A running joke about the MTA is the one thing they are on time and efficient about is taking your money—but the rollout of the MTA's New Fare Payment System OMNY has been far from on time and efficient. The agency launched its effort to replace the aging MetroCard system in 2016 and awarded a contract to Cubic Transportation Systems, which built out the original MetroCard and is one of the largest fare payment system developers in the world (including Oyster in London, PATH's Smartlink, TAP in Los Angeles, Clipper in San Francisco, and Ventra in Chicago).
After several years of development, the OMNY rollout began on a very strong foot with the rollout of contactless payment readers to NYC Subways and Buses from May 2019. OMNY readers were installed at all subway stations, on all NYC local, SBS, and express buses, and on the Staten Island Railway by the end of December 2020. Even with a several month hiatus for the COVID-19 pandemic, the rollout of the contactless readers was pretty expeditious. The MTA has started to leverage the increased technical capabilities of the new system and introduced fare capping last year, though other than that it has not begun to leverage the full capabilities of the system. The adoption of contactless payments for the subways and buses has been pretty robust so far, with more than a billion subway trips taken using OMNY and contactless.
But since the MTA wrapped up the installation of OMNY readers on the subways and buses, the program has largely fallen flat in its face. The MTA's launch of the physical OMNY farecard and the inclusion of reduced fare riders into OMNY set off months behind schedule and uptake has been slow. The rollout of OMNY vending machines has been repeatedly delayed, stretching existing ticketing facilities thin. The launch of a new OMNY app with mobile account management and a new mobile ticketing system has also been delayed by years. The MTA has offered very few details on how OMNY will work on the LIRR and Metro-North, where there have been no signs of life on progress towards a new fare payment system.
The end result is a very poor and cumbersome experience for riders. While riders in cities with properly managed transit agencies can use a single farecard to seamlessly travel across as many as more than two dozen different transit operators, New Yorkers will continue to be frustrated by differing and disjointed fare payment systems. Riders will have to carry around as many as four different farecards going forward (or manage and keep track of multiple different online accounts for the services that support contactless payments), as well as download separate mobile ticketing applications and carry around change for those smaller operators left out.
Having a fractured and outdated fare payment system can also discourage transit ridership. In addition to being a major deterrent for riders who can't keep all of the ins and outs of the dozens of different fare structures and systems in place throughout the region, the lack of modern payment options is a significant hinderance to using transit in the outer portions of our region. Many local buses outside NYC only accept exact change, either in coins (or on the more 'modern' bus routes, dollar bills as well). If you do not have exact change, you can't ride. How many people carry around $2 to $3 in quarters on a regular basis? How many people these days carry around any cash at all? Without a bunch of quarters jingling in your pocket, you simply can't take the bus in many outlying towns, even if you wanted to.
A fractured fare payment system also means that future efforts towards harmonization of fare policies, expansion of free and discounted transfers, etc. will become all the more harder. It will be significantly more difficult to offer free transfers between PATH and NYCT Subway in the future, for example, since they will have two distinct and non-interoperable fare payment systems. Incompetence and insularity from the region's major transit agencies today will impede progress for decades to come.
Isn't open loop/contactless just as good?
Some have argued—including spokespeople for several of the region's transit operators—that contactless or "open loop" payments, where you can tap your credit/debit card or mobile wallet directly to the fare reader to pay, are just as good. If you have a contactless credit card and can just tap it to the reader everywhere you go, what difference does it make if the backend systems processing the transactions are different?
Well, there are a couple of shortcomings to that. The long and short of it is that contactless payments get quite a bit more complicated and difficult to manage for both riders and operators once scaled to more complicated fare structures. Right now, the MTA is only handling six different types of fares on the OMNY system—and they are all fixed fare tables, with no zones or any sort of complexity:
- NYCT Full-fare and transfer
- NYCT Half-fare and transfer
- NYCT Express Bus Full-fare and transfer
- NYCT Express Bus Half-fare and transfer
- AirTrain JFK Full-fare
- NYCT Full-fare single ride ticket
Once you start trying to expand new fare payment systems to other operators (and, in particular, the railroads), it gets a lot more complicated. MTA is currently just barely managing 6 different types of fares on OMNY. The LIRR has 109 different types of fares and 12 fare zones with 151 different combinations (1, 3, 4, Far Rockaway, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 81, 84, 91 with indirect fares via zones 1, 3, 4, or 7). NJTransit takes this to the extreme with 63 different bus fare zones (some of which overlap each other), 46 rail fare zones (54 if you count the West of Hudson lines, which they handle ticketing for), and 4 light rail fare zones, which are priced according to 4 different bus fare tables (intrastate tickets are cheaper than interstate tickets, etc.) and 3 different rail fare tables (Hoboken Division fares are priced differently than Newark Division fares depending on what terminal you are travelling to, and the Atlantic City Rail Line has its own (lower) fare pricing model).
An overreliance on contactless payments also overcomplicates and makes more difficult fare payment if you are anybody other than an adult paying only full one-way fares.
- Half-fare eligible riders must apply to multiple agencies: contactless payments are easy for people paying the regular, full-fare. However, for riders eligible for half-fares must apply to the transit operator to avail of discounted pricing. This impacts, at a minimum: senior citizens, Medicare beneficiaries, and people with disabilities. New York City residents earning below certain income thresholds are also eligible for half-fares on subways and buses as part of the NYC Fair Fares program. With a single regional farecard system, a rider could apply to one agency and be able to use a farecard (or contactless card/device linked to their account) with any operator across the region. Without integration, riders must make a separate application to each agency—one to MTA, one to NJTransit, one to ConnDOT, one to PATH, and in some cases additional applications to other operators like NYC Ferry, the suburban bus operators, etc.—to qualify for reduced fares. With the exception of NYCT and PATH, transit operators will generally accept the reduced fare or paratransit cards issued by neighboring agencies, but only for paper and some mobile tickets—it's impossible to extend this same practice to contactless and electronic payments since there's no way to tell someone's age or disability status by their credit card number. For riders, is a huge and needless hassle, especially once you consider the populations that will be subjected to this. The PATH train is not the fountain of youth—if someone is 70 while riding NYCT, they don't magically become ten years younger when they get to the PATH portion of the station.
- Riders wishing to pay with cash and or pre-tax benefits must juggle multiple farecards: contactless payments also don't work well when your desired payment method doesn't support it. If you prefer to pay with cash, or rely on a pre-tax benefit program that still doesn't support contactless/mobile payments (which most of them don't), then contactless payments are not an option. With a single regional farecard system, that's not a huge deal—you only need to carry one extra card with you and you can use it and top it up at any operator across the region. Instead, these riders now have to carry four different farecards plus more cash and their cards for the smaller operators that have been left out.
- Limited options for through tickets/joint tickets: if each agency is left to develop and implement their own standalone fare payment system, it becomes ten times harder to offer through ticketing or joint ticketing (where a single ticket or pass can be used for a journey that continues on the same mode with a different operator, or connects to a different mode, e.g. a rail trip that starts on NJT at Newark and continues on the LIRR to Valley Stream, or a trip that starts on the LIRR to Bay Shore and then connects to a SCT Bus to a local destination). Right now there are handful of through ticket/joint ticket (UniTicket) options available, but most are only available on paper tickets and operate on visual verification. Bringing these transfer options to contactless or other digital payment methods is more challenging, and next to impossible if they are operating on different backend systems (there would need to be backend integrations between the different backends in order to recognize that a transfer is eligible for a discount and then procedures for refunding the difference back to a rider's farecard or card account.
- No guarantee of fare parity: the argument that contactless payments are "just as good" as farecards also depends on ensuring there is complete parity between fares and fare products that can be loaded onto and used by farecards as what's available to contactless users. It's not unprecedented for agencies to charge pay-as-you-go/stored balance riders higher fares or offer fewer options. PATH, for example, charges people who pay with MetroCard stored value $2.75 for a single trip, however they have 10-, 20-, and 40-trip products available only on Smartlink that charge an effective $2.60 fare per trip. CTA in Chicago for several years after they began accepting contactless payments alongside Ventra cards would charge bus riders an extra $0.25 if they paid directly with a contactless card or device instead of paying with a Ventra card. While the MTA is offering fare parity now for the limited number of fare types handled through OMNY at the moment, there's no guarantee agencies will offer equal fares for contactless users (and if they don't, riders would have to default back to carrying multiple farecards). This will get even more complicated and difficult once it comes time to introduce unlimited passes.
- Contactless invites privacy issues: using your contactless credit or bank card to tap your way across the city might sound like an appealing way to skip the ticket line, but you are leaving behind a digital trail with multiple different agencies that potentially exposes you to privacy breaches if that data is not managed properly. The MTA has already been caught with its pants down for its handling of unregistered riders' contactless payment and travel history with OMNY, and has responded by eliminating the ability to view travel history for all users (making it impossible to reconcile credit card charges to travel history, another downside of using contactless). Contactless payments on mass transit is a new frontier, and even in other cities that have introduced the option it has only come after payments with traditional farecards have become cemented and represents a smaller share of transactions.
- Contactless isn't universal: by not having a regional fare payment system where the costs and rollout is managed regionally, expansion of contactless payments will be incumbent on each individual operator to enter into contracts and setup their own systems. While most of the larger agencies will likely eventually trend this way, many smaller transit agencies may not see the value proposition of setting up a whole separate contactless system. In some cases, either it isn't a differentiator and is not worth the hassle of adding and maintaining a bolt-on contactless system (e.g. for the small island ferries, where you don't have any alternative to get there) or when the operators are operating on razor-thin margins with virtually no choice riders (as discussed below) and don't want to take on extra payment processing expenses when, ultimately, the majority of their riders don't have a choice but to ride the bus and pay however they need to pay.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to carry around one farecard for the city they live in—but it should be one farecard that is good for commuting and travelling everywhere. Contactless payments shouldn't be used as a stopgap and a sloppy substitute for a unified, coordinated regional fare payment system.
Existing synergies
What makes the fracturing of the region's fare payment systems particularly painful is the fact that in many cases, the existing ticketing systems used by the various agencies are already somewhat integrated or operate on common platforms—and fully integrating them would require only a few extra steps, not a wholesale reconstruction and redefinition of the fare payment landscape.
In terms of revenue sharing, the MTA already has agreements in place with practically all of the region's major and most of the minor transit operators to deal with sale and remittance of ticket revenue—a truly regional OMNY system would in many cases require just the expansion of those existing frameworks. NJTransit already sells Metro-North tickets for the West of Hudson lines and remits the revenue back to the MTA; and both LIRR and Metro-North sell through-tickets to the Meadowlands and remit the revenue for those back to NJT. Metro-North sells tickets for ConnDOT on the New Haven Line, and remits the revenue back to them. LIRR already has agreements in place with NICE, Suffolk County Transit, Long Beach Bus, Fire Island Ferries, Sayville Ferry, and the Davis Park Ferry for the sale of either monthly/weekly UniTickets or special discounted packages.
The mobile ticketing landscape has fractured into a dozen or more different mobile ticketing applications, but many of them run on the same platform. For example, NICE, Suffolk County Transit, and Fire Island Ferries use the same Masabi JustRide platform as the LIRR/Metro-North use for eTix/TrainTime. Despite all four operators using the same platform, you need to download four separate applications, have four separate usernames and passwords, and there are no discounts or transfers for using mobile tickets across the different applications.
Ben Whitaker, the founder of Masabi, told me in 2019 that the functionality exists within the JustRide SDK to share/embed tickets across different agencies, so you could purchase and store a NICE Bus ticket in your ticket wallet on MTA's eTix/TrainTime application. These platforms also have the ability to sell and display tickets through third-party applications like Transit App (though only NICE Bus and CTtransit have offered this broadly, Fire Island Ferries also offers ferry tickets for sale through the Uber application).
Yes, definitely feasible if the agencies wanted to do it. They could choose to do it in their own apps, or let multiple 3rd party journey planner apps like @transitapp or @google act as aggregators, or both to give passengers the most choice and maximum chance of discovering it!
— Ben Whitaker (@benmasabi) February 1, 2019
Regions elsewhere in the US have figured out how to manage this—in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, a group of 15 transit operators collaborate on a single electronic ticketing platform, built on the same Masabi JustRide platform that the LIRR, Metro-North, NICE, Suffolk County Transit, and Fire Island Ferries use. Certain tickets and passes can be used across multiple different operators—when I traveled to the area this past spring, a day pass that I purchased from TANK in Kentucky was accepted on Cincinati's Metro bus system in Ohio seamlessly, with the mobile ticket scanning on the other bus without any issue.
Both TANK & Metro had QR code scanners on buses to validate tickets/passes.
— The LIRR Today (@TheLIRRToday) April 6, 2023
The $5 day pass that I purchased from TANK scanned on Cincinati's Metro seamlessly, without any issue. A level of coordination MTA, PANYNJ, etc. have yet to figure out.
Scan was just as fast as NFC tap. pic.twitter.com/ZsSL6jRgLL
Even across other modes, different carriers use common platforms (for example, the Fishers Island Ferry, the Cross Sound Ferry, and Block Island Express all use the same booking platform). NYC Ferry also uses the same type of ticket machines as CTfasttrack.
In the Hudson Valley and Connecticut, the MTA and Metro-North have a very robust system of connecting transit services, where riders have the option to purchase monthly UniTickets that allow them to travel on both the train and a connecting transit vehicle for a discounted price and with a single ticket (the UniTicket is shown as an endorsement on the monthly ticket, where the MTA logo is otherwise printed next to the zone number). Metro-North currently has UniTicket connections with the following services:
- Westchester County Bee-Line (a discounted bus-only UniTicket that is cheaper than buying an unlimited ride MetroCard, though if you also take the subway in NYC then the unlimited ride MetroCard is the best value)
- Transport of Rockland
- Putnam County Transit
- Hudson Rail Link
- Dutchess LOOP
- Newburgh-Beacon Bus
- Newburgh-Beacon Ferry
- Haverstraw-Ossining Ferry
- Ulster County Link
- Mahopac-Croton Falls Shuttle
- CTrail Shore Line East
- CTrail Hartford Line
- CTtransit Stamford
- CTtransit New Haven
- Norwalk Transit District
- Westport Transit District
- Greater Bridgeport Transit District
- Milford Transit District
- Housatonic Area Rapid Transit
- Greenwich Commuter Connection
- Stamford I Bus
This covers virtually all transit operators in the Hudson Valley and the Metro-North service territory, meaning that the MTA already has revenue-sharing agreements in place with all of these operators. But at the moment, these UniTickets are only offered as monthly (and sometimes weekly) paper tickets (CTrail Hartford Line and Shore Line East tickets are available as one-way and round-trip UniRail tickets).
Right now, these joint ticket options are not available on eTix/TrainTime, and the MTA has made no indications that they will be brought forward to OMNY and/or GoCT in the future. At best, they will remain available as only paper tickets and only a handful of riders will know how to purchase them from ticket machines—but the more likely outcome is the MTA looks to jettison these money-saving ticket options altogether, shafting riders who avail of these services instead of driving to the station and parking. At a time when reduced pandemic ridership means that there is a lot more parking available at Metro-North stations, forcing riders to not only pay more, but to have to carry around a roll of quarters to pay for the bus in exact change each trip because they don't accept OMNY would be a major deterrent and shift people away from using connecting transit.
In search of a metropolitan transportation authority
With responsibility for the region's mass transit services divided across so many different parties (four major agencies, plus dozens of smaller public operators and private carriers), it can be very difficult to get everyone on the same page and marching to the same drumbeat. This has proven especially difficult with fare payment.
If only we had some sort of authority that could take charge of coordinating transportation across the entire metropolitan area...a metropolitan transportation authority of sorts. But we do! The MTA has a very broad mandate to improve commuter transportation within the 12-county MTA service district. The MTA's mission and purpose is defined in §1264 of the NYS Public Authorities Law:
"The purposes of the authority shall be the continuance, further development and improvement of commuter transportation and other services related thereto within the metropolitan commuter transportation district, including but not limited to such transportation by railroad, omnibus, marine and air, in accordance with the provisions of this title. It shall be the further purpose of the authority...to develop and implement a unified mass transportation policy for such district in an efficient and cost-effective manner..."
Importantly, the MTA's mission and purpose is not defined by or limited to its current assets—even though the MTA may not operate bus service in Nassau, Suffolk, or Westchester Counties (for example), the continuance, further development, and improvement in bus service in these outer counties still sits firmly within the MTA's legislated purpose. Even outside the 12-county MTA district, I would argue that the development of a regional, unified fare payment system is still firmly within the MTA's remit. After all, quite a large proportion of the people commuting on mass transit in New Jersey and Connecticut are beginning or ending their trips within the 12-county MTA district—and they are connecting to/from other transit services operated in the MTA district and/or they are paying taxes to the MTA either directly/personally or through their employer as a result of their work performed in the 12-county MTA district.
I put the blame for the failure of a regional fare payment system squarely at the feet of the MTA—the MTA has the resources, the means, and the standing to see through the creation of a regional fare payment system moreso than any other entity across the region, and it should have taken charge of seeing this through. Just in terms of sheer size, the MTA's annual operating budget is 6.7 times the size of NJTransit's and 54 times the size of ConnDOT's rail, bus, paratransit, and dial-a-ride operations budget, and it absolutely dwarfs what smaller suburban transit agencies spend.
A major sticking point with different agencies—that I'll explore in more detail in a separate post—has been the MTA's demands for cost sharing. The MTA has left the door open for other agencies to join OMNY, but is requiring those interested in joining to bear the full costs of them joining into the MTA's system, purchasing all of the equipment themselves (and getting much less of a bulk discount than MTA got) and paying to the MTA processing and administrative costs. For an agency the size of the MTA, which rakes in $6.9 billion in fare and toll revenue every year, OMNY/credit card processing and transaction fees are a drop in the bucket of their $19+ billion operating budget. But for smaller operators that currently rely predominantly on cash payments, making a transition like this is a major change that comes at a significant cost. And since most of these operators just barely scrape by, taking on these costs would likely require raising fares to cover those additional costs, which would negatively impact the lower-income riders who rely on local buses in the outer region.
The MTA piously argues that this is the fiscally responsible course, since it shouldn't be using its resources to effectively subsidize the fare collection expenses of NJTransit, ConnDOT, NICE, etc. But for the reasons outlined above and below, there's tremendous value in a true regional fare payment system, and most riders using the region's other transit services are either (a) paying taxes or fees into the MTA some other way (b) connecting to MTA services when they arrive in NYC.
But the MTA has never seemed to have taken much of an interest in making OMNY a true regional fare payment system. Instead of bringing everyone to the table from the start and designing a fare payment system that would meet everyone's needs, it did its own thing and then cracked the door open to say "if you want to join, at your own expense, whatever." Several of the operators I contacted said they haven't even been contacted by the MTA about adopting OMNY.
Obstacles to regional adoption of OMNY
From small to large, the region's remaining transit agencies across the reason cited a variety of factors and obstacles to adopting OMNY, ranging from cost to timing to pre-established relationships/systems to general bureaucratic intransigence.
The factors most frequently cited by the region's remaining transit operators for why they are ditching OMNY largely stem from (a) the MTA's demands for cost sharing and (b) the extremely delayed and protracted timeline of the OMNY program, which has left other agencies in limbo as they struggle to keep their legacy fare payment systems in operation and keep up with the needs of their riders. Several agencies seeing the slow/lack of progress on OMNY passed a point of no return and had to decide to go a different route, buying new fareboxes or even investing in an entirely separate fare payment system to keep the wheels turning.
Below are just the highlights of some of the drama and confusion surrounding the future of fare payment across the tri-state area over the last several years. I originally began research for this piece in 2019 before it was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic—some of the quotes and background below were from 2019, though most have been updated to reflect more recent updates and follow-ups made over the course of the last several weeks.
Roosevelt Island Tram
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| OMNY readers on Roosevelt Island Tram (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
NICE Bus
Local buses in Nassau County began accepting MetroCard early on when they were operated under MTA Long Island Bus. When the MTA and Nassau County had a falling out over subsidies for Long Island Bus, the county turned over operation to concessionaire Veolia/Transdev. Since all of the MetroCard equipment was already in place and riders were quite fond of using MetroCard and getting free transfers, MetroCard was kept for NICE Bus.
In July 2019, NICE Bus CEO Jack Khzouz announced that NICE would join OMNY to replace MetroCard and that all NICE buses would be equipped with OMNY by late 2020.
As the MTA has been falling on its face with both the frontend and backend development of OMNY, this rollout has been significantly delayed. Neither the rollout of the physical fare readers nor the deployment of the backend software systems to NICE has begun. NICE has been saying that the current holdup is that they are waiting on the MTA to release the OMNY software to them, and that they are quoting a timeline of 6 months to a year for that.
At the moment, NICE still plans to join OMNY. The MTA says that the rollout of OMNY to NICE is now expected to be complete by the end of 2024.
Bee-Line Bus
Westchester County's Bee-Line Bus system was one of the latest agencies to join MetroCard, beginning to accept the cards on April 1, 2007. Bee-Line participates in the same fare union with NYCT/MTA Bus, RIOC, NICE, and Metro-North's Hudson Link which offers free transfers among the participating systems. Similar to NICE, a large number of Westchester riders will take Bee-Line down to the ends of the subway in the Bronx and take advantage of the free transfer to get into the city for $2.75, sacrificing significant extra travel time to avoid Metro-North's second-highest in the country fares, similar to NICE and the LIRR.
Westchester County announced in the summer of 2019 that they would also be joining OMNY to replace MetroCard and that OMNY would be available "in the 2021–2022 timeframe". According to its website, Bee-Line still plans to join OMNY. The MTA quoted the same timeline as NICE Bus saying that they expect to complete the rollout of OMNY to Westchester by the end of 2024.
Hudson Rail Link
The Hudson Rail Link, which operates a handful of bus routes feeding the Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil Metro-North stations in the Bronx, is not technically a non-MTA service—it is one of Metro-North's managed connecting services—but it currently accepts MetroCard for fare payment and participates in the NYCT fare union with free transfers and unlimited passes. (Hudson Rail Link also accepts exact change and Metro-North UniTickets (which is added as an extra symbol on paper monthly and weekly tickets that is displayed visually to the driver).
As of September 2023, MTA says that Metro-North's Hudson Rail Link plans to join OMNY and that the goal is to have it implemented by the end of 2023.
PATH
There have been longstanding plans for a unified payment system between PATH (a heavy-rail rapid transit system similar to the NYC Subway except that it goes to New Jersey) and the NYC Subway. The wheels were in motion for PATH to adopt MetroCard as early as 1996, when MetroCard was first being deployed to the NYC Subway. At the time, officials said that integrating MetroCard into PATH "was a crucial next step toward a unified transit pass for the entire region, a goal of planners for decades now." (well, nearly 30 years later, we still don't have a unified transit pass for the entire region...and it may be another 30 years before we can get there). Officials said at the time that more than 80% of rush hour PATH riders combine their trips with another form of rail, subway, or bus transport.
Well, similar to OMNY, the MTA's expansion of MetroCard to other agencies took a significant amount of time, and PATH did not end up accepting MetroCard until nearly a decade later, in 2005. Even when MetroCard came to PATH, it was far from the unified transit pass officials imagined a decade earlier. The adoption of MetroCard on PATH could at best be described as half-hearted. PATH does not participate in the fare union and does not accept free transfers from NYCT or the other systems, nor does it accept their unlimited passes.
Maybe PATH wants to keep its own fare structure and that's ok. But those separate functions were never built into MetroCard (either because the system was not technically capable, or PANYNJ and MTA could never come to terms about how to implement it). To this day, the use of MetroCard on PATH is strictly limited to the deduction of $2.75 fares from stored value balances, and the sale and use of separate 2-trip PATH MetroCards (which are only sold in PATH stations, are only valid for use on PATH, and are not refillable or reusable).
In 2006, in the first major break from MetroCard, the PANYNJ introduced Smartlink, a new contactless smartcard fare payment system for PATH to replace the troubled QuickCard, a paper-based, magnetic stripe farecard that had been handling other PATH fare transactions not handled by MetroCard. Smartlink remains the principle form of fare payment on PATH to this day—unlimited passes are only available on Smartlink cards, and riders who purchase 10-, 20-, or 40-trip fare products can pay a discounted fare of $2.60 per trip (cheaper than the $2.75 cash fare that is deducted if paying with MetroCard). Senior citizens can avail of a discounted fare only if they register for a separate senior Smartlink card—and cannot use MTA's Reduced Fare MetroCards for lower fares on PATH.
The PANYNJ clearly had a broader vision for Smartlink, with a goal of expanding it for use on other transit systems across the region. Smartlink is built out similar to most of the other 2000's era smartcard systems (like Clipper and SmarTrip) where the card can hold multiple combinations of "fare products" that can be used depending on the circumstances. Smartlink also has a cash balance feature that, apart from during a brief transition period with QuickCard, has never been used.
Then-PANYNJ Vice Chair Charles Gargango said at the card's initial launch in 2006 that "[Smartlink] is also an important first step toward the development of a regional fare-payment medium that will greatly improve the commute for those who travel by rail, bus or subway throughout the region." Sound familiar? He added at a 2006 event at the World Trade Center that "as soon as the MTA is ready, we’re ready to use it with them". (the MTA was at the same time testing direct contactless payments with MasterCard PayPass at some subway stations). PANYNJ Director Bab Bernard said that Smartlink could one day even be used to buy "coffee, newspapers, and other small items." Later in 2006, John McCarthy, who was at the time the PA's Director of Public Affairs (and is now MTA's Chief of External Relations), told Newsday that the goal was to eventually have a single smartcard that could be used on PATH trains, subways, and buses, that coordination could be many years away. Talk about an understatement!
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| PATH's ill-fated plans to become an OMNY affiliate by 2022 |
As time went on and the MTA continued to fumble with the rollout of OMNY, PANYNJ officials went silent on the path forward for fare payment on PATH. Smartlink is not an old system, and while feature-wise it is not the most modern (the biggest shortfall these days is that it does not accept open-loop contactless payments), it does the job fine. But PATH's physical fare payment infrastructure has serious issues. Smartlink's in-station sales are built on the MTA's MetroCard Vending Machines, which are quite old. With the MTA getting rid of MetroCard and MVM's, support for repairs and parts for these machines will become even more difficult and expensive. PATH's turnstiles are also in horrible shape, there are frequent issues with either the Smartlink targets or MetroCard readers not working, screens busted, or they just flat out don't work. Even if PATH were to sunset MetroCard and keep Smartlink, it would need to make a serious investment in the physical fare infrastructure to keep it going. If they are going to do that, they might as well upgrade the fare system completely.
Evidently fed up with the lack of progress, or unreasonable terms from the MTA, the PANYNJ began to signal a break from the MTA over OMNY for both PATH and AirTrain JFK (to be discussed later). In November 2021, the PANYNJ announced it was awarding a $99.4 million contract to Cubic Transportation Systems to develop and implement a new "tap and go" fare system to replace Smartlink and MetroCard on PATH. Cubic is the same vendor that is building out OMNY, but now instead of being "integrated with OMNY", the new Smartlink replacement would only be "similar to OMNY"—but not integrated or interoperable with OMNY.
With the PANYNJ now implementing their own, separate, and not interoperable fare system for PATH, those hopes for a single, unified regional farecard are still out of reach. And what's worse, with the decommissioning of MetroCard, you even won't be able to use one card for both systems, even at a higher fare. And pay-per-ride MetroCards still represent a large proportion of trips on PATH. Going forward, after MetroCard goes away, you will need two separate farecards for PATH and NYC Subways.
This is a tremendous disappointment, and a massive failure on the MTA's part. With MTA and PATH implementing separate and distinct fare payment systems, it also seems like any hope of long-desired fare integration or free/discounted transfers between PATH and NYC Subways and Buses will be off the table for many more years to come.
PATH seems to be having their own headaches and fumbles rolling out their new system with Cubic, the system was originally supposed to be rolled out in 2023, but there has been few signs of progress. Earlier this summer, PANYNJ officials promised a "major announcement" about the Smartlink replacement system in July, but that came and went with no news. The latest rumors are that it will start to roll out to a few turnstiles at the major stations later this year, with the full rollout happening in 2024.
Spotted at Journal Square PATH… 👀👀👀
byu/springsteenstan injerseycity
So as of now, PATH will not be joining OMNY and will not be interoperable with OMNY, and the new Smartlink replacement fare payment system is expected to be in place in 2024.
NJTransit
NJTransit, which is the statewide operator of all rail, light rail, and most bus services in New Jersey, is currently in the process of developing a new fare payment system. Thousands of NJ rail and bus riders make connections to NYC Subways and Buses, the LIRR, and even Metro-North on a daily basis (plus several thousand more connecting to PATH and ferries) and would therefore benefit from a single, unified regional farecard spanning the two states.
But that's not going to happen. NJTransit never stated nor seemed interested in joining the OMNY program, and it was one of the first major agencies to break from the MTA and OMNY for fare payment. In 2018, NJTransit announced that it was renewing its longstanding agreement with Conduent (formerly doing business as Xerox), another fare payment company that is a competitor to Cubic. Conduent is also a pretty big player in the fare and toll payment industry. It has been the primary vendor for NJT's paper-based and MyTix ticketing systems for many years, it built out SEPTA Key in Philadelphia, and it has operated the E-ZPass networks in both New York and New Jersey (plus other states) for many years. This was not a totally unexpected move.
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| Concept design for NJT farecard (NJTransit) |
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| New NJT fare validators in use at Newark Penn Station. Currently they are limited to scanning QR codes on paper tickets (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
But other than purchasing the physical farecards, NJT has not outlined much about what functionality it plans to implement with its new system—and it has not outlined a full plan or timeline for the overall modernization effort. It has said that they would have an account-based system that accepts contactless payments, but how will this work? NJT's fare system is quite a bit more complicated than NYCT's. NJT has 3 different sets of rail fare zones (Hoboken Division, Newark Division, and the Atlantic City Rail Line), 2 different sets of bus fare zones (North Jersey and South Jersey, each of which having three different pricing structures for interstate, intrastate, and inter-commuter fares) and also charge for transfers and overrides on buses, and even the light rail fare structures are complicated (Newark Light Rail has a regular fare and a cheaper underground fare for the original subway segment, Newark Light Rail and the RiverLINE sell continuing trip tickets valid for transfers onto buses, and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail has joint tickets with NY Waterway ferries). That's a lot of complexity to code into an account-based, open-loop system.
But definitely one of the mor disappointing downsides is it seems NJT's new fare system will not be integrated with or interoperable with PATH's Smartlink replacement. With NJT and the MTA going different ways, PATH was likely forced to make a choice, continue along the road like MetroCard and parter with the MTA for the new fare payment system, or go back to their pre-2000's way of working with NJTransit for fare sales (PATH's old QuickCards used to be sold at NJT ticket machines)? They chose the MTA, and unfortunately got left out to dry.
While they sort that out, there is no indication on what's going to happen to Metro-North West of Hudson riders. Will they be put on NJT's new fare system (they already have the new TVM's and electronic ticketing)? Will OMNY be accepted as well to/from the NY stations, and if so how will that work onboard, at Secaucus Junction, and at the terminals? Or will OMNY not be available for Metro-North West of Hudson riders, meaning it fails even at its most narrow definition of being one farecard that's accepted on all MTA services?
Bottom line: NJTransit will not be joining OMNY and will not be interoperable with OMNY.
ConnDOT (CTrail, CTtransit, CTfasttrack)
The region’s other statewide mass transit provider, the Connecticut Department of Transportation, has also been going through its own fare payment evolution process. And, as I’m sure it comes as no surprise at this point, it has not been coordinated/compatible with OMNY.
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| A Go CT validator for CTfasttrack buses (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
Go CT is currently accepted on CTtransit-operated local and express busses across Connecticut. At the time of the initial launch, ConnDOT and CT Governor Daniel Malloy made mention of expanding GoCT to the state’s rail services, saying "[i]n the near future, the Department of Transportation plans to make the Go CT Card also available for use on all of the rail lines in the state – including the Hartford Line, Shore Line East, and the New Haven Line", though that has not yet happened and seems to be mired in more of the usual inter-operator, inter-state dysfunction.
ConnDOT also operates three different rail services across the state under the CTrail banner: the New Haven Line (operated by Metro-North), Shore Line East (operated by Amtrak), and the Hartford Line (operated by a joint venture of TransitAmerica Services and Alternate Concepts Inc., along with a fare integration agreement with Amtrak). Because there are three very distinct services and three different operators, the fare systems in place on the three services are all different.
- The New Haven Line and its branches, operated by Metro-North, have tickets sold by Metro-North using infrastructure similar to LIRR (either paper value tickets issued at TVM’s or TOM’s) or mobile tickets in the combined MTA TrainTime/eTix application
- On the Hartford Line, service is operated by a mix of CTrail-branded trains operated by TransitAmerica/Alternate Concepts and Amtrak Northeast Regional, Valley Flyer, and Shuttle/Hartford Line trains that operate between New Haven and Springfield (and may continue north to Greenfield, MA or south to Washington, DC). Both Amtrak and CTrail issue tickets for journeys between New Haven and Springfield, and under a fare integration agreement the tickets can be used on any train along the corridor (except the Vermonter). So if you have a CTrail ticket, it will be accepted on an Amtrak train between those stops, and vice-versa. This system is fairly advanced—there is an integration between the CTrail ticketing system and Amtrak’s reservation system that allows an Amtrak conductor to scan and electronically cancel a CTrail ticket, and vice-versa. Mobile tickets are also available through the CTrail eTix app (that has the same name as, but is separate from, the now-defunct MTA eTix app that was merged into TrainTime) that are accepted by both Amtrak and CTrail. Tickets for Amtrak trains can also be bought through the Amtrak app or on Amtrak’s website or telephone sales channels and are accepted by both operators. All Hartford Line stations, including New Haven and New Haven-State Street have CTrail TVM’s and some have Amtrak QuickTrak machines (though these only book reservations for Amtrak-operated trains).
- On Shore Line East, which is wholly operated by Amtrak, Amtrak handles all ticket selling functions and issues riders paper value tickets (one of the few remaining places on the Amtrak network where paper value tickets are still used, though that is on the way out). Amtrak conductors also issue paper duplex receipts onboard transactions (since most SLE stations still don’t have TVM’s and only New Haven, Old Saybrook, and New London have Amtrak ticket offices). SLE riders did not benefit from the ticketing upgrades made when the Hartford Line was being launched, though ConnDOT and Amtrak appear to be making some upgrades now. The new ticket vending machines installed at Hartford Line stations can sell tickets to/from SLE stations (though other than New Haven and NH-State Street, they haven’t been installed at any other SLE station). These tickets are lifted and remitted by Amtrak crews, not scanned. The CTrail eTix application does sell mobile tickets for Shore Line East stations (though these are only visually verified and not scanned). In recent months, tickets for CTrail Shore Line East trains can now be purchased through the Amtrak app, on Amtrak’s website, and Amtrak’s phone line and are issued as electronic tickets, suggesting that they could be making their way towards electronic ticketing on SLE in the future.
- It is possible to buy through tickets between the three lines—but only in limited places and you have to know where to look. CTrail ticket vending machines at Hartford Line stations can sell through-tickets between the Hartford Line and Shore Line East. At some stations you can also buy through tickets from both HL and SLE to Metro-North stations along the New Haven Line (all the way to NY-Grand Central)—these print as two separate tickets, split at New Haven, and the Metro-North crews manually punch the CTrail ticket to cancel it. Metro-North sells one-way, weekly, and monthly UniRail through tickets from Metro-North stations to all HL and SLE stations. One-way tickets are dispensed as a separate voucher that is lifted and remitted by the crew on the HL or SLE train (and doesn’t have a barcode/can’t be scanned); monthly and weekly tickets are a single ticket that has a printed destination of New Haven plus an endorsement that allows it to be used to the onward HL/SLE destination. The functionality to buy these on Metro-North TVM’s are quite clumsy—the HL/SLE stations are not listed as separate destinations, you have to pick New Haven and then use a separate menu to add on the HL/SLE segment. These tickets are also only offered as paper value tickets—Metro-North still does not have UniRail tickets available for sale on TrainTime.
- Inter-agency turf battles limit where certain tickets can be sold. CTrail TVM’s and the CTrail eTix can only sell through tickets to Metro-North stations if coupled with travel east of New Haven (e.g. you cannot buy a New Haven to Stamford or Bridgeport to NY-Grand Central ticket from CTrail sales channels, even through these are CTrail services). Similarly, Metro-North only sells HL/SLE joint tickets in conjunction with a Metro-North ticket with a destination of New Haven. New Haven-Union Station and New Haven-State Street have both Metro-North and CTrail TVM’s, and you can only buy tickets for the New Haven Line from the Metro-North TVM’s, and these stations are blocked on the CTrail TVM’s (which makes things quite confusing at New Haven)…except for tickets between New Haven and New Haven-State Street, where CTrail TVM’s and CTrail eTix will sell you a free $0 ticket to travel between those stops, Metro-North TVM’s will charge you $2.75 for a one-way ticket, and Amtrak will charge you between $1.00 and $7.00.
As you can tell, the ticketing arrangements on CTrail services is extremely confusing and a very poor experience for riders—and there seems to be little hope for relief in the near future.
For travel strictly between New Haven and points east/north (where the MTA is not involved), ConnDOT and Amtrak do seem to be making progress towards harmonizing and improving the ticketing system. The Hartford Line is close with good integration between the two, though Amtrak’s reservation system should show and sell tickets for CTrail-branded trains operating along the corridor, and Amtrak tickets for travel wholly between New Haven and Springfield should really be treated as unreserved tickets since they are fixed in price and accepted on CTrail trains. On Shore Line East, they seem to be taking gradual steps towards moving towards electronic ticketing, and that should continue until the experience is similar to the Hartford Line. ConnDOT should also equip the remaining SLE stations with CTrail TVM’s.
But once the MTA gets involved, everything goes off the rails. The MTA’s OMNY system is not compatible with Go CT, and presumably does not include any out of the box integration with Amtrak’s reservation system, like CTrail has. MTA will presumably extend OMNY (in whatever form it will eventually take) to the New Haven Line and its branches—but not the Hartford Line or Shore Line East.
On the bus side, the MTA sells monthly and weekly UniTickets that allow rail riders to connect to CTtransit local buses in Stamford and New Haven, as well as local buses operated by the Norwalk Transit District, Westport Transit District, Milford Transit District, Housatonic Area Rapid Transit, Greenwich Commuter Connection, and the Stamford I Bus. Presently these discounted UniTickets are not offered as electronic tickets through eTix/TrainTime nor does there seem to be any plan to bring them forward to OMNY or GoCT.
ConnDOT may well follow-through on its pledge to accept Go CT on the Hartford Line and Shore Line East, but there’s a slim chance of that expanding to the New Haven Line. If it were, how would that work? Would there be two seats of readers at each station, some for OMNY users, others for GoCT? And what about through journeys? Will riders have to scramble to tag off at a GoCT reader and tag on at an OMNY reader in the few minutes transfer at New Haven? Will the existing paper and mobile ticket joint ticket options remain (and continue to be manually canceled/lifted or visually verified), will these be improved, or, as I fear may likely happen, be eliminated altogether?
CTrail is in an extra sticky bind because it is pulled in three different directions by three different operators, and they only have some sort of control over one. Amtrak seems to be working well with ConnDOT to improve the ticketing experience, and hopefully that continues—but the MTA seems completely careless and clueless about the need for better integration at the fringes of its system, and the cumbersome experience they are getting set to force on transit riders in Connecticut.
Bottom line: ConnDOT will not be joining OMNY completely (aside from, perhaps, the New Haven Line and its branches) and Go CT will not be interoperable with OMNY.
AirTrain JFK
When the AirTrain JFK was completed in 2003, it accepted MetroCard as the sole media of fare payment out of the box. Because AirTrain JFK connects to the Subway at both paid stations, and the LIRR already had infrastructure set up to sell joint MetroCards (that it has been gradually dismantling), this was a smart move, and is one of the few places where NY's transportation agencies have gotten getting joint ticketing/fare payment "right" (although only in a very limited sense, as you can only buy the joint LIRR tickets and AirTrain MetroCards at five machines systemwide—2 inside the AirTrain gateline at Jamaica, two at NY-Penn Station, and one at NY-Grand Central).
AirTrain JFK technically works on its own subset of the MetroCard system. AirTrain MetroCards sold from AirTrain TVM's at Jamaica and Howard Beach (with a blue AirTrain logo on the back) are actually different from regular MetroCards. The stored value functionality works the same way—stored value from both AirTrain MetroCards and regular MetroCards can be used to pay AirTrain JFK fares, regular MetroCards can be reloaded with stored value at AirTrain MVM's, and AirTrain MetroCards can be reloaded with stored value at regular MVM's, so most travelers don't notice the difference. But the differentiation does come into play when dealing with unlimited/multi-ride passes. If you want to purchase a $40 30-day unlimited AirTrain MetroCard or the $25 10-trip AirTrain MetroCard, those passes can only be loaded onto AirTrain MetroCards at AirTrain TVM's. The opposite is also true: if you want to buy regular Subway/Bus 7-day or 30-day unlimited MetroCards, those can only be loaded onto regular MetroCards at regular MVM's.
With MetroCard on its way out, the PANYNJ needs another fare payment method for AirTrain JFK—and it can't come soon enough. Many New Yorkers who have switched to using OMNY or contactless payments on Subways and Buses no longer carry around MetroCards and are therefore quite frustrated when they get to the AirTrain station and find they have to purchase a new MetroCard (and pay a $1 fee for it) to ride.
The many New Yorkers needing to buy MetroCards combining with the regular volume of tourists coming and going on the AirTrain JFK have led to extraordinarily long queues at MVM's at the AirTrain JFK stations, offering a horrible welcome to NY for visitors and laying bare the consequences of our factitious and uncoordinated fare payment infrastructure.
In October 2021, the PANYNJ stated that AirTrain JFK would be joining OMNY as an OMNY affiliate and would have OMNY implemented by the end of 2021. Last year, the PANYNJ changed their language slightly and suggested that they would be implementing a new contactless fare payment system for AirTrain JFK (but not OMNY). In theory, fare payment on AirTrain JFK is pretty straightforward—there is only one fare, it's charged to everyone (even seniors and people with disabilities), the wide majority of people coming and going do have credit cards (who is paying cash for airline tickets these days?), and most cards issued these days are contactless. You could probably catch 90+% of users with a straightforward contactless payment reader hooked up to the turnstile. They technically don't even need a physical farecard (the 10-trip and monthlies could probably be handled on the backend as fare caps without too much extra complication). They would just need to sort out how to handle cash payments and those who have non-contactless credit cards (e.g. people who use pre-tax benefits). That is a small enough volume of people they could probably arm attendants with an off-the-shelf point of sale system and manually sell tickets at the gateline.
But there has been some more recent developments, with the MTA and PANYNJ taking some steps in the right direction. AirTrain JFK began accepting OMNY and contactless payments at a limited number of turnstiles (1-3 in each direction/location) on October 10 under an interim agreement between the MTA and the PANYNJ. The two parties are continuing to negotiate the terms of a permanent OMNY agreement, which means there are still plenty of chances for things to sour, but a press release from Governor Hochul says the remaining turnstiles will be equipped with OMNY readers by the end of 2024. Whether that will entail full functionality for AirTrain JFK on OMNY (including the 10-trip and 30-day unlimited passes and OMNY vending machines at the stations for cash-paying riders) remains to be seen.
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| OMNY validators installed at the Jamaica AirTrain JFK station (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
At the moment, it seems like AirTrain JFK is likely joining OMNY, at least partially/temporarily for now, and the remaining readers are expected to be installed by the end of 2024.
AirTrain Newark
The AirTrain Newark, which serves Newark Airport in New Jersey, is in a different situation. It has never accepted MetroCard—instead, NJTransit and Amtrak tickets sold to/from the Newark Airport rail link station include the $8.25 access fee bundled into the ticket price (so a NJT ticket to Newark Airport costs $8.25 more than a ticket to/from North Elizabeth station, which is in the same fare zone).
This offers what is probably the smoothest joint ticketing experience in the region. For one fare in one transaction, you get a single ticket that is scanned and canceled onboard the NJT train, and then is also scanned to get through the fare gates at the rail link station.
Given the already close integration between NJT/Amtrak and the AirTrain Newark (and the fact that you must arrive/depart on a NJT/Amtrak train at the rail link station, as there is no access to the outside world from that station), the AirTrain Newark will likely be a part of whatever new fare system NJT puts into place—and won't be like the AirTrain JFK accepting OMNY, or use PATH's TAPP. In essence, the Port Authority's three transit services will require the use of three separate fare payment systems. Talk about regional coordination...
New Conduent contactless readers and QR code scanners are already being installed at the rail link station (with NJT branding, too), which certainly reinforces this theory:
I did see that one of the EWR AirTrain turnstiles was recently modified to add NFC tap points. For what, I don’t know. But it has NJT branding. pic.twitter.com/KOFTliqI5J
— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) December 14, 2022
The most likely outcome here is that AirTrain Newark is unlikely to join OMNY and NJT's system will not be interoperable with OMNY.
NYC Ferry
The city’s NYC Ferry network, operated by Hornblower under contract from the NYC Economic Development Corporation, launched in 2017 to take over the under-utilized East River Ferry service, and it has since blossomed into a fairly expansive network touching all five boroughs.
When the system was first being developed and launched, one of the big selling points was fares that were pegged to the NYCT base fare—$2.75 for a one-way trip and $121 for a 30-day unlimited pass. While the fares were the same as NYCT fares, there were no free transfers between NYC Ferry and NYCT Subways and Buses since the ferries did not accept MetroCard (NYC Ferry uses its own separate system of paper and mobile tickets).
There was a bit of hullabaloo about the lack of MetroCard acceptance when the system first launched. EDC and the city said they wanted to accept MetroCard and be a properly integrated part of the region’s mass transit network, but the MTA refused since MetroCard was near the end of its life and they did not have sufficient spare equipment to install turnstiles and MVM’s at all NYC Ferry landings. But, we were assured, it was no big deal, since MetroCard was going to be replaced in the very near future, and NYC Ferry could be included in that.
Per mayor's office: EDC 1st met w/MTA in spring 2015 over NYC Ferry fare integration, but was essentially told: wait for MetroCard phase out
— Vincent Barone (@vinbarone) April 26, 2017
Fast forward 8 years, and as the MTA has continued to fumble with the OMNY rollout, talk of OMNY adoption on the ferries has gone very quiet. NYC EDC says that they are “in discussions” with the MTA about bringing OMNY to the NYC Ferry system—which is the same thing that an EDC spokesperson told me 4 years ago in 2019, so evidently those discussions are moving at a snail’s pace, similar to the other operators where MTA is either not giving it the proper attention or is being unreasonable on terms or cost-sharing. The MTA did not include NYC Ferry on a list of third-party operators it is currently working on expanding OMNY to.
Subsequent to the initial launch of NYC Ferry, EDC recently overhauled the fare structure to bring in more fare revenue and curb accusations of people in the city’s wealthier waterfront communities taking taxpayers for a ride with what has been characterized as a luxury service. NYC Ferry now has a higher $4 base fare (no longer pegged to the Subway fare), as well as a $27.50 10-trip ticket valid for 90 days (which works out to $2.75 per trip, cheaper than the Subway), and half-fares which are still priced at $1.35. There are no longer unlimited passes.
While it would still be very beneficial to bring OMNY to NYC Ferry to enable contactless payments and better standardize and harmonize ticketing across the region’s different transit operators, it seems unlikely that we will see free transfers between the ferries and subways anytime soon, especially under the new fare structure.
In short: adoption of OMNY on NYC Ferry is still undetermined, though it seems unlikely.
NY Waterway
New York Waterway operates interstate ferry service between landings in New Jersey and several locations in Manhattan. A privately-owned and operated service, its fares are significantly higher than the publicly-subsidized NYC Ferry or other transit services, though it still attracts a decent crowd, mainly on weekdays during rush hours. NY Waterway has connections to almost all NYC Ferry routes, either at Pier 11/Wall Street or at the west side landings. It also has connections to NJTransit Rail at Hoboken Terminal (offering riders heading into Hoboken fast and easy connections to the Financial District and Hudson Yards), as well as connections to NJT's Hudson-Bergen Light Rail at several points along the waterfront.
NY Waterway currently handles ticketing with paper value tickets sold at ferry landings (virtually all landings have staffed ticket windows during operating hours and most do not have ticket machines, certainly unique among transit services these days) or mobile tickets through NY Waterway's app (NY Waterway was one of the first transit operators in the region to rollout mobile ticketing). Deckhands visually verify mobile tickets and unlimited passes. Riders using paper tickets surrender the ticket to the deckhand, who tears it and discards it (usually before even leaving the landing).
NY Waterway also operates a fleet of crosstown busses emanating from its west side landing at 39th Street. These buses are free to ferry ticket holders and do not charge a separate fare.
Despite NY Waterway being fairly well connected with the rest of the NY-NJ transit network, there is only one joint ticketing arrangement in place: the Hudson Go Pass via Port Imperial (there are no joint ticket options for Hoboken riders).
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| NJT and NY Waterway used to have the same TVM's (Photo: Lauren of All Trades) |
Of course, the benefits of a single regional fare payment system would make a lot of sense here. To be able to use NJT Rail or Light Rail, then connect to the ferry over to Manhattan, and then either get a bus, subway, or connect to a NYC Ferry trip all with a single farecard would make things much easier and more convenient for riders.
But when I inquired back in 2019, a spokesperson for NY Waterway said that NY Waterway had no plans at that time to change its fare collection system—meaning NY Waterway will not be joining OMNY, and will remain with paper/mobile tickets.
NY Waterway also operates two ferry services across the Hudson River upstate under contract with Metro-North (the Haverstraw-Ossining Ferry and the Newburgh-Beacon Ferry). Presently, NY Waterway handles ticket sales for one-way trips and ferry-only trips. Metro-North sells a combined/discounted UniTicket for monthly and weekly riders (the UniTicket is one ticket, with a printed destination of Ossining or Beacon and an endorsement that allows it to be used on the ferry). These UniTicket options are not available on eTix/TrainTime. How this will work in the future is up in the air as the MTA has not provided any details on how OMNY will work on the LIRR or Metro-North, including the Metro-North managed connecting services.
CitiBike
Another concessionaire-operated service under the auspices of the city government is the CitiBike bike sharing system in New York City, currently operated by Lyft. In other cities, transit agencies have integrated their fare cards into the bike share systems, allowing cyclists to either use their transit farecards to unlock bikes, or go all the way and allow them to pay for bikeshare trips using their stored balance.
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| In San Francisco, Clipper cards can be used to unlock SF Bay Wheels bikeshare bikes (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
Lyft previously referred questions about the integration between OMNY and CitiBike to the city, and did not respond to more recent questions on the subject. The MTA did not include CitiBike on a list of third-party operators it is currently working on expanding OMNY to.
Allowing bikeshare users to unlock bikes with transit farecards would make it much simpler and easier to avail of these services. CitiBike used to issue annual members bike keys, which are basically a contactless farecard in the shape of a house key—integration could allow them to ditch one more key on their keychain and lighten their load. Since the system has been taken over by Lyft, bike keys are no longer issued or even offered in most circumstances, and the only way to unlock a bike is to scan a QR code or type the bike ID’s number with the Lyft or CitiBike app (Lyft presumably wants you to coerce you into using the app so they can collect data from you while you do so). This has rendered the CitiBike system very vulnerable to vandalism where people deface the QR codes or ID numbers on bikes, preventing others without bike keys from unlocking them and either unlocking a bike elsewhere or effectively making them their personal bike. Still, the docks remain equipped for contactless cards (they are identical to the ones in San Francisco in the photo above), so this would be easy to implement if everyone were to get on the same page.
Barring a lightning strike of common sense, CitiBike is unlikely to accept OMNY or be interoperable with OMNY.
Metro-North West of Hudson
Metro-North's West of Hudson services on the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis Lines are undeniably MTA services, but the future of fare payment on these lines is setting up for mountains of confusion as these are MTA services operated by NJTransit. NJT operates these under contract from the MTA as an extension of their Pascack Valley and Erie Main/Bergen County Lines with equipment purchased by Metro-North.
NJTransit handles all ticket sales for the West of Hudson lines, including both paper tickets through ticket machines and ticket offices as well as mobile tickets through its MyTix app. The exception was Mail & Ride tickets sold before the program was eliminated—if you bought a ticket from a West of Hudson station to Secaucus Junction or Hoboken through Mail & Ride, you would get a ticket printed on the regular MTA monthly stock that LIRR and Metro-North use on the East of Hudson Lines, if travelling to NY-Penn Station you were also issued a $0 NJT monthly that had the magnetic stripe/QR code to allow you through the faregates at Secaucus Junction (this was an uncommon but very interesting ticketing quirk that would allow LIRR riders to sometimes sneak a free ride with their monthly tickets, since they were the same color NJT conductors would recognize them but usually not able to decipher what they mean and if they were valid).
Because NJT handles ticketing for the West of Hudson Lines, they are already being outfitted with the NJT's new fare payment infrastructure, including new ticket vending machines at stations and electronic ticket scanning onboard trains. Presumably West of Hudson riders will also be able to utilize NJT's new farecard and contactless payments for travel in the coming months and years.
But what about OMNY? The outlook for that is looking pretty slim—and will mean that "One Metro New York" won't even fully cover all MTA services across the region.
For riders, this poses both an inconvenience (as West of Hudson commuters will need to work across two fare systems) and also opportunity for confusion. Presently, West of Hudson monthly tickets are accepted on the Hudson Line as long as the value is equal to or greater than the equivalent monthly on the Hudson Line. This means that someone with a Harriman to NY-Penn Station monthly ticket anywhere south of Peekskill on the Hudson Line. Metro-North conductors can recognize this with paper and mobile tickets, but how will this work with contactless payments or people using NJT's farecard that's not compatible with OMNY?
This is just one of several gray areas where we have no clue how MTA is going to handle expansion of OMNY to the railroads.
Transport of Rockland
Transport of Rockland is the principal operator of local bus service in Rockland County. Bus services are operated by Transdev, the same firm that operates Hudson Link and NICE. While TOR has suspended fare collection for the foreseeable future, their fares can normally only be paid in cash when boarding buses and there are no mobile ticketing options and also no unlimited passes (similar to SCT).
When I asked back in 2019 if Transport of Rockland was looking into joining OMNY, Rockland County gave one of the more insightful answers as to the major problems behind the MTA's OMNY mess. Susan Meyer, a Senior Public Information Specialist for Rockland County said that they see the value of a universal electronic fare payment system for our regional transit services, but "unfortunately, there are significant obstacles to having such a system, the greatest of which for Rockland are cost for implementation and obligated fare increases."
Rockland County previously requested that the MTA cover the cost for TOR to join OMNY, but the MTA refused. Ms. Meyer added "As Rockland County continues negotiations with MTA to address the more than $40 million annual value gap between what Rockland pays to MTA and what we receive in return, we will have conversations with MTA with the hope that we may be able to offer our customers this more convenient, regional fare payment option in the future."
Further, the lack of cohesion among the region's largest transit operators (MTA, NJT, ConnDOT) also causes issues in the outer parts of the region where their service territories overlap. Rockland County cited this as another difficulty for Rockland commuters, given that NJT operates the West of Hudson lines and is not joining OMNY. NJT extends some buses across the border into Rockland and Orange Counties, and there are private carriers like Coach USA who are not joining OMNY as well, leading to a very fractured system even if TOR were able to join OMNY.
Transport of Rockland is not joining OMNY.
Suffolk County Transit
Back on Long Island, our other major bus operator, Suffolk County Transit (which is the principle local bus operator in 8 of the 10 Suffolk County towns) seems unlikely to join OMNY. While fewer riders make connections all the way to the NYC Subway and would benefit from the fare union, plenty of SCT riders either make connections to the LIRR or transfer to NICE or HART buses and would therefore benefit from a unified fare payment system.
Suffolk County Transit is one of the largest suburban transit operators that does not accept MetroCard, and there has been little talk over the years of them adding it. Suffolk County Transit also does not have any UniTicket arrangements with the LIRR (except for a package ticket for the bus to Robert Moses State Park), and they either never have or have not for a long time.
Suffolk County Transit has never formally addressed its interest (or lack thereof) in OMNY, however they have said in responses to questions about it over the last few years that it will be highly unlikely they will join due to an issue that will become more common as we talk about the smaller operators: MTA's demands for cost sharing.
The MTA has spent hundreds of millions building out the physical, frontend, and backend infrastructure for OMNY on the Subway and Buses. Similar to MetroCard, it has been conditioning the expansion of OMNY to other agencies on the basis that they buy all of the physical equipment themselves and also pay the MTA a significant amount in fees per month and per transaction to process fare payment transactions and provide some level of customer service. While a system as large as the MTA—and burns money as fast as the MTA does—those off-the-top fare payment processing fees are pretty negligible out of the vast sums of money the MTA drains from New Yorkers. But for smaller agencies like SCT that do not share those same economies of scale, they can take a significant bite out of fares that riders pay.
To take the Roosevelt Island Tram example above, despite riders paying between $2.75 and $2.90 for a single trip on the tram, RIOC would only get about $2.00 back to cover the operating cost of the service—the remaining $0.75 to $0.90 went to cover the cost of the MTA's fees. If the same harmful formula were applied to SCT, their current $2.25 fare would have to increase to $3.00 just to cover the additional cost of MTA's cost-sharing fees, without generating an extra cent to improve service.
The same theory applies to free transfers and UniTicket discounts with the LIRR—for SCT to offer additional transfers and discounts for those connecting to/from rail, they would have to raise the base fare for everyone else to keep revenue steady.
Given that suburban bus riders tend to have significantly lower incomes and be much more sensitive to price than transit riders in New York City, this is a hard sell for the smaller suburban bus operators. NICE and Bee-Line can stomach it because so many of their riders transfer onwards to the Subway that giving into the MTA's demands are a necessary evil, but the case for that weakens significantly the further you get away from the city.
I place the blame for these circumstances squarely on the MTA—here, the MTA is completely abdicating its role as the metropolitan transportation authority. The MTA is so bad at spending money that it can't see the big picture and the value to the whole region of having a widely-adopted regional fare payment system. I think it would be completely reasonable for the MTA to, in effect, subsidize the fare payment processing costs for smaller transit operators in the 12-county MTA service region. After all, people riding Suffolk County Transit are paying taxes to support the MTA too...
At the present time, it seems highly unlikely that Suffolk County Transit adopts OMNY and will remain a predominately cash-based fare system that is not interoperable with OMNY.
Huntington Area Rapid Transit
HART, which operates local bus service in the Town of Huntington, also has several routes that either directly connect with the LIRR (at Huntington, Greenlawn, and East Northport stations) or with other Suffolk County Transit or NICE Bus routes at major transfer hubs. HART's fares mirror Suffolk County Transit: a $2.25 base fare, $1.25 student fare, $0.75 half-fare. Transfers are available for a $0.25 surcharge, which are then accepted on other HART routes, NICE, and SCT. There are currently no LIRR UniTicket options available for HART.
HART is in a similar predicament to SCT: they are a very small system and would have great difficulty stomaching the significant capital and additional operating expenses that would be required to join OMNY. Back in 2019, the Town of Huntington's Director of Transportation of Transportation and Traffic Safety Scott Spittal said that while the Town has been considering updating their fare payment system, HART will not be joining OMNY as it would require updating the hardware on each bus with the contactless readers.
Similar to SCT, we are likely to remain stuck with an archaic method of coins and paper transfers to ride buses in Suffolk County.
Long Beach Bus
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| Long Beach Bus vehicles will wait for LIRR trains to arrive per their schedule |
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| Long Beach buses depart from the ground level of the parking garage, just steps from the LIRR platforms (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
Despite the great value of the monthly UniTicket and the decent ridership on the feeder buses, relatively few people take advantage of it. Pre-pandemic, an average of just 260 people per month purchased the monthly UniTicket, and that demand has been weakening. In 2022, just 56 tickets were sold each month—22% of pre-pandemic levels.
Use of the already very limited UniTicket options is on the downslide across the board. In order to avail of the discounted ticket, you first have to be aware. The LIRR makes zero effort to promote and increase awareness of joint tickets (aside from a brief note on the back of the timetables, which are no longer printed). LIRR also does not offer UniTickets on eTix/TrainTime, only paper tickets. So if you're one of the many who prefer to use mobile tickets these days, you don't even have that option.
Given the much denser nature of Long Beach, this is one area where feeder busses really work, and every effort should be made to maintain and expand the integration between LIRR and the local buses at Long Beach. Having a unified fare payment system that can automatically calculate free transfers and cap fares can make it much easier for these people to utilize these feeder services, and not need to rely on finding an option buried under a menu on the TVM.
But that seems unlikely to happen. While city officials did not directly respond to a request for comment, Long Beach Bus is unlikely to join OMNY and will remain dependent on exact change. What happens with the joint UniTicket is still an open question—though I suspect the MTA will look to argue that too few people use it (because they make it so hard to use) as grounds to eliminate it.
North Ferry
The North Ferry, which runs between Greenport and Shelter Island Heights, still relies on one of the oldest forms of fare payment: tokens. Foot passengers who wish to take a trip on the ferry must purchase tokens, with cash, at one of the ferry landings and drop them into a turnstile before boarding. This is a bit paradoxical because the North Ferry has for about the last 10 years had a pretty sophisticated ticketing system for collecting vehicle and bikes fares, where deckhands sell fares and issue travelers printed receipts (they even beat LIRR to electronically issuing printed tickets to riders by several years). If you purchase a same day round-trip ticket, the QR code on the ticket is scanned to cancel the return journey (this is even more advanced than LIRR, which does not scan the QR codes on onboard receipts and instead manually punches them to cancel).
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| The North Ferry is just a short walk from LIRR's Greenport station (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
The North Ferry's and its operator, the Heights Property Owners Association, recognized the value of connecting riders at Greenport and expressed an interest in learning more about OMNY when I reached out in 2019 (as the MTA did not make any effort to contact them about it), as they were beginning the process to upgrade the token system. I referred this back to the MTA, but as far as I am aware, the MTA never reached out.
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| Ferry pass cards can be used by residents at turnstiles (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
South Ferry
Similar to the North Ferry, the South Ferry (which runs from North Haven to Shelter Island at the south end of the island) does not sell advance tickets, all fares have to be paid in cash onboard the ferry. The South Ferry doesn't even use turnstiles, foot passengers pay the deckhands in cash on the boat.
The South Ferry also has resident ticket books, but these are sold only with cash at the ferry's office. Commuters who work on Shelter Island but are not residents must obtain a South Ferry Commuter ID Card in order to qualify for commuter tickets.
The South Ferry has not adopted the FerryPass system and in all cases they are a separate company and operating entity different from the North Ferry. Tickets and passes sold for travel on the South Ferry are not valid on the North Ferry and vice-versa.
Here is yet another situation where OMNY and a regional fare payment system could come in very handy. While respecting that the two operators are different and have their own fare structures, a carrier-agnostic fare payment system would allow residents and visitors to be able to ride either ferry without having to juggle two sets of ticket books. For residents and commuters, they would also only need to establish residency once and then they could use the same cards/account to qualify for resident pricing on both ferries.
But, similar to the North Ferry, the South Ferry will likely not be joining OMNY.
Fire Island Ferries
Serving another small island a bit further to the west, Fire Island Ferries is the largest of the three operators connecting Long Island with seasonal and year-round communities on Fire Island. Fire Island Ferries is based in Bay Shore and provides scheduled, fixed-route service across the Great South Bay to communities between Kismet and Ocean Bay Park, and they also have a water taxi division that provides lateral trips along the length of Fire Island on request.
The LIRR currently offers package ticket deals with Fire Island Ferries and the other two ferry operators, where riders can buy round-trip tickets from Zone 1 or Jamaica to Bay Shore, Sayville, or Patchogue, get a voucher for a taxi to the ferry landing, and then round-trip ferry passage across to Fire Island. The package ticket is quite a good deal and has been decently popular over the years. But they are only available at full-sized ticket machines as paper tickets (and, unfortunately, are not available for intra-Island riders).
Several years ago, Fire Island Ferries launched a mobile ticketing system for both the fixed-route ferries to/from Bay Shore as well as the lateral water taxi services. The mobile ticketing system uses the same exact Masabi JustRide platform that the LIRR and Metro-North use, but the systems are completely separatee...you have to download a separate app, set up a separate account, and buy tickets individually--without the discount offered by the package ticket. Despite the LIRR and Fire Island Ferries using the same mobile ticketing platform, you can't get the same package as a mobile ticket as you can as a paper ticket.
Again, OMNY would offer great opportunities to both enhance the experience for riders connecting to/from the LIRR and making the trip from NYC or elsewhere on Long Island as well as provide more options for residents and visitors not using the LIRR. Adopting a modern fare payment system for the ferries would increase options for riders (allowing everyone to pay by card) as well as make the boarding process quicker and more efficient. At the present moment, if you wish to buy tickets for the ferry using a credit card, the only option is to use the mobile ticketing application--FIF only accepts credit cards for 40-trip books and monthly parking passes, and only at their Bay Shore office.
Sayville Ferry Service
Same as above. Bringing OMNY to the Sayville Ferry Service routes (which serve Cherry Grove, Fire Island Pines, Sailor's Haven, and Winter Haven) would allow for the package ticket to be offered through more modern means as well as provide better options for riders travelling on the ferries.
The Sayville Ferry Service does allow riders to purchase tickets with credit cards at their Sayville terminal, however you have to pay a 3.5% surcharge.
Davis Park Ferry
The Davis Park Ferry is the third of the three Fire Island Ferry operators, running the easternmost routes from two landings in Patchogue across to Davis Park and the National Park Service grounds at Watch Hill.
The Davis Park ferry does not sell or accept any digital tickets, however you can pay with a credit card at the Patchogue landings subject to a $10 minimum and a surcharge of $0.25 to $0.75 depending on the fare.
While all of the small island ferry operators serving Shelter Island and Fire Island are private entities and in theory ultimately free to set their own fare structures and mechanisms for collecting fares, there is clearly a benefit to residents, visitors, and the region as a whole for better standardization of fare payment processes. All five of these operators that provide ferry service between locations within Suffolk County do so pursuant to a license issued by the Suffolk County Legislature, and their operation and any fare changes are subject to approval by the legislature. The legislature can use its approval of fare increases as leverage to standardize fare collection procedures, and the MTA can step in as the metropolitan transportation authority and offer to subsidize or heavily discount the installation of the physical OMNY equipment and processing fees in order to further adoption.
Fishers Island Ferry
Unlike LI's other ferry operators, the Fishers Island Ferry is the only publicly-operated ferry service on Long Island. The Fishers Island Ferry connects Fishers Island (which is often forgotten about but is part of the Town of Southold and Suffolk County in New York State) with New London, CT. The ferry is operated by the Fishers Island Ferry District, a special taxing district established on Fishers Island which runs the ferry and also manages the public-use Elizabeth Field Airport on the island (which is owned by the Town of Southold).
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| Fishers Island Ferry riders can connect directly to CTrail and Amtrak at New London, a short walk away (Photo: The LIRR Today) |
But there are a quite a number of people who connect to the ferry at New London from Amtrak or CTrail Shore Line East trains. Again, having a unified regional fare payment system would provide convenience and consistency even in the most remote corner of the MTA's service territory.
Gordon Murphy, the former Assistant Manager for Business and Operators for the Fishers Island Ferry District said in 2019 that they had not been approached by the MTA regarding OMNY, but that many of their passengers do use Amtrak, SLE, and Metro-North. He said presently their ticketing system would require a bit of effort to integrate, but they use the same platform as the Cross Sound Ferry, so there might be synergies to explore—not only could bringing all agencies onto a common platform make it easier for people to commute and travel across the CBD, but it could also help join together trips on the outer portions of the region (e.g. enable someone to travel from Orient Point to Fishers Island via New London on a common ticket).
Cross Sound Ferry
Similar to the Fishers Island Ferry, the Cross Sound Ferry also connects different services on the outskirts of the region. The Cross Sound Ferry links the very eastern tip of the North Fork at Orient Point to New London, CT, which is right across the street from the Amtrak/CTrail station as well as the ferry landings for the Fishers Island Ferry and the Block Island Express ferry to Block Island.
On the Long Island side, there are people that connect to/from the SCT 92 bus route (formerly the S92) that operates on a roughly hourly schedule between Orient Point and East Hampton via Riverhead (and it's possible to take the bus to Greenport and connect to the LIRR there).
While few people would make a big loop travelling one way via the New Haven Line and CTrail to New London, coming across the Long Island Sound on the ferry, and then taking the bus to the LIRR at Greenport back to the city, plenty of people connect to or from the Cross Sound Ferry on one or either end and would benefit from having an integrated ticketing system reaching out to the full extents of the MTA service territory.
Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry
Located closer to the city at a narrower location along the Long Island Sound, the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry is busier and is also more heavily used by foot passengers who can connect to and from mass transit on either end. On the Bridgeport end, the ferry landing is a very short walk to the Bridgeport CTrail and Amtrak station and the main bus hub for Greater Bridgeport Transit. On the Port Jefferson end, it is a bit of a walk up the hill to Port Jefferson station in Port Jefferson Station, but there are Suffolk County Transit buses that travel through the town and serve the ferry landing directly (and can also take you up to the station).
If the ferry, bus, and rail schedules were coordinated well, it would be quite easy and convenient to take the train from someplace in Connecticut to Bridgeport, then the ferry across to Port Jefferson, and then a bus or train to one of the destinations on the North Shore of Long Island, like Stony Brook University or commercial hubs in Smithtown, Huntington, etc. Again an integrated ticketing system would allow riders to easily plan, coordinate, and pay for these types of trips.
The LIRR used to have a package deal for people connecting to the ferry that offered round-trip LIRR fare from zone 1 or zone 3 to Port Jefferson, then a voucher for a taxi from the station down to the ferry landing, and a voucher for $3 off the foot passenger fare on the ferry. This package was only available for purchase at full service TVM's or ticket windows at LIRR stations in NYC or on Long Island (not on the Bridgeport side) and was eliminated after 2020.
While ultimately the MTA and Suffolk County do not have any leverage over interstate operators, these operators clearly have an appetite for simplifying and beefing up ridership from feeder transit, two of the three interstate operators have either expressed and interest in having such a system or have offered discounted joint tickets in the past. And with more foot passengers transferring to/from transit on either end instead of driving their cars, it's better for both the ferry operators (since foot passengers take up considerably less space on ferries compared to cars) and for the communities on either end who have people coming across to shop or visit businesses, instead of flooding the local streets with car traffic.
Hudson Link
Shifting over to the Hudson Valley, and back to publicly-operated transit services, the Lower Hudson Transit Link, formerly the Tappan Zee Express and more commonly known as the Hudson Link, operates express bus service connecting Rockland and Westchester Counties across the Tappan Zee Bridge. The service is managed by the NYS Department of Transportation and operated by Transdev, and it received a major rebranding and service boost as part of the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge.
The service is used as a major feeder from stops in Rockland County across the Tappan Zee Bridge to Metro-North stations in Tarrytown and White Plains (as well as for access to businesses in White Plains and along the I-287 corridor). It is a convenient option for many in Rockland County to get to Manhattan without having to deal with the limited service on the Metro-North West of Hudson Lines, which only go to Hoboken and require a transfer at Secaucus Junction or connection to PATH (neither of which go to the East Side). The most popular routes are those that feed from park and ride facilities or local stops in Rockland County into the Tarrytown Metro-North station, and buses are synced to offer convenient transfers to/from Metro-North trains at Tarrytown.
Metro-North and Hudson Link offer a monthly UniTicket that offers a pretty nice discount and the ability to use a single ticket (since the Hudson Link pass is shown as an endorsement on the MNR monthly ticket). These options are not available as a mobile ticket (both Metro-North and Hudson Link use mobile ticketing and ticket scanning, though on different platforms).
In addition to connections to/from Metro-North, Hudson Link also sells and accepts transfers to/from a number of local bus operators on both sides of the Hudson River, including Transport of Rockland, Clarkstown Mini Trans, Westchester's Bee-Line, I-Bus, and CTtransit (which extends several routes from CT to White Plains). Presently the only way to avail of transfers to these operators is to purchase a paper transfer.
When I contacted Hudson Link about adopting OMNY in 2019, they said that they were planning to join OMNY as part of the third phase of the rollout and that it should be available on Hudson Link buses in 2021. But as that timeline was a big swing and a miss, Hudson Link is yet another agency that seems to be rethinking their participation in OMNY after all of the MTA's delays and headaches. They have dropped all talk of joining OMNY, and a spokesperson for the NYS Department of Transportation (which is responsible for the Hudson Link contract) did not respond to questions seeking an update earlier this month.
Clarkstown Mini Trans
Mini Trans is a "community transit service" operated by the Town of Clarkstown, in Rockland County. The system is predominately a fixed-route service, though they do provide door-to-door service to/from senior centers and shopping hubs for senior citizens. All of the five fixed route lines converge at Nanuet Mall where there are transfers available to Transport of Rockland routes.
Clarkstown Mini Trans currently accepts cash only onboard vehicles for $1.50 base fares, $0.30 base transfers, $0.40 half-fares, and $0.15 half-fare transfers (these are among the cheapest fixed route transit fares in the region, but you have to carry nickels and dimes to make exact change).
Clarkstown Mini Trans also accepts "SuperSaver" tickets issued by Transport of Rockland, which are a book of 10 tickets for $11 (for an effective fare of $1.10 per trip). Presently, these SuperSaver ticket books can only be purchased by mailing a check, going to the Rockland County Department of Public Transportation's office in Pomona, or visiting a town or village hall someplace in the county to buy with cash. Here's yet another opportunity where a regional electronic fare payment system can make things much easier for riders, especially those with lower incomes and who are reliant on suburban local bus service.
Putnam Area Rapid Transit
Putnam Area Rapid Transit (PART) operates four fixed route bus services concentrated in the eastern half of the county around the communities of Mahopac, Carmel, Brewster, and Kent, as well as a seasonal trolley service centered around Cold Spring on the Hudson Line.
PART charges $2 base fares and $1 half-fares, and all fares must be paid in cash only onboard the bus and in exact change.
PART also operates the Mahopac-Croton Falls shuttle, which is one of Metro-North's managed connecting services. Monthly and weekly UniTickets are available for this service. As with the other managed connecting services, it's unclear what the future of these ticket options will be going forward if the MTA is going to adopt OMNY but local transit operators will be left out.
Dutchess County Public Transit
Dutchess County Public Transit (formerly known as the Dutchess LOOP) operates quite a robust network of local buses routes considering how rural most of the county is. Most routes emanate to and from Poughkeepsie, serving either the Metro-North station or the downtown transit center up the hill. A decent number of riders make connections to local bus services at Poughkeepsie, either to travel locally within that city or further away.
Metro-North currently offers monthly UniTickets. Unlike most other outer-region local bus operators, Dutchess County does offer unlimited passes valid for 1-, 7-, or 31-day periods for both full-fare and half-fare riders. Payment onboard the bus for $1.75 base fares and $0.75 half fares is cash only, however similar to SCT with newer fareboxes you have the option to overpay and get a change card that can be used on future trips. You can also purchase bus tickets online for delivery through the mail (similar to the LIRR's old WebTicket platform). Again the offerings are quite robust for a bus service serving a rather rural area.
But even in the outer reaches of the MTA's service territory, the lack of an electronic fare payment system causes friction and inconvenience for riders. I rode a Dutchess County Public Transit bus over the summer from Pawling to Poughkeepsie. Not only did I have to scrouge up and bring with me $1.75 in quarters, but at several stops along the route we were held up momentarily by waiting for people to pay their fare—in two cases, the finicky farebox wasn't accepting a wrinkled dollar bill so they had to fish for another one, at another stop a rider boarded with a handful of paper change cards that they didn't know the balance of, so had to feed a bunch into the farebox to cobble together enough for the fare. It would be far easier for riders to be able to use their contactless card or have a single farecard that they could load online or at various locations across the region.
Transit Orange
Town of Wallkill Transit
Transit Orange, the common branding used for a number of bus and transit services throughout Orange County is an eclectic mix of fixed route transit in three cities/villages (Middletown, Newburgh, and Kiryas Joel), one express bus route that connects Middletown to Harriman along NY-17 (operated by Coach USA), and dial-a-bus service options in a handful of cities, towns, and villages that cover most of the halfway-developed portions of the county.
The Town of Wallkill also operates another fixed route "shuttle bus" that makes five trips per day, mostly serving senior apartment complexes and shopping centers.
Many of these services (with the exception of the Town of Wallkill's lone remaining bus route) came into operation under a common branding with a spiffy new website in late 2021. Fares for the three local fixed-route networks are consistent at a $1.50 base fare and a $0.75 half fare and child fare (except for Kiryas Joel routes, where the fares are double if the destination is outside the Village of Kiryas Joel). And while there appears to have been a fair bit of effort put into harmonizing and modernizing the different bus routes and services, these buses are still reliant on payment of exact fares, with no options for mobile ticketing or unlimited passes.
Transit Orange connects with Metro-North trains (operated by NJTransit) at several locations on the Port Jervis Line, a Metro-North ferry (operated by NYWaterway) at Newburgh, and several other routes operated by NJTransit, Coach USA, and Leprechaun Lines. So a regional fare payment solution could do a lot of good. Alas, Transit Orange is unlikely to joint OMNY or any other electronic fare payment system.
Coach USA
Coach USA is one of the largest remaining private carrier operators providing commuter bus service in the region. In addition to their inter-city services both under the Coach USA brand and their Megabus brand, Coach USA operates a number of commuter routes under various brand names, primarily serving locations in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley. Their offerings have shrunk considerably in recent years, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, with various privately-operated lines being taken over and restructured by public agencies.
In New Jersey, Coach USA operates:
- Under the Community Coach brand:
- Route 77 from the Midtown Bus Terminal to Livingston Mall (direct operation)
- NJT routes 702, 705, 707, 709, 722, 744, 746, 748, 758 providing local bus services in and around Passaic County, under contract from NJTransit
- Under the Olympia Trails brand:
- Newark Airport Express bus operating between NY-Grand Central, Bryant Park, and the Midtown Bus Terminal in Manhattan and the Newark Airport terminal.
- ONE Bus Routes 2, 84, and 88 serving local destinations in Hudson County from the Journal Square Transportation Center
- Under the Short Line brand (which consists of three separate subsidiaries Hudson Transit Lines, Hudson Transit Corporation, and Chenango Valley Bus Lines)
- Routes 17G, 17RG, 17SF/WY, 17US from the Midtown Bus Terminal to various destinations in Bergen County, mostly along route NJ 17 (some of these services extend over the border into Rockland County)
- Under the Suburban Transit brand:
- Lines 100, 200, 300, 350, 400, 500, 600, 700, and the Dunellen Local which serve locations in central and southern Jersey, mostly around the Brunswicks and Princeton.
In the Hudson Valley, Coach USA operates:
- Under the Rockland Coaches brand:
- Routes 9A, 9T, 11A, 11X, 14, 20, 21T, 45, 46, 47/49, and 49J from the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal and the Midtown Bus Terminal in Manhattan to various destinations in Rockland County.
- Under the Short Line brand (which consists of three separate subsidiaries Hudson Transit Lines, Hudson Transit Corporation, and Chenango Valley Bus Lines)
- Several bus routes under contract for Transit Orange (Main Line Trolley,
- Route W59 from stops on local streets in Manhattan to Nanuet, with some peak express services subsidized by Rockland County
- Routes 17M/MD, X32N, XPA84, X87M, 700, 209, L-9, and L-211, mostly from the Midtown Bus Terminal in Manhattan to locations in Orange County (though some run to Pennsylvania instead)
- Routes 208-GWB and 287 which are owned by the NYS DOT and assigned to Coach USA
- Routes 40, 52, 56, 79, 88, L187, X178, 179, 495, and L-12 which operate to or within the Southern Tier region
- Stewart Airport Express service between the Midtown Bus Terminal and SWF Airport in Orange County
While Coach USA's services have become quite the hodgepodge of routes over the years as they have shed unprofitable routes and taken on the operation of others from weaker carriers, they do a somewhat decent job of keeping everything under the Coach USA umbrella somewhat consistent. Most buses these days use Coach USA branding (with the exception of Megabus), not the name of the subsidiary brands that actually operate the routes, and the Coach USA website offers a one-stop shop for information about most of these services.
With the exception of the routes that are operated under contract from NJT or Transit Orange, Coach USA offers electronic ticketing from a unified ticketing platform for all of its services, meaning you can use their website to easily see schedules and book and pay for your ticket, and then print it out or show it on your phone to board the vehicle. This certainly takes most of the mystery and confusion out of riding with most of the other private carrier bus lines.
While private carrier buses are ultimately free to do what they want with regards to ticketing, no matter how full the buses are and no matter how healthy their inter-city business lines are doing, all of these private carrier buses operating commuter routes are hurting. If the MTA were to come along and offer to simplify ticketing for commuter routes (especially those to/from Rockland and Orange Counties, which are firmly within its service area no matter how hard it tries to forget) and in return reduce some of the administrative and overhead costs involved with ticketing and processing payments, I imagine they wouldn't object too strenuously.
Leprechaun Lines
The Hudson Valley is filled with a very odd mix of public and private bus and rail services, and another player in the mix is Leprechaun Lines, which similar to the Coach USA operates a number of local commuter/contract bus services in addition to their established inter-city services.
Leprechaun Lines operates the Newburgh-Beacon connection bus, which runs between Stewart Airport, several stops in Newburgh, and then across the bridge to the Metro-North station on the Hudson Line in Beacon. This service operates on weekdays only. Leprechaun Lines also privately operates several local routes within the greater Newburgh area under contract from Transit Orange. This leaves Newburgh as one of the more bizarrely served portions of the MTA service territory. The area is served by:
- 6 local bus routes publicly operated by Leprechaun Lines under the Transit Orange brand
- 1 local bus route publicly operated by Ulster County Area Transit connecting Newburgh to New Paltz
- 1 express bus route between Beacon and Stewart Airport via Newburgh operated by Leprechaun Lines with subsidy from the County
- 1 ferry route between Newburgh and Beacon operated by NYWaterway with subsidy from Metro-North
- 3 express bus routes to New York privately operated by Coach USA
- 1 express bus route to Middletown privately operated by Coach USA
- Dial-a-bus service operated by the County/City under the Transit Orange brand
The divide between Beacon on one side of the Hudson River and Newburgh on the other is really quite stark—it's clear that all of the money has settled on the east side of the Hudson River because of the easy, direct access to NYC from the Hudson Line. Most of Newburgh could be within 90 minutes of NYC during rush hours if there was better coordinated transit service to the this often forgotten Upstate city.
Restoring rail service on the River Line on the west side of the Hudson River all the way to Newburgh is likely out of reach at the moment, but the MTA could do a lot to make it easier to get to this portion of its service region with better connecting service to Metro-North via bus or ferry, and with a standardized fare payment system it could be a lot easier to get where you're going.
Ulster County Area Transit (UCAT)
On the Long Island side, the end of the MTA's service territory is well defined—Suffolk County is surrounded by water on three sides. But the northern border of the MTA's service region is a lot fuzzier, as there are many supercommuters who travel down from Ulster or Columbia Counties (if not further up towards Albany) to board Metro-North at Poughkeepsie or Wassaic stations.
Most drive and park, but Ulster County Area Transit (UCAT) operates the Ulster-Poughkeepsie Link bus service from Rosendale, New Paltz, and Highland in Ulster County across the Mid-Hudson Bridge to feed into Metro-North. This service is operated by UCAT under contract from the NYS Department of Transportation. Metro-North offers monthly and weekly UniTickets where people can purchase one pass (only as a paper ticket) to travel from these portions of Ulster County through the NY-Grand Central on Metro-North for $529.50. What will become of this as the MTA shrinks regional fare payment options?
Currently UCAT has suspended fare payment and is offering free fares, but in the likely event that fares eventually return, having a regional fare payment system extend slightly outside the region would even prove valuable.
River Valley Transit
Southeast Area Transit
WRTD
While ConnDOT has taken over the operation of many of the state's local bus networks under its CTtransit brand, several portions of the state still operate their own service independently. Several of these include (River Valley Transit, a combination of 9 Town Transit and Middletown Area Transit, Southeast Area Transit based in New London covering the southeastern portion of the state, and Windham Regional Transit District based in Windham).
These operators do not accept the Go CT card, but they do sell mobile tickets using the Token Transit platform, the same platform used by CTtransit. So again, there are plenty of existing synergies out there that just need to be joined together under one roof.
Greater Bridgeport Transit District
Norwalk Transit District
Westport Transit District
Milford Transit District
Greenwich Commuter Connection
The remaining separate Connecticut transit districts listed above also operate their own services independent of ConnDOT, but currently only accept cash payments or pre-purchased tickets. The Greater Bridgeport Transit District holds the title of being the only bus system in the region to still sell and collect tokens for regular adult fares.
All of these operators do offer joint UniTickets with CTrail monthly/weekly passes at New Haven Line stations, sold through Metro-North. Again, an excellent opportunity to bring everyone on to a common fare payment platform.
Housatonic Area Rapid Transit
Housatonic Area Rapid Transit (which, like Huntington Area Rapid Transit, also goes by HART) operates local bus service around the Danbury-New Milford area. Unlike some of the other CT bus operators, HART operates a number of feeder shuttles as Metro-North connecting services, shuttling people from various locations in its service territory to Metro-North stations along the Harlem Line in New York state (service on the electrified portion of the Harlem Line is significantly better than the Danbury Branch, and many people will drive across the border from CT to NY stations on the Harlem Line).
Several of these shuttles, like the Danbury-Brewster Shuttle have a pretty robust service, meeting most peak trains and providing a basic levle of off-peak and reverse-peak service.
Metro-North currently sells monthly and weekly UniTickets only as paper tickets, but similar to the issue with many other of these feeder shuttles and connecting bus services, (a) the future of these UniTicket offerings is unclear, and (b) UniTickets are not sold for one-way or round-trip journeys. This is especially problematic these days as fewer people (especially those commuting long distances) are travelling in five days a week. Similar to other cases, not having a modern fare payment system can be a barrier to using transit, especially when it's just as easy to drive and park your own car.
Paratransit, Community Transit, and Demand-Response/Microtransit
An overlay and/or supplement to many of these transit services are paratransit, "dial-a-bus"/community transit, and newer demand-response or microtransit programs. These differ from fixed route services that serve set stops at set times (which describe most of the providers mentioned above) in that they offer door-to-door, curb-to-curb, or corner-to-corner service within a defined area.
There are no hard and fast definitions for these services, but generally they fall into one of three buckets:
- ADA Paratransit services are typically curb-to-curb services for people with disabilities that prevent them from using fixed-route transit. Federal law requires fixed-route bus operators to provide paratransit services in a "complementary" manner to fixed-route service. This means that transit providers must at a minimum provide paratransit service between any two points within three-quarters of a mile of a fixed route stop during the times that fixed route service is available. Some municipalities voluntarily expand this (e.g. Suffolk County offers service between any two points in 8 of 10 towns regardless of whether there is a fixed-route bus stop nearby). Paratransit services have to be pre-booked (typically over the phone).
- Community transit/Dial-A-Bus services are similar in nature to paratranist, where they operate curb-to-curb service but typically for a broader audience that don't normally qualify for ADA paratranist services. These services generally fall into one of three groups of passengers: anyone in the general public, seniors who are not disabled, and people who live in rural areas outside of the places served by fixed-route transit. They are a way to expand access to transit without the expense of fixed-route service, but also without the rigidity of paratransit requirements. These are typically only encountered in the very outer portions of the region where there is limited fixed-route transit. These trips usually have to be pre-booked by phone.
- Demand-Response Transit/Microtransit services are a hip new take on community transit and are being deployed in several places across the region. These typically offer corner-to-corner service, where you may have to walk a short distance to the stop to keep the routes optimized. These services are typically app-based and not pre-booked, where you can enter your origin and destination and then are matched with a nearby vehicle.
In general, these types of services are considerably more expensive to operate than traditional fixed-route services since they typically use smaller vehicles that carry fewer passengers, take circuitous routes to serve locations off the beaten path, and have much more down time. But they can fill a vital hole in the traditional transit network.
Below are a list of paratransit, community transit (senior/rural), and demand-response transit operators across the region. When it comes to fare payment, each of these tend to take a different approach. For demand-response transit, all seven of the currently operating demand-response systems require you to download a separate application and sign-up for a separate account (the Jersey City DRT program uses the regular Via application, but they're the only one). This makes it harder to know whether a demand response system is available in your area (since these don't show in typical transit direction results).
For all of the other systems, usually the only way to make reservations for trips is to call a telephone number during business hours. Only three paratransit service providers offer a mobile application and web portal to book journeys: MTA NYCT in New York City as well as River Valley Transit and WRTD in eastern Connecticut. This is a difficult area to digitize, but more and more seniors are using smartphones as they age and the use of online booking systems (whether people book their trips themselves, or you keep phone lines to help people make bookings) can help optimize vehicle management and make routings more efficient.
Further, with the exception of the DRT services where both booking and payment are handled in the dedicated app, almost all of these other services require payment in exact change when you board the vehicle (even NYCT's Access-A-Ride accepts payment only in exact change, you cannot use MetroCards to pay for fares). NJT is the only major provider that has an online wallet that allows riders to electronically pay for their paratransit trips.
Getting all of the region's paratransit, community transit, and demand-response/microtransit operators onto a common platform would not only simplify fare payment, but it can also help make vehicle utilization more efficient, cross-boundary trips between two service areas easier and more streamlined, and help riders avoid headaches and roadblocks when trying to obtain visitor status on neighboring systems. This would not only make service easier to use and more accessible to riders of all abilities, but also cut down considerably on the administrative overhead that is required to operate these types of systems.
Interoperability in the future?
While the MTA, and by consequence the entire region, seems to have missed the train on getting a regional fare payment system, our only/best hope is that these agencies are able to implement some sort of interoperability or data-sharing on the backend to allow OMNY, TAPP, Go CT, and NJT's farecard to become interoperable at some point later in the future.
This is similar to how the E-ZPass network functions. While there is a (mostly) common branding used across the E-ZPass network, toll collection is actually operated by 17 different member agencies (mostly coterminous with state lines) which collaborate on common standards and policies, but ultimately operate their own facilities independently. What makes the magic of using a New York E-ZPass on a toll road in Virginia is the agencies sharing information and reconciling revenue on the backend.
There is, in theory, an avenue to do this in the future with transit fare payment. Ultimately the technology used by OMNY, TAPP, Go CT, and NJT are all somewhat similar, which are predicated on using a card number linking back to a transit account, where the stored value and passes are not stored on a physical card, but instead the backend system. The approach would be similar to E-ZPass, if you use your OMNY card to tap for a one-way trip on NJT's Newark Light Rail, NJT would take note of your account number and the transaction amount, and then in real-time or in batches overnight, send that information to the MTA who would deduct the amount from your OMNY balance and remit it to NJT.
This is not a radical concept (agencies including the MTA already exchange money this way either through its participation in E-ZPass or under its existing transit contract operating/UniTicket agreements or MetroCard). But it would be quite a bit more complicated to implement on the transit ticketing front, as there are many more different ticket and pass options (typically, you can only avail of discount plans offered by a tolling authority if you have an E-ZPass issued by that state, for example, someone with a Massachusetts-issued E-ZPass is not able to sign-up for the Staten Island bridge discounts).
When I asked the MTA if they have any plans to implement interoperability between OMNY and TAPP, Go CT, and NJT, they said they have no plans at this time, and that MTA's first priority is rolling out OMNY to its customers. And given that the region's major transit operators seemed to have little interest in collaborating on a regional system at the get-go, the likelihood of them coming together to glue the broken pieces back together at any point in the near future seems very out of reach.
The complete failure of OMNY as a regional fare payment system is a tremendous disappointment for the future of expanding access to transit across the New York region. But unfortunately, it's just the latest example of the dysfunction and confusion that NY's transit riders have to deal with on a regular basis.
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