Subway vending machines for OMNY system arrive this summer

Jan 26, 2024

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The much-delayed switchover to the MTA's new OMNY fare system is set to take a step forward this summer when the transit agency begins to install new vending machines with the tap cards in subway stations.

The roughly 6-foot-tall apparatuses and their flat screens will allow riders who don't have a credit or debit card with the tap-payment technology, or want a dedicated fare card, to easily purchase and load cash onto the OMNY system for the first time, officials say.

"OMNY has put the MTA well-ahead of the curve," said the MTA's head of megaprojects, Jamie Torres-Springer, whose division recently took control of the troubled project, at an agency meeting Monday. "We have a lot of success to emphasize."

Additionally, the MTA said Monday that it had worked out the legal and technical issues that had slowed providing OMNY to the JFK AirTrain and Roosevelt Island Tram. The fare system will be available at both by November, it said.

Those updates were among the great pains that MTA bosses took Monday to paint a picture of progress when it comes to OMNY, as they detailed the management overhaul of the project and acknowledged the previously expected complete MetroCard switch-off has been indefinitely postponed.

OMNY is now at least four years behind its original schedule and is expected to cost $772 million, making it more than $120 million over budget, the agency has previously acknowledged.

There have been three major hold-ups in completing the MetroCard switchover, officials have said: Getting the vending machines installed so anyone with cash can use the new OMNY system; setting up a system that will allow the Department of Education, Human Resources Administration and other city agencies to issue discounted fares via OMNY for students and low-income New Yorkers, and bringing pre-tax benefit providers such as WageWorks onboard.

There are major other headaches, too: Officials have made little progress getting the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North onto the system, according to an independent assessment of the the MTA's progress on OMNY that was provided to the board.

Those efforts were still in the design — or "scoping" — phase, the assessment said.

OMNY was conceived as a way to unite the MTA's subways, buses and commuter railroads all onto the same system, allowing passengers to seamlessly pay and transfer between systems while helping the agency simplify its back-end operations.

Officials even hoped at one point that it would link together MTA's sprawling operations with the Port Authority's JFK AirTrain and PATH system, making it technologically feasible for straphangers to travel more easily across the Hudson River.

However, those plans have been trimmed back because of the sprawling delays and technical headaches the MTA has confronted getting the system online for the city's subways and buses — the first big portion of the project.

The PA recently announced that the PATH will move ahead with its own system, made by the same contractor the MTA hired to build OMNY, Cubic Systems.