BOSTON -- Just in time for New Year's Eve, the riders of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority are seeing the first steps of a $204 million upgrade in security.

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David Boeri Reports On MBTA

NewsCenter 5's David Boeri reported that at South Station and North Station, the MBTA opened two of what will eventually be seven or eight monitoring stations, which it promises will dramatically improve customer service and security throughout the entire MBTA system.

"Before, if you took down our operation control center, you would cripple the MBTA's capacity to monitor what is happening on the system," said MBTA General Manager Michael Mulhern.

Now, state of the art communications systems, including banks of cameras and monitors, allow Felix Adorno, a fare collector turned hub station manager, to see what is happening in 70 stations throughout the system at any given time.

"It is about safety. It is about customer service," said Adorno.

As automated systems replace token collectors, the collectors will be deployed as uniformed customer service agents and security monitors. And Adorno and others will provide customers with real time information about late trains, elevators, or the last train out to Rockport on New Year's Eve.

"As years go by, we always define customer service as the movement of vehicles -- whether or not the line was operating on time, whether or not there was any delays in service. What this does is personalizes our operations control and it puts personnel in direct contact with customers," said Mulhern.

Currently, the Red Line and the Silver Line have 110 cameras. Soon, they could be 300 with the capacity for 100 more.