New York City's plan to secure its subways with a next-generation  surveillance network is getting more expensive by the second, and slipping further and further behind schedule.

A new report by the New York State Comptroller's office reveals that "the cost of the electronic security program has grown from $265 million to $450 million, an increase of $185 million or 70 percent." An August 2008 deadline has been pushed back to December 2009, and further delays may be just ahead.

Shortly after a series of bombings in the London Tube, The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York's mass transit systems, signed a contract in 2005 with defense contractor Lockheed Martin to put in thousands of security cameras, electronic tripwires, and digitally-controlled gates into New York's sprawling network of subways. The deal was inked just a few months after MTA chairman Peter Kalikow argued against "wasting money on unproven technology."

At the heart of the program was a network of surveillance cameras, passing what they saw through a set of intelligent video algorithms, designed to spot suspicious behavior: a bag left on the subway platform, a person jumping down to the tracks, a mob running up a down escalator.
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The long-dreamed-of Second Avenue subway will take another important step toward becoming a real thing of concrete and steel today, as the federal government plans to announce that it has formally approved $1.3 billion in financing for the project's first phase.

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said in an interview that the money would be paid out over the next seven years as construction progresses on the subway's first leg, which will have stops on Second Avenue at 92nd, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began preliminary work on the line after Gov. Eliot Spitzer held a ceremonial groundbreaking in April.

Ms. Peters said the federal money would pay for about one-third of the work on the first phase, which is expected to cost more than $4 billion. The first leg is scheduled to open in 2014, and it will run as an extension of the Q line.