In the next year, students and subway and bus riders won’t need to fumble with a MetroCard to pay the fare.
The MTA board is modifying its contract with the company Cubic, which is behind the OMNY tap-to-pay system, opting not to use the vendor to roll out its integration with the TrainTime app for mobile ticketing on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North.
What You Need To Know
- The MTA is working on backend tech issues to allow 40% of riders to now use OMNY
- OMNY will be integrated with the TrainTime app to be used as a form of payment for both transit and commuter railroad tickets
- Public school and CUNY students and discounted fare participants will get physical OMNY cards this year while the MTA is working to integrate pre-tax commuter benefit cards into the program
“In fact, 70% of our revenue comes from railroad mobile ticketing and through TrainTime,” Jessica Lazarus, MTA’s senior director of commercial initiatives, said. “And so, we’re doubling down on integrations within TrainTime to New York City Transit.”
The app gets 4.9 stars in the app store, so the integration will now just add OMNY as a payment option.
“If you’re a TrainTime customer, you purchase a ticket and check out in TrainTime. You can use an OMNY card or a bank card to pay for that ticket,” Lazarus said.
Some groups hope the integration will lead to further discounts.
“That could mean monthly fair capping,” Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said. “That you could buy a monthly City Ticket, which would allow you to transfer from subway and buses to the railroads.”
But there’s also 40% of transit users that still can’t use OMNY at all because of backend tech issues.
“That includes students, fair fares, reduced fare to a certain extent,” Lazarus said. “There are many customer segments that require technology, that MTA operations and third-party stakeholders. We have to get all those folks coordinated to make sure these customer segments can transition to OMNY. And we have a plan to do it by the end of this year.”
That also includes pre-tax commuter benefit users.
The MTA started a Fair Fares reduced price OMNY pilot ahead of the full rollout.
In the fall, city public school and CUNY students will receive OMNY cards and will eventually be able to add the cards to their phones for contactless payment.
However, there will always be a paper ticket option for the railroads and a physical OMNY card option for all-cash users.
On both the railroads and transit, a physical ticket and OMNY card will always be available for all-cash users.
There are already 70 OMNY vending machines at 37 stations throughout the city.