New York City Transit officials yesterday revised downward – to months, from years – their estimate of the time it will take to restore full subway service after a fire Sunday in the Chambers Street station destroyed equipment necessary for safe operation of the A and C lines. But in making the announcement, the government transportation bureaucrats underscored the decrepit nature of the subway system’s infrastructure. They said that they planned to restore the subway’s 1930s-era technology.

We’ve got nothing in particular against the 1930s, but we’d bet that at least a portion of the passengers facing longer, more crowded rides because of the fire would like the option of taking a train to work that runs using modern technology. Other cities have somehow managed to do this. On recent visits to Paris, London, and Boston, for instance, we saw platform signs announcing how many minutes it would take for the next train to arrive.

The point is not to repair the situation by increasing taxes or the state’s already formidable debt. But this city’s grand subway system was built, beginning 100 years ago, by private enterprise. Maybe if the lines were returned to competing private hands at least one transportation firm in the city would aspire to something more up to date, something that might be fixed a little bit faster.