Metro

Transit cops getting subwalkie-talkies

Maybe another $8.6 million will do the trick.

After spending $160 million on a failed radio system for cops to communicate in the subways, the city is hoping to overcome the failed network by buying transit cops two-way radios, officials said yesterday.

The improvised solution comes six years after the MTA bet the house on an emergency-communications system that wound up becoming a garbled mess.

With a federal grant for $8.6 million, the city will begin buying 2,700 Motorola dual-band radios and phasing them in next month for transit cops.

The new radios will allow officers to reach commanders above ground — something they can’t do with the current system.

Mayor Bloomberg’s administration hailed the pilot program, which will allow transit cops to directly communicate with officers in their precincts from underground subway platforms.

“This means for the first time, officers in the NYPD Transit Bureau will be able to communicate directly by radio with NYPD precinct officers,” Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna said.

Administration officials were grilled about the communications dead zone during a City Council hearing in the fall, and insisted that, despite the years of delay, they were on the way to finding a solution.

The MTA purchased the network for dual-band radios for some $139 million from EA Technologies in October 2006.

The cost has since increased to $160 million.

Because the NYPD oversees transit cops, the city and the MTA have split the additional charges.

Despite the city’s plan to finally get transit cops into radio contact with their commanders above ground, there’s still a gaping hole in subway communications: emergency medical services.

Emergency medical technicians are not yet part of the interim solution.

“We’re pretty screwed underground,” Emergency Medical Service union spokesman Bob Ungar said.

“For the most part, the subways are a giant dead spot. They need to move very quickly to a Phase 2 to get EMS online, because we’re dealing with life-threatening emergencies in the subway and we shouldn’t have to send a paramedic up to the street to communicate,” he said.

Ungar said paramedics have to operate in the subways the way they have for generations — stationing one EMT atop the station’s stairs to communicate with dispatch or other units.

The Fire Department, which oversees the EMS, has been using the MTA system since 2009, but doesn’t rely on it to communicate with brass and dispatch centers above ground.

Firefighters responding to the subways typically bring their own heavy-duty transmitters with them so they can communicate with those above ground.