Senior straphangers and others who get a decreased fare from the MTA can now cease swiping and begin tapping, because the company swaps out reduced-fare MetroCards for the fashionable OMNY system.
MTA Chairperson Janno Lieber introduced Friday that the transit authority has began mailing the brand new tap-to-pay playing cards to the 1.5 million riders already enrolled within the reduced-fare program.
“Those are principally seniors — folks over 65 — and people with medical disabilities,” Lieber stated. “It is the largest single group that has not truly been on the OMNY system up until now.”
The four-year-old system, a successor to New York’s iconic yellow MetroCards, permits riders to pay their means just by placing a tap-to-pay-enabled bank card, debit card or good telephone close to a turnstile reader.
The OMNY card — which, very similar to a MetroCard, will be bought with money or a bank card at merchandising machines all through the system — has largely been billed as a backup to that system, marketed towards these with out financial institution accounts or good telephones.
Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Every day Information
Senior New Yorkers and different eligible riders can apply for the reduced-fare program on the MTA’s customer support heart on Stone St. in Manhattan. (Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Every day Information)
However whereas seniors and different reduced-fare riders have been in a position to register to get their low cost by means of tapping their financial institution playing cards since 2022, solely 75,000 of the 1.5 million reduced-fare riders have performed so.
At the moment, roughly 65% of all subway riders use the OMNY system to pay their means. Eighty p.c of these paying full fare use a tap-to-pay technique.
New candidates to the reduced-fare program can enroll and obtain an OMNY card on the MTA’s important customer support heart, at 3 Stone St., in Decrease Manhattan. Transit officers say the service will probably be expanded to different service facilities systemwide early subsequent yr.
The playing cards will be refilled at OMNY-card merchandising machines, which the MTA has been quietly including all through the system over the previous yr.
Jamie Torres-Springer, MTA’s head of building and growth —who had been tasked with kickstarting this system after early delays — stated there at the moment are some 400 merchandising machines all through the system’s 472 stations.
“We expect by the middle of next year we’ll have the card vending machines fully rolled out in the system,” Torres-Springer stated.
Initially Revealed: December 13, 2024 at 6:37 PM EST
