If you count in the financial constrait that service is working under, sure. But meassuring the speed/position of a rail vehicle on a piece of track reliably is not an unsolvable feat of hardware engineering. It is done elsewhere and it is done elsewhere where similar constraints for uptime exist.

Theoretically by that logic we could argue that trains are hard because making the motors for them is non-trivial. It is non-trivial, and depending on your standards it might be even hard. But it is essentially a solved problem. You want a motor? You get one from the big companies, let them design one or use one from an existing similar train. Same thing goes for measuring speed. You want it? Create a team researching which ones to get.

Like in many places NY infrastructure has it's best days long behind itself and it is a wonder it still works. That infrastructure is in dire need of modernization and it has been for a while. The reason this is not done is not because it is hard or impossible to do. It is just expensive.