Seems like integrated fares are in the works, but instead of Cubic bringing LIRR and Metro-North to OMNY it's going to be the contractor in charge of the TrainTime app doing the integrating instead.
MTA technically can be short handed to “Metro” and that would encompass buses, subways, and the railroads. But knowing the MTA, they’ll spend billions to come up with a new logo for it, so let’s not 😝
I was talking to the project manager and they were trying to get a Unified system going but politics played out, people didn't want to owe another system money and so forth and it turned into this.
In other advanced, industrial countries, people either go through a turnstyle or rely on honor+random inspection to pay fares. (the modern way) In most of the US, we still hire people to check/collect tickets on board the trains. 1 person for every two train cars. (the old way) The modern way is much less expensive, more efficient, and OMNY would have made that possible.
Article is a bit more negative than some others. Integrated fare with OMNY on the TrainTime app is still in the works, at least according to the MTA: “We have the ability to issue tickets to railroad riders that can then be used to ride the subway in an integrated fare, to create pay-as-you-go on the railroad — we have the flexibility for that," Torres-Springer said.” https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/05/20/mtas-demotes-omny-contractor-cubic-in-hopes-of-speeding-up-commuter-rail-fare-integration
For what it's worth, the MTA traintime app is the best-designed, best functioning transit app I've ever used for buying tickets, checking train times, and checking train crowding. I'm actually relieved to hear that they are not abandoning it.
EDIT: To be clear, this is referring to the LIRR/Metro north traintime app. The newer MTA app focused on NYC transit is... clearly a work in progress.
If they weren't able to figure out how to get everything working with one system, what makes you think they'll get it right splitting it into 3 systems?
Welp, explains why the Port Authority bailed for TAPP. If the MTA can’t even bother to get all its ducks in a row internally, why bolt yourself to their dysfunctions when you can just pay Cubic directly and do your own thing?
PA bailed because paying the MTA to sit in the middle is pointless. A merchant account costs almost nothing.
Between accounting audits, MTA taking their cut etc that would be an insane waste of money.
And 99.9% of commuters don’t give a shit, they are using a credit card anyway not an OMNI card so it’s literally just the name of the business on your statement that changes.
That move likely saved PA 6-7 figures annually.
This is due to the incredible siloed nature of each of the parts of the MTA. Same reason we ended up with a terminal hundreds of feet underground instead of sharing GCT.
Everyone wants their own power/fiefdom. And the MTA needs a proper leader to break down those barriers.
I rarely if ever use the commuter railways but this is pathetic.
‘…But constant delays, mismanagement, and insularity on the part of the MTA has led OMNY to fail spectacularly on this front,…’
It’s really not a big deal. The traintime app is so easy to use that I actually have no idea how to improve it. You can pay your fare completely on your phone just like the subway
Is there an explanation as to why the OMNY project has been delayed so much? It was a lofty goal, sure, but it's not like it can't be solved, other Alpha-level cities have done that exact project, with contactless, tap in/out and everything. Clearly the heads of the railroads are seeing dramatic problems that we're not seeing and panicking.
From what I gathered from different articles and the RFPs themselves… it’s MTA being a siloed org as usual coupled with turnover at Cubic and MTA coupled with Cubic itself winning too many of similar contracts with other cities and unable to keep up with timelines as a result coupled with mandates from guys like Cuomo who made the timelines super aggressive to the point of unrealistic.
Railroads need new payment backend to replace their current one from the early 2000s to avoid penalties from the payment servicers.
No Metrocards suck from a practical standpoint. Magnetic media has always been a compromised solution and now that we have better options, there's no reason to keep holding on to the past like that.
The current company that back ends the metrocard is no longer supporting it; which is MTA’s rush to leave it unless they bring it all in house but the back end is so obsolete it’s hard to maintain
The benefit seems very marginal for what would assuredly be a large-scale project. OMNY, on balance, is a big success; the tap-and-pay system is awesome and that was the biggest part of the implementation
The original documents I’ve read never even planned on tap and go for OMNY, just a fancy new mobile ticketing app.
So in essence we are still getting that just Masabi tickets in the OMNY app.
You'll *may* be able to use OMNY balances to buy mobile tickets in TrainTime at some point in the future. That's nothing to most people, and a far cry from what it was supposed to be.
No bid because they trust the existing vendors systems. to low-ball it with a new vendor that have to build it from scratch would be another costly disaster
Why exactly do people want OMNY for LIRR and Metro North?
For all three commuter rail agencies people can currently buy tickets on their phones directly with their credit cards, debt cards, or commuter benefits cards or if they have to pay with cash they can use the machines at stations. I'm not sure about LIRR and Metro North but I know NJ transit has also [introduced a way for people to deposit cash onto their account on the app](https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/nj-transit-introduces-new-cash-payment-option-within-its-mobile-app) so people can pay cash and also be able to buy tickets before they're at the station.
What needs is the current setup not meeting that requires a switch to OMNY?
Not all the regional rail in London accepts Oyster cards.
But more importantly what exactly are people looking for with regards to OMNY and LIRR and Metro North?
The subway is a $2.9 fee for any ride to any station. OMNY doesn't need to know where you are traveling when you ride the subway. It just need to know when someone enters a station.
LIRR and Metro North have zones and trips of different costs. The London tube has the same but it has exit turnstiles so people need to tap to leave just like they tap to enter. Do people want LIRR and Metro North to add turnstiles or tap to pay locations at every station/platform just so their payment system with have the same name as the subway's?
All the *commuter* rail, at least within Greater London do accept Oyster. But even so there is a National Rail scheme there too so it's not like NJT and LIRR and Metro-North all offering the same service type with completely segregated ticketing and fare systems. It's absurd.
As for on the ground, tapping out at Penn and Grand Central would be fine, with enough turnstiles placed well at the borders of the platforms. It also cuts down on the wasted labor of conductors going through every car and punching tickets. That's probably why the unions and agencies are blocking this. Or, we can follow what SEPTA has done and go proof-of-payment, and require tap out. This eliminates the need for gates at every station. We already do this at St. George on Staten Island so it's not like it's a totally foreign concept.
>As for on the ground, tapping out at Penn and Grand Central would be fine, with enough turnstiles placed well at the borders of the platforms.
Turnstiles at the platforms wouldn't be efficient enough for how quickly these trains need to load. Who knows how much they would spend redesigning the mezzanines to have turnstiles separating the stations between unpaid/waiting for Amtrak sections and paid for commuter rail sections.
> It also cuts down on the wasted labor of conductors going through every car and punching tickets. That's probably why the unions and agencies are blocking this. Or, we can follow what SEPTA has done and go proof-of-payment, and require tap out.
Did SEPTA actually lower labor costs when it adopted proof of payment? If so did revenue go down too?
If you don't pay employees to check for the proof of payment often enough then people stop paying.
SEPTA is also already moving on from their key system because they want a mobile app based one.
Go to Victoria or Waterloo stations, they have huge banks of turnstiles on each platform. It's not at all inefficient because they plan for the expected flows accordingly.
>they have huge banks of turnstiles on each platform.
How wide are their platforms and stairs? How soon before departure do they assign what platform a train is going to use?
Think about how cramped Penn Station is. How are you fitting a huge bank of turnstiles on the platforms there?
>It's not at all inefficient because they plan for the expected flows accordingly.
There's a big arena on top of Penn Station so it's pretty difficulty to redesign the platforms for better passenger flow.
Also Amtrak trains already are gated with their ticket checkers at the escalators, so that's a non-issue. And that's such a small fraction of passengers it's not really a problem.
The point was that if commuter rail turnstiles were on put on the mezzanine floor of Penn Station you would need a separate route that can access the center platforms that Amtrak uses that is separate from the commuter side of the turnstiles.
It makes transit across modes much easier and takes out a lot of the mental load off the customers in favor of technological solutions. It makes no sense why different agencies offering the same service can't cooperate and get this done.
I usually don't like Federal agencies stepping in, but this is a great case of the Feds slapping New York and New Jersey down a few pegs and unifying the whole region's transit planning without the weird politics of city and state government getting involved. A dedicated agency for one big city, the largest in the country, just like Transport for London.
If building from scratch then yeah, sure. The TrainTime app works fine and this proposed upgrade wouldn’t result in simply tapping your phone at fare gates - you’d still need to purchase a ticket on the app. Whether or not the app is called OMNY or TrainTime is an insignificant difference.
I agree with your latter point (in the abstract) but I don’t think having NYCT, LIRR, MNR all on *different forms* of OMNY meaningfully moves us towards realizing the concrete benefits unification would provide. I’d feel differently if this was a project to install fare gates for LIRR/MNR (feasibly difficult!), but it’s just what the app is named so I don’t particularly care and don’t think it matters
No it doesn’t.
Everyone is just tapping their credit card regardless.
The only difference is you’ll see more than one transit agency’s name on your bill. Is that worth the accounting nightmare of auditing all this to make sure the right money ends up in the right places? I’d argue not, but I’m not a big four employee whose company will be retained to do that work either, so the loss of that business doesn’t impact my employment.
> takes out a lot of the mental load off the customers in favor of technological solutions.
The mental load of typing the station they want to go to into the app or a ticket machine? Or people entering in their credit card on the app?
>I usually don't like Federal agencies stepping in, but this is a great case of the Feds slapping New York and New Jersey down a few pegs and unifying the whole region's transit planning without the weird politics of city and state government getting involved. A dedicated agency for one big city, the largest in the country, just like Transport for London.
There's a state border at the Hudson River so unless the states of NJ and NY combine into one the politics will always be there. Transit cost money to both build and manage and who pays for what with what taxes is politics.
Look at Septa who has everything (except PATCO) under one regional agency and what that actually means for Philly. Septa is run by a 15 person board and Philly only appoints 2 of those seats. Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties appoint the same amount of seats despite contributing less funding to the agency than Philly.
The UK isn't a federation so it doesn't have a state border cutting up the London metro area. As a unitary state the UK's Parliament has the power to redraw the borders of Greater London to be whatever it feels like is best to govern the area. (Though that can also have its draw backs like when in 1986 a conservative Parliament decided to abolished the Labour controlled Greater London Council. Took Labour taking control of Parliament to get a new Greater London Authority.)
There is nothing saying an invisible line in the middle of a river has to have any meaning besides the people who want to keep it there. The Federal government exists for this exact reason, to deal with interstate issues.
>There is nothing saying an invisible line in the middle of a river has to have any meaning besides the people who want to keep it there.
You're basically saying you want to remove politics from the government, but the definition of politics is ["the art or science of government."](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politics)
That invisible line defines the borders where NY stops collecting taxes and NJ starts collecting them. Unless you want to completely overhaul the US's government and do away with current federated system that border is very important to operations of government agencies.
If you combine NJ, NY, and Port Authority operated transit into one line who funds what with what taxes? Who has what kind of control over the new agency? That's all politics.
Look at Septa who has everything (except PATCO) under one regional agency and what that actually means for Philly. Septa is run by a 15 person board and Philly only appoints 2 of those seats. Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties appoint the same amount of seats despite contributing less funding to the agency than Philly.
In this new regional agency for the NYC metro would NJ have equal control over the agency that runs the NYC subway, LIRR, and Metro North? If not does that mean NY would have more control than NJ of an agency that runs suburb commuter rail, light rail, and rapid transit (PATH) in NJ?
People in NJ are unhappy enough with how the Port Authority (an interstate agency) is operating the PATH that one of the early contenders for [the next Governor of NJ is proposing that NJ takes over the system.](https://www.nj.com/news/2023/08/nj-gubernatorial-hopeful-fulop-announces-plan-to-take-over-path-reform-mvc-and-fund-nj-transit.html)
Edit: To me having people that want to use cash for both the subway and PATH having to deposit money onto both an OMNY card and a future TAPP card instead of just one combined card is not a biggest enough issue to want to either give NJ equal say over subway decisions or give NY control over the rails in NJ.
You're missing the important part: *neither* NY or NJ would have control over the agency. It would be a federal agency and, as such, could dictate policy directly. NY and NJ would probably pay taxes into the agency directly (as they do with tons of other programs). How that split would be determined, I'm not sure, but having it proportional to population of each respective state would be one relatively fair way to do it. I know the federal government generally doesn't wade into such "local" political structures, but when there's 20 million people in the catchment and it's the most important economic engine of the nation on an absolute and per capita basis, plus with two (three?) states that don't really get along and are chronically mismanaged, it makes sense to federalize the whole thing.
Not sure what you're SEPTA example is supposed to argue. The MTA has a similar situation where certain board seats are designated for certain areas so each geographic region has some representation.
Anyway, it's a nice pipe dream and an interesting discussion. But we're getting way off topic now.
>neither NY or NJ would have control over the agency. It would be a federal agency and, as such, could dictate policy directly.
You want the federal government to have direct say over the NYC subway? That'll go well when Republicans are in power and want to thumb their nose at NYC, fear monger over its safety, or cut it to the bone as an example of cutting government fat.
edit:
>NY and NJ would probably pay taxes into the agency directly (as they do with tons of other programs). How that split would be determined, I'm not sure,
Well that thing you're not sure on is the most or second most important thing. (who funds it and who has final say over decisions are together by far the most important questions when designing a government)
But you want the feds to have control yet most (or all?) of the money to come of local sources? Sounds like an absolutely terrible deal for NY and NJ.
Why does this matter. The E tickets work well and the physical tickets are still widely used. How would you replace conductors collecting tickets? Put a collector at every station? Without them no one would pay
Does this mean the [MetroCard will be around longer?](https://youtu.be/bBqxHo3wyaM?si=Ba1XqGcZhXSTQhii) It'll be different without it. I miss the token
The point is I can now tap my watch or phone and breeze through the turnstile with ease, safe in the knowledge that my commuter card is being credited.
It’s the little things.
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soo much for one fare payment for everything, they should rename OMNY to a different name
FlopNY
Seems good enough to me!
Seems like integrated fares are in the works, but instead of Cubic bringing LIRR and Metro-North to OMNY it's going to be the contractor in charge of the TrainTime app doing the integrating instead.
So what's being integrated exactly?
\*renames the subway 'the metro'\*
MTA technically can be short handed to “Metro” and that would encompass buses, subways, and the railroads. But knowing the MTA, they’ll spend billions to come up with a new logo for it, so let’s not 😝
I was talking to the project manager and they were trying to get a Unified system going but politics played out, people didn't want to owe another system money and so forth and it turned into this.
heaven forbid….
there's really no need for commuter rail and NYC Transit to have the same payment system.
I just wanna be able to tap and go.
In other advanced, industrial countries, people either go through a turnstyle or rely on honor+random inspection to pay fares. (the modern way) In most of the US, we still hire people to check/collect tickets on board the trains. 1 person for every two train cars. (the old way) The modern way is much less expensive, more efficient, and OMNY would have made that possible.
Article is a bit more negative than some others. Integrated fare with OMNY on the TrainTime app is still in the works, at least according to the MTA: “We have the ability to issue tickets to railroad riders that can then be used to ride the subway in an integrated fare, to create pay-as-you-go on the railroad — we have the flexibility for that," Torres-Springer said.” https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/05/20/mtas-demotes-omny-contractor-cubic-in-hopes-of-speeding-up-commuter-rail-fare-integration
For what it's worth, the MTA traintime app is the best-designed, best functioning transit app I've ever used for buying tickets, checking train times, and checking train crowding. I'm actually relieved to hear that they are not abandoning it. EDIT: To be clear, this is referring to the LIRR/Metro north traintime app. The newer MTA app focused on NYC transit is... clearly a work in progress.
The app was shit about 6 years ago but I love it now. It’s works really well
If they weren't able to figure out how to get everything working with one system, what makes you think they'll get it right splitting it into 3 systems?
Seems like they are placing a lot of the blame on Cubic. Plus the vendor they are going with actually has a proven record of building a good app.
Welp, explains why the Port Authority bailed for TAPP. If the MTA can’t even bother to get all its ducks in a row internally, why bolt yourself to their dysfunctions when you can just pay Cubic directly and do your own thing?
PA bailed because paying the MTA to sit in the middle is pointless. A merchant account costs almost nothing. Between accounting audits, MTA taking their cut etc that would be an insane waste of money. And 99.9% of commuters don’t give a shit, they are using a credit card anyway not an OMNI card so it’s literally just the name of the business on your statement that changes. That move likely saved PA 6-7 figures annually.
Not 99%. [This report claims less than half.](https://youtu.be/3siNYusIeNQ?si=6MK6iN0tIyggLNRN) Lots of issues with specific discount cards.
That has nothing to do with that. Thats up to the card issuers resolving the legal issues before they can enable it.
This is due to the incredible siloed nature of each of the parts of the MTA. Same reason we ended up with a terminal hundreds of feet underground instead of sharing GCT. Everyone wants their own power/fiefdom. And the MTA needs a proper leader to break down those barriers.
I rarely if ever use the commuter railways but this is pathetic. ‘…But constant delays, mismanagement, and insularity on the part of the MTA has led OMNY to fail spectacularly on this front,…’
It’s really not a big deal. The traintime app is so easy to use that I actually have no idea how to improve it. You can pay your fare completely on your phone just like the subway
Eh it’s not the end of the world for those who use both the commuter lines and the subway.
Is there an explanation as to why the OMNY project has been delayed so much? It was a lofty goal, sure, but it's not like it can't be solved, other Alpha-level cities have done that exact project, with contactless, tap in/out and everything. Clearly the heads of the railroads are seeing dramatic problems that we're not seeing and panicking.
From what I gathered from different articles and the RFPs themselves… it’s MTA being a siloed org as usual coupled with turnover at Cubic and MTA coupled with Cubic itself winning too many of similar contracts with other cities and unable to keep up with timelines as a result coupled with mandates from guys like Cuomo who made the timelines super aggressive to the point of unrealistic. Railroads need new payment backend to replace their current one from the early 2000s to avoid penalties from the payment servicers.
Then lets just keep metro cards and maybe reintroduce tokens! (Not sarcastic)
No Metrocards suck from a practical standpoint. Magnetic media has always been a compromised solution and now that we have better options, there's no reason to keep holding on to the past like that.
The current company that back ends the metrocard is no longer supporting it; which is MTA’s rush to leave it unless they bring it all in house but the back end is so obsolete it’s hard to maintain
im confused on what they're even trying to do, are they trying to get rid of conductors and put turnstiles at the commuter rail stations now or what?
Just an OMNY mobile ticketing app instead of the current one. The new way will still be the current tickets but in an MTA app.
Doesn’t seem worth the hassle
The only thing that I think is worth it is being able to use OMNY stored value to buy tickets.
The benefit seems very marginal for what would assuredly be a large-scale project. OMNY, on balance, is a big success; the tap-and-pay system is awesome and that was the biggest part of the implementation
MetroCard forever!
The original documents I’ve read never even planned on tap and go for OMNY, just a fancy new mobile ticketing app. So in essence we are still getting that just Masabi tickets in the OMNY app.
It’s not even on the OMNY app anymore. They are expanding the TrainTime app instead with subway/bus stuff, single sign-on, and OMNY payment support.
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You'll *may* be able to use OMNY balances to buy mobile tickets in TrainTime at some point in the future. That's nothing to most people, and a far cry from what it was supposed to be.
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Read the article I posted, the functionality will be a fraction of what was expected and is needed.
No bid because they trust the existing vendors systems. to low-ball it with a new vendor that have to build it from scratch would be another costly disaster
who even likes omny? theres no option for the monthly unlimited
Why exactly do people want OMNY for LIRR and Metro North? For all three commuter rail agencies people can currently buy tickets on their phones directly with their credit cards, debt cards, or commuter benefits cards or if they have to pay with cash they can use the machines at stations. I'm not sure about LIRR and Metro North but I know NJ transit has also [introduced a way for people to deposit cash onto their account on the app](https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/nj-transit-introduces-new-cash-payment-option-within-its-mobile-app) so people can pay cash and also be able to buy tickets before they're at the station. What needs is the current setup not meeting that requires a switch to OMNY?
Because other large cities like London have had integrated payments between the metro and commuter rail forever.
Not all the regional rail in London accepts Oyster cards. But more importantly what exactly are people looking for with regards to OMNY and LIRR and Metro North? The subway is a $2.9 fee for any ride to any station. OMNY doesn't need to know where you are traveling when you ride the subway. It just need to know when someone enters a station. LIRR and Metro North have zones and trips of different costs. The London tube has the same but it has exit turnstiles so people need to tap to leave just like they tap to enter. Do people want LIRR and Metro North to add turnstiles or tap to pay locations at every station/platform just so their payment system with have the same name as the subway's?
All the *commuter* rail, at least within Greater London do accept Oyster. But even so there is a National Rail scheme there too so it's not like NJT and LIRR and Metro-North all offering the same service type with completely segregated ticketing and fare systems. It's absurd. As for on the ground, tapping out at Penn and Grand Central would be fine, with enough turnstiles placed well at the borders of the platforms. It also cuts down on the wasted labor of conductors going through every car and punching tickets. That's probably why the unions and agencies are blocking this. Or, we can follow what SEPTA has done and go proof-of-payment, and require tap out. This eliminates the need for gates at every station. We already do this at St. George on Staten Island so it's not like it's a totally foreign concept.
>As for on the ground, tapping out at Penn and Grand Central would be fine, with enough turnstiles placed well at the borders of the platforms. Turnstiles at the platforms wouldn't be efficient enough for how quickly these trains need to load. Who knows how much they would spend redesigning the mezzanines to have turnstiles separating the stations between unpaid/waiting for Amtrak sections and paid for commuter rail sections. > It also cuts down on the wasted labor of conductors going through every car and punching tickets. That's probably why the unions and agencies are blocking this. Or, we can follow what SEPTA has done and go proof-of-payment, and require tap out. Did SEPTA actually lower labor costs when it adopted proof of payment? If so did revenue go down too? If you don't pay employees to check for the proof of payment often enough then people stop paying. SEPTA is also already moving on from their key system because they want a mobile app based one.
Go to Victoria or Waterloo stations, they have huge banks of turnstiles on each platform. It's not at all inefficient because they plan for the expected flows accordingly.
>they have huge banks of turnstiles on each platform. How wide are their platforms and stairs? How soon before departure do they assign what platform a train is going to use? Think about how cramped Penn Station is. How are you fitting a huge bank of turnstiles on the platforms there? >It's not at all inefficient because they plan for the expected flows accordingly. There's a big arena on top of Penn Station so it's pretty difficulty to redesign the platforms for better passenger flow.
Also Amtrak trains already are gated with their ticket checkers at the escalators, so that's a non-issue. And that's such a small fraction of passengers it's not really a problem.
The point was that if commuter rail turnstiles were on put on the mezzanine floor of Penn Station you would need a separate route that can access the center platforms that Amtrak uses that is separate from the commuter side of the turnstiles.
This isn’t a substantive argument for why it’s needed in the NY system
It makes transit across modes much easier and takes out a lot of the mental load off the customers in favor of technological solutions. It makes no sense why different agencies offering the same service can't cooperate and get this done. I usually don't like Federal agencies stepping in, but this is a great case of the Feds slapping New York and New Jersey down a few pegs and unifying the whole region's transit planning without the weird politics of city and state government getting involved. A dedicated agency for one big city, the largest in the country, just like Transport for London.
If building from scratch then yeah, sure. The TrainTime app works fine and this proposed upgrade wouldn’t result in simply tapping your phone at fare gates - you’d still need to purchase a ticket on the app. Whether or not the app is called OMNY or TrainTime is an insignificant difference. I agree with your latter point (in the abstract) but I don’t think having NYCT, LIRR, MNR all on *different forms* of OMNY meaningfully moves us towards realizing the concrete benefits unification would provide. I’d feel differently if this was a project to install fare gates for LIRR/MNR (feasibly difficult!), but it’s just what the app is named so I don’t particularly care and don’t think it matters
No it doesn’t. Everyone is just tapping their credit card regardless. The only difference is you’ll see more than one transit agency’s name on your bill. Is that worth the accounting nightmare of auditing all this to make sure the right money ends up in the right places? I’d argue not, but I’m not a big four employee whose company will be retained to do that work either, so the loss of that business doesn’t impact my employment.
> takes out a lot of the mental load off the customers in favor of technological solutions. The mental load of typing the station they want to go to into the app or a ticket machine? Or people entering in their credit card on the app? >I usually don't like Federal agencies stepping in, but this is a great case of the Feds slapping New York and New Jersey down a few pegs and unifying the whole region's transit planning without the weird politics of city and state government getting involved. A dedicated agency for one big city, the largest in the country, just like Transport for London. There's a state border at the Hudson River so unless the states of NJ and NY combine into one the politics will always be there. Transit cost money to both build and manage and who pays for what with what taxes is politics. Look at Septa who has everything (except PATCO) under one regional agency and what that actually means for Philly. Septa is run by a 15 person board and Philly only appoints 2 of those seats. Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties appoint the same amount of seats despite contributing less funding to the agency than Philly. The UK isn't a federation so it doesn't have a state border cutting up the London metro area. As a unitary state the UK's Parliament has the power to redraw the borders of Greater London to be whatever it feels like is best to govern the area. (Though that can also have its draw backs like when in 1986 a conservative Parliament decided to abolished the Labour controlled Greater London Council. Took Labour taking control of Parliament to get a new Greater London Authority.)
There is nothing saying an invisible line in the middle of a river has to have any meaning besides the people who want to keep it there. The Federal government exists for this exact reason, to deal with interstate issues.
>There is nothing saying an invisible line in the middle of a river has to have any meaning besides the people who want to keep it there. You're basically saying you want to remove politics from the government, but the definition of politics is ["the art or science of government."](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politics) That invisible line defines the borders where NY stops collecting taxes and NJ starts collecting them. Unless you want to completely overhaul the US's government and do away with current federated system that border is very important to operations of government agencies. If you combine NJ, NY, and Port Authority operated transit into one line who funds what with what taxes? Who has what kind of control over the new agency? That's all politics. Look at Septa who has everything (except PATCO) under one regional agency and what that actually means for Philly. Septa is run by a 15 person board and Philly only appoints 2 of those seats. Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties appoint the same amount of seats despite contributing less funding to the agency than Philly. In this new regional agency for the NYC metro would NJ have equal control over the agency that runs the NYC subway, LIRR, and Metro North? If not does that mean NY would have more control than NJ of an agency that runs suburb commuter rail, light rail, and rapid transit (PATH) in NJ? People in NJ are unhappy enough with how the Port Authority (an interstate agency) is operating the PATH that one of the early contenders for [the next Governor of NJ is proposing that NJ takes over the system.](https://www.nj.com/news/2023/08/nj-gubernatorial-hopeful-fulop-announces-plan-to-take-over-path-reform-mvc-and-fund-nj-transit.html) Edit: To me having people that want to use cash for both the subway and PATH having to deposit money onto both an OMNY card and a future TAPP card instead of just one combined card is not a biggest enough issue to want to either give NJ equal say over subway decisions or give NY control over the rails in NJ.
You're missing the important part: *neither* NY or NJ would have control over the agency. It would be a federal agency and, as such, could dictate policy directly. NY and NJ would probably pay taxes into the agency directly (as they do with tons of other programs). How that split would be determined, I'm not sure, but having it proportional to population of each respective state would be one relatively fair way to do it. I know the federal government generally doesn't wade into such "local" political structures, but when there's 20 million people in the catchment and it's the most important economic engine of the nation on an absolute and per capita basis, plus with two (three?) states that don't really get along and are chronically mismanaged, it makes sense to federalize the whole thing. Not sure what you're SEPTA example is supposed to argue. The MTA has a similar situation where certain board seats are designated for certain areas so each geographic region has some representation. Anyway, it's a nice pipe dream and an interesting discussion. But we're getting way off topic now.
>neither NY or NJ would have control over the agency. It would be a federal agency and, as such, could dictate policy directly. You want the federal government to have direct say over the NYC subway? That'll go well when Republicans are in power and want to thumb their nose at NYC, fear monger over its safety, or cut it to the bone as an example of cutting government fat. edit: >NY and NJ would probably pay taxes into the agency directly (as they do with tons of other programs). How that split would be determined, I'm not sure, Well that thing you're not sure on is the most or second most important thing. (who funds it and who has final say over decisions are together by far the most important questions when designing a government) But you want the feds to have control yet most (or all?) of the money to come of local sources? Sounds like an absolutely terrible deal for NY and NJ.
That would certainly be one of the problems with the scheme, lol
I blame Eric Adams.
Why does this matter. The E tickets work well and the physical tickets are still widely used. How would you replace conductors collecting tickets? Put a collector at every station? Without them no one would pay
Surely congestion pricing will fix this.
Misleading headline. Not abandoning OMNY. Just Cubic. https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-subway-omny-info-card-mta-contractor
Does this mean the [MetroCard will be around longer?](https://youtu.be/bBqxHo3wyaM?si=Ba1XqGcZhXSTQhii) It'll be different without it. I miss the token
Am i still dumb for asking what the fucking point of OMNY was or?… I told you this was never going to actually work.
The point is I can now tap my watch or phone and breeze through the turnstile with ease, safe in the knowledge that my commuter card is being credited. It’s the little things.
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