The state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a new acronym: OMNY. Friday, the MTA introduced its “One Metro New York” fare technology on much of the 4-5-6 line and Staten Island buses.
The $645 million OMNY program, which requires you only to tap your phone or credit card against a pad on the turnstile or bus, is the MetroCard’s gradual replacement. If the MTA does it right — a big if — OMNY will be just as much of a revolution as the MetroCard 25 years ago.
In the mid-1990s, the MetroCard was a key aspect in reviving Gotham. Yes, the state had already invested $21 billion (in today’s dollars) in new taxes to rebuild trains and buses that had fallen apart by the 1970s. Subway ridership was up: It went from 952 million people in 1980 to 1 billion by 1994, a five percent increase.
After that, though, ridership exploded, to 1.4 billion by 2000, or 40 percent.
The city’s population — residents, tourists, and commuters — was growing. MetroCard enabled this growth by allowing for unlimited-ride monthly and weekly passes, plus bonuses for multiple rides, something old tokens couldn’t do.
For five-day-a-week commuters, the unlimited-ride passes — now used by more than half of passengers — made “extra” trips free. As subways got safer and busier, the volume discounts kept people from congesting the streets. That is, until it all got too crowded four years ago, and the temptation of artificially cheap Uber and Lyft rides, highly subsidized by global investors, tempted people into cars.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post