An episode of “America’s Got Talent” about subways, it was not.

The “Genius Transit Challenge” conference on Thursday — sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which will award three $1 million prizes for the brightest ideas for improving New York City’s subway system — was more of a sober-minded seminar for public-transit mavens who filled the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan.

With its spotlights and glamorous balconies, the venue is a setting more familiar to fashion models and rock stars than experts discussing New York’s transportation system, which has deteriorated to the point that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday a state of emergency for the subway network.

“We need new ideas,” Governor Cuomo told the audience after noting that 700 subway cars in the system have passed their expiration date. “They literally should be in a museum,” the governor declared.

Joseph J. Lhota, the newly reinstated chairman of the authority, served as a businesslike master of ceremonies, moderating a panel discussion with transit officials from cities including Toronto, Paris and Zurich. They talked about how they had modernized their subways — including, in Paris, bringing driverless trains to one of the Metro system’s oldest and busiest lines. Officials from Japan talked about holding a smart watch up to a turnstile to enter the Tokyo Metro. No MetroCard needed — imagine that.