Swipe No More: New York Subway Retires MetroCard for Good
New York’s subway quietly retired the MetroCard at midnight, shifting the nation’s busiest transit network to tap-and-go OMNY fares and ending a 30-year era.
The Last Swipe
At 11:59 p.m. on a rain-slicked Friday, the turnstiles at Times Square–42nd Street blinked their final farewell to the yellow-and-blue MetroCard. By midnight, every entrance to the largest subway system in the United States had gone tap-only, closing a 30-year chapter that began when the first MetroCard replaced the token in 1993.
From Tokens to Tap-and-Go
For lifelong riders, the change feels seismic.
“I still have my first MetroCard in my wallet,”said Maria Alvarez, 58, a home-health aide from Queens, clutching a coffee and a crumpled card whose magnetic stripe has long since given up.
“It’s like the subway grew up without asking my permission.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) says the migration to OMNY—short for One Metro New York—will shave 15 seconds off every passenger’s entry, a cumulative saving the agency values at $30 million a year in recovered ridership time. More importantly, it ends the $7 million annual cost of printing, encoding, and repairing 60 million MetroCards.
What Riders Need to Know Today
- MetroCards are no longer accepted anywhere on subway or bus routes.
- Every turnstile now accepts contactless credit cards, debit cards, or smart-device wallets.
- Reduced-fare customers can request a free OMNY card online or at 400+ subway station kiosks.
- Unlimited 7- and 30-day passes live on as OMNY “fare caps”: after 12 taps in a week, the rest of your rides are free.
The Security Trade-Off
Privacy advocates warn that the same chips that speed commutes also create a digital breadcrumb trail. The MTA insists location data is anonymized within 24 hours and subpoena-protected. Still, the agency’s own board minutes show it has fielded 63 data requests from law-enforcement agencies since OMNY’s partial rollout in 2019.
A Farewell Ritual
At Union Square, three college students set up a cardboard “funeral” for MetroCard, complete with black balloons and a Spotify playlist of turnstile beeps remixed into lo-fi beats. Strangers dropped expired cards into a shoebox labeled “Swipe Memories.” By sunset, the box overflowed like a grainy time capsule.
Meanwhile, deep beneath 14th Street, technicians pulled the last MetroCard reader from its metal cradle, sealing it in bubble wrap destined for the New York Transit Museum.
“We’re not erasing history,”said museum curator Chelsea Pérez.
“We’re just giving it a different shelf.”