Haven Line could never recoup the costs for this single reason alone.

That, and most riders would rather sleep or sip a beer–two exercises that are generally frowned upon at work.