The city will distribute free OMNY Cards instead of MetroCards to the city’s 1.1 million public school students next year, part of a push by the MTA to get more transit riders using the tap-and-go fare payment system.
MTA officials said Monday that the distribution of OMNY Cards will take place before the start of the 2024-25 school year. Public schools distribute MetroCards to students that let them ride to and from school, and related activities, for free.
While students will have to use physical OMNY Cards for the next school year, eventually the MTA says students will be able to load their free trip benefits onto their smartphone.
“This coming school year will be OMNY Cards instead of this whole incredible menu of MetroCards that the DOE system has historically been buying, it’ll be just one OMNY Card per student,” said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber. “But after that, for the future, it’ll be all on the phone.”
As an added perk, Lieber said that once students are using OMNY, the agency may finally be able to allow back-door boarding on local buses, which would speed up commutes on the nation’s slowest jitneys. OMNY readers at the back door of city buses are currently unused.
The MTA initially planned to retire the MetroCard and switch over fully to the tap-to-pay system by 2023. But the agency now says the MetroCard is here to stay indefinitely with the OMNY project not expected to be complete until 2026, as the MTA seeks to roll out the program for students and other discount-fare riders.
The MTA launched OMNY for those with senior and disability discounts in 2022, but now says the 1.5 million riders with a half-price MetroCard will have an OMNY Card mailed to them by the end of this year. Meanwhile, some low-income riders with Fair Fares are participating in a pilot program where benefits can be loaded onto OMNY Cards.
OMNY Cards are available to anyone from some retail outlets and at vending machines in stations. But unlike ubiquitous MetroCard machines, those without a smartphone or bank card can only get an OMNY Card at machines in 37 subway stations, though that number is growing.
Fewer than half of riders are paying their fare using OMNY, the MTA said Monday, with larger numbers of riders using it on the subway than the bus. About three-quarters of full-fare riders use OMNY, but just 6% of those with reduced fares are using it.
OMNY readers were fully installed on all subway turnstiles and buses by the end of 2020. But OMNY — which stands for “One Metro New York” — was originally meant to unite all of the transit options in New York under a seamless fare-payment experience, with the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North, and PATH intended to be included.
The Port Authority has launched a separate payment system for the PATH train, called TAPP (Total Access PATH Payment), which was developed by Cubic, the same company that developed both OMNY and the MetroCard.
Meanwhile, the MTA on Monday finally detailed how it will roll out OMNY onto the LIRR and Metro-North: instead of having contactless readers at stations like in the subway, OMNY will be integrated as a payment option into the popular TrainTime app.
“It was not anticipated or scoped that we were going to gate every one of the railroad stations. It’s simply not practically possible, it wouldn’t make sense for the riders,” said Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s construction and development chief. “What we have here is a contactless system that is integrated, and that’s the real value that we’re bringing to this.”
The MTA is set to vote Wednesday on whether to drop Cubic as a contractor for the railroad integration, to be replaced by Masabi and Scheidt & Bachmann.
Read more: Congestion Pricing Supporters Rally for Hochul to Act
