Goodbye MetroCard!

[SocialDemocrat61]

The MetroCard Never Got Its Due
A symbol of New York is gone.

By Matteo Wong

On a chilly December morning, I descended a flight of stairs and entered the New York Transit Museum. Housed in a decommissioned subway station in downtown Brooklyn, the museum was packed with elementary-school children on a field trip. All around me, tour guides shepherded groups of them through the various exhibits. Later on, I heard one guide ask if any of the students knew how to pay for the subway. “You tap a phone,” a child volunteered.

For decades, the default answer has been something else: You swipe a MetroCard. Something like a flimsy yellow credit card, the MetroCard has bound together nearly everyone in the city—real-estate moguls and tenants, Mets and Yankees fans, lifelong New Yorkers like myself and new arrivals from Ohio. Any tourist who visited New York inevitably got one. But now the MetroCard era is about to end. Today is the last day you can purchase a card.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the organization that operates the city’s public-transit system, has for years been phasing out the MetroCard in favor of contactless payment—tapping your phone or a credit card, much as you would at any store. The new system, known as OMNY (“One Metro New York”), will bring together the benefits of technological progress: tens of millions of dollars in savings for both riders and the MTA each year, shorter lines, less plastic waste. Many other large metro systems have already fully transitioned to tap-and-go; in this sense, New York is behind the times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/metrocard-farewell-new-york-subway/685276/

[PJMcK]

1. I liked the MetroCard

It was compact and I never had a problem with it. The new OMNY card is fine but it’s thicker making it a bit more cumbersome.

There was a maybe-rumor that it never got hacked. Don’t know if it’s true but one often sees fare-beaters vaulting the turnstiles. I find this infuriating because I paid my fare as did most of the other subway riders.

[MineralMan]

2. What they don't say is what people who have no credit card or phone will do.

Not ride the train, I guess.

That's the unspoken message here.

Every time I've visited NYC, and there have been many, I used to buy a week's worth of metro rides. Then, the last day I was there, on the last ride I would take, I handed my card to someone who appeared to be down on their luck. "Here, use the rest of this, on me."

No phone? No card? No ride. that's where they're going with this.

[SocialDemocrat61]

3. You don't need a phone

or a credit card to use OMNY.

[MineralMan]

4. Ah, OK. I looked that up.

Thanks!

[Renew Deal]

5. Many of the other cities with tap and go still have cards

And NY is rolling out another card called OMNY, so they are not eliminating the plastic waste unfortunately. And it makes sense. Some people don’t have phones or credit cards or both.

[SocialDemocrat61]

6. I have an OMNY card

and unlike the MetroCard, the Omny card doesn’t expire.