What to do if OMNY derails your commute and sanity

The end of an era has officially arrived: After years of teasing the MetroCard’s imminent death, the MTA will stop selling the iconic yellow-and-blue cards that have granted riders access to New York City’s public transportation network for the last three decades. 

At this point, MTA data shows that roughly 90% of all subway and bus fares are paid through OMNY, the notorious tap-to-pay system poised to take the MetroCard’s place once and for all next year. In light of the series of malfunctions that have continuously haunted my own commute and once shut me out of the MTA entirely, my confidence in the newfangled system is less than assured.

I’m hardly the only casualty. While a July survey of about 400 OMNY users from the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC), the watchdog group to the MTA, found that respondents were generally positive about the system transition, 75% of MTA riders reported experiencing recent problems with tap-and-ride. 

That percentage comes as little surprise, considering the series of public blunders by Cubic, the contractor at the root of all these technical glitches, as acknowledged by MTA CEO Janno Lieber in an Oct. 24 press conference. The company has screwed up so epically over the course of OMNY’s nine-year rollout that the MTA reduced one of its contracts in 2024. 

Between missed deadlines, integration failures and woeful customer service reported by users, it’s not unreasonable to wonder how Cubic might fail us in 2026 and beyond, especially as ridership is starting to tick back up to pre-COVID levels. 

“I think people thought this would be smoother and more seamless than it has been,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the grassroots advocacy organization Riders Alliance. “But we've had several years now to realize that it's in fact a bumpy road, and we need wayfinding.”

In all fairness, overhauling the fare payment system for the largest transportation network in North America is no easy task, and the playbook for resolving rider issues is still evolving. As such, I’ve harnessed my personal frustration, learned experience and research capabilities to create the following resource guide ahead of the end of MetroCard sales on New Year's Eve.

Malfunction junction

Per the PCAC survey, the most common OMNY malfunction is readers not accepting taps, followed by delayed charges, extra charges and riders being charged over $34 within a week without the fare cap applying automatically. (In case you didn’t know, rides are supposed to be free once you reach 12 trips paid with the same payment method in a seven-day period.) 

Then there are the malfunctions, service disruptions and related consequences that fall outside those recorded by the survey. One reporter at the recent press conference cited an instance of a rider receiving a summons from the New York City Transit EAGLE team — the fare enforcement agents everyone knows and loves — when their charge failed to immediately show up in their Apple Wallet. Another pointed to some users experiencing difficulty linking their transit tax benefits or having their cards kicked off the system after OMNY software upgrades.

If you’re like me, you’ll be pleased — albeit skeptical — to learn that OMNY’s customer service infrastructure is undergoing a major makeover. By the end of 2025, the number of customer service centers throughout the region will grow from 16 to 32, MTA leadership said. You can see the full list of upcoming locations on the MTA’s customer service center page. 

MTA leadership added in the press conference that you can get help via 511 or online at mta.info, but those pathways will also just connect you back to OMNY customer service. Third party advocates Riders Alliance and PCAC have their own online forms that allow you to submit complaints about the resolution process and other OMNY issues, should they continue to fuck up your shit on a rolling basis.

The MTA has also increased its phone customer service, allegedly bringing the average wait time to a minute, according to Shanifah Rieara, the MTA’s senior advisor for communications and policy. Additionally, online OMNY accounts now include customer service tools. 

Right now, you can try to get help through the “OMNY Digital Assistant” available in your online OMNY account, which every MTA rider can register for via Google, Apple or email and password. The tool provides answers to basic questions and information in addition to allowing users to pull up their trip history, add money to their OMNY card, check progress toward free rides and freeze a lost or stolen card.

While that all sounds great, the digital assistant also has a reputation for sucking — one of the recommendations from the PCAC survey is for the MTA to “clean up the misinformation” provided by the digital assistant. And if you want to get help for the more complicated OMNY glitches, it just submits your issue to customer service as an inquiry and assures you that a representative will contact you. 

Cubic initially piloted a third party chatbot developed by another contractor, Pypestream, for several months in 2022. The MTA added roughly $13 million to Cubic’s contract in May, including nearly $3 million to build out a new AI chatbot feature, according to board documents, as part of a previous agreement that the authority would hire Cubic for the service beyond the trial period. 

Once launched, the modified chatbot is supposed to allow customers to “type their questions into a chat box that prompts the Chatbot to provide pre-populated responses regarding OMNY cards and account questions,” whatever that means. Neither the MTA nor Cubic responded to inquiries regarding how the chatbot will differ from the current digital assistant feature, but the stated goal of the additional service is to reduce the volume of calls to customer service (duh.)

PCAC survey respondents who used a digital wallet to tap had the highest rate of malfunctions across categories, a fact that shocks me not at all. I’ve had my phone and the cards linked to it kicked off OMNY roughly five times due to an erroneous balance that OMNY periodically claims I owe, which I am inexplicably not allowed to pay in the online OMNY account that’s supposed to make such tasks click-of-a-button easy.

When I’ve contacted OMNY customer service representatives, they have seemed determined to make me gouge my eyes out. First they blame it on my bank, then accuse me of fraud, and finally gaslight me by insisting my card doesn’t exist.

In my desperate search for resolution, I have repeatedly been told to “just get an OMNY card,” the irony of which cannot be overstated, being that the entire point of this system overhaul is to provide the modern convenience of paying with smart devices at the turnstile. Otherwise, the only way I’ve found to get around poorly trained reps is to demand that my issue be escalated to a manager and request a case number, a step that has taken up to three weeks in the past.

What the hell else is going on?

It’s a legitimate question, given the lack of clarity and communication riders have received throughout OMNY’s troubled rollout. The MTA said it has invested in improving its outreach, though, and that riders can expect more reliable communication from a diversity of sources, including mta.info, MTA social media, notices posted in stations and new customer service centers and mobile units.. 

If you haven’t traded in your MetroCard and still have money on it after Dec. 31, you’ll still have some time before the MTA stops accepting MetroCard payments for good at a yet-to-be-determined date in 2026. You just won’t be able to buy a new card or load more money onto an existing one. 

Whenever the MTA decides that MetroCards will no longer be accepted at turnstiles, riders who haven’t switched yet can transfer the value of their MetroCards onto an OMNY card or get reimbursed at the aforementioned customer service centers and mobile units.

A common complaint among riders has been the disappearance of the information on turnstile screens that used to show MetroCard users their remaining balance, fare cap status, and free transfers. Brian Fritsch, associate director of PCAC, said the MTA is working on restoring that feature, but it’s still not clear when that will happen. 

And finally, without further ado, riders can review their charge and trip histories in their OMNY accounts, as previously mentioned. 

I live in fear of the next software upgrade

Early last month, the MTA notified riders that they wouldn’t be able to purchase new OMNY cards or reload more cash onto them from Oct. 3 to Oct. 5  due to a software upgrades. Disruptions like this are obviously crippling for riders who rely on the OMNY card and miss the transit authority’s memos to plan ahead. Riders who need to use an OMNY card are disproportionately older and disabled people who use reduced-fare OMNY, students and low-income people who qualify for the Fair Fares ride discount — demographics that may also struggle to access information from the MTA.

“What I see is this stark dichotomy where for several years now, with increasing force, we're being told we must pay the fare," Pearlstein said. “But at the same time, there's a disconnect where for some people it isn't as clear-cut as it once was.”

That said, the MTA told the press that it recently traced OMNY malfunctions to a single “fundamental issue,” Cubic’s servers. Because of the size of the MTA’s ridership, the contractor needed to transition the system from its servers to the cloud, which the October service upgrade addressed, Leiber said at the press conference, adding that reports show transactions being processed much more quickly.  

Lieber also said the update “virtually eliminated” the backlog of taps and charges being processed by Cubic’s system, the reason you would sometimes see a charge pop up on your phone hours after you actually rode the train. It's unclear whether this is the end of the systemic malfunctions as we’ve come to know them, and MTA leadership has promised to continue monitoring the situation. Cubic did not respond to questions about whether they expect additional outages that disrupt OMNY card purchases and reloading.

I’m going to miss the MetroCard

No one likes saying goodbye, but you can bid the MetroCard a fond farewell through the end of December. The MTA has a bunch of special events and experiences planned, including but not limited to food collaborations, merch, and giant MetroCard cutouts with a faccia hole in the middle for commemorative photos. 

The OMNY card design sucks

The black-and-white chunk of plastic looks like an access key to the offices of the private equity firms that own Cubic, and I hate it. The lazy, corporate aesthetic was created by Cubic, former MTA creative director JP Chan, and Pentagram, the company also responsible for SNL’s opening title graphics. Even the green student variation is uninspired at best and could easily be mistaken for a grocery store loyalty card. With all due respect, this is a maximalist, nonconformist city, and Pentagram’s webpage showcasing OMNY is reminiscent of the dystopic community of “sameness” from The Giver.

Why aren’t we ushering in the OMNY era with a cool limited edition design evoking those done with the MetroCard, like the LL Cool J or David Bowie collaborations? Are we really going to go with a colorless rectangle emblematic of the creeping enshittified wasteland progressively draining the culture and glorious filth from New York City’s streets, completely ignoring an obligation to create a symbol worthy of following the MetroCard’s act? Not even going to seize the obvious opportunity to riff on Johannes Vingboons's “View of New Amsterdam” in acknowledgement of the city’s 400th anniversary? Or borrow from any of the other countless visual representatives of this great stinking melting pot? Cool!