What I don't like about the OMNY card
Mar. 21st, 2026 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoySo, New York City recently got rid of the Metro Card (the card readers are still there, so if you have one it's still usable for now, but you can no longer get a new one nor refill your existing one) and replaced it with the OMNY card. The OMNY card has one big obvious advantage: It's much easier to use. Tapping your OMNY card is much easier than the mess that was swiping your Metro Card several times until it finally worked. (They say real New Yorkers could get it consistently on the first try. Well, by that standard I'm no real New Yorker, I suppose.) Also, if you want to get a new OMNY card or refill your existing one, the machines are faster and easier to use, particularly because they support tapping a credit card, whereas previously getting a credit card to register was *also* something that might take multiple tries.
But the OMNY card system has a few problems, ways in which it's distinctly worse than the old Metro Card. First off, when you pay with an OMNY card, the display doesn't show how much you've been charged and how much is is left on the card. Metro Card did this. Why not OMNY?
Worse, if you don't have sufficient fare, the error message is unhelpful -- it just says "card not accepted". This will make you think there's something wrong with your OMNY card and you need a new one. There isn't! You just need to refill it! This is confusing; the message should say "insufficient fare" like the Metro Card would.
Similarly, free transfers should have a "free transfer" message like Metro Card did, etc -- when I say you should know how much you've been charged, that includes if it's free, and you should know why it's free! OMNY has a feature where the subways become free if you've used them enough in one week. Is there a special message for when you've activated this feature? I bet there isn't, but there definitely should be!
What OMNY card does do is that, if your balance is low, sometimes it will allow you to go a tiny bit into the negatives (not more than like $3). Um, OK, I guess? I don't actually find this a helpful feature. Making it one more ride before I have to refill my OMNY card doesn't really make my life substantially easier (indeed, it throws off my accounting of when I expect to have to do so). What I want is better indication of what's going on when I use the card, not an interest-free loan of $3.
But what really grates is that it seems like, if your balance is negative, OMNY won't necessarily work for things that are supposed to be free. The other day I took a bus, with my card at $0. (Or so I deduced later -- as I've complained, it didn't tell me!) This put me at $-3 (again, or so I deduced later). Then, just a few minutes later, I attempted to take a subway, with what should be a free transfer. It said "card not accepted"! Dude, it's a *free* transfer. You shouldn't need to have money in order to take a *free* transfer. Yes, even if your balance is negative! Because my OMNY card wasn't accepted, I had to pay with my credit card instead, which meant I had to pay for both the bus *and* the subway, which is not how it's supposed to work. I should be able to trust that things will cost what they're supposed to cost, and not that they'll effectively cost double when your card is low on balance. It should be very simple -- if something is free, it should be always permitted, even at negative balance.
(In effect, the "feature" of allowing small negatives cost me $3, because if you couldn't go negative, I wouldn't have hit this bug! I'd have just paid with my credit card for both the bus and the subway, and the free transfer would have worked.)
Finally, there's the odd fact that OMNY doesn't seem to work for PATH like Metro Card did; instead PATH has an apparently identical, yet nonetheless distinct, system called "TAPP". Why don't these work together? I have to assume the reason is political rather than technical, and that probably it'll be fixed at some point, but it's still a problem.
I should figure out who to complain to about this, I guess. :-/
But the OMNY card system has a few problems, ways in which it's distinctly worse than the old Metro Card. First off, when you pay with an OMNY card, the display doesn't show how much you've been charged and how much is is left on the card. Metro Card did this. Why not OMNY?
Worse, if you don't have sufficient fare, the error message is unhelpful -- it just says "card not accepted". This will make you think there's something wrong with your OMNY card and you need a new one. There isn't! You just need to refill it! This is confusing; the message should say "insufficient fare" like the Metro Card would.
Similarly, free transfers should have a "free transfer" message like Metro Card did, etc -- when I say you should know how much you've been charged, that includes if it's free, and you should know why it's free! OMNY has a feature where the subways become free if you've used them enough in one week. Is there a special message for when you've activated this feature? I bet there isn't, but there definitely should be!
What OMNY card does do is that, if your balance is low, sometimes it will allow you to go a tiny bit into the negatives (not more than like $3). Um, OK, I guess? I don't actually find this a helpful feature. Making it one more ride before I have to refill my OMNY card doesn't really make my life substantially easier (indeed, it throws off my accounting of when I expect to have to do so). What I want is better indication of what's going on when I use the card, not an interest-free loan of $3.
But what really grates is that it seems like, if your balance is negative, OMNY won't necessarily work for things that are supposed to be free. The other day I took a bus, with my card at $0. (Or so I deduced later -- as I've complained, it didn't tell me!) This put me at $-3 (again, or so I deduced later). Then, just a few minutes later, I attempted to take a subway, with what should be a free transfer. It said "card not accepted"! Dude, it's a *free* transfer. You shouldn't need to have money in order to take a *free* transfer. Yes, even if your balance is negative! Because my OMNY card wasn't accepted, I had to pay with my credit card instead, which meant I had to pay for both the bus *and* the subway, which is not how it's supposed to work. I should be able to trust that things will cost what they're supposed to cost, and not that they'll effectively cost double when your card is low on balance. It should be very simple -- if something is free, it should be always permitted, even at negative balance.
(In effect, the "feature" of allowing small negatives cost me $3, because if you couldn't go negative, I wouldn't have hit this bug! I'd have just paid with my credit card for both the bus and the subway, and the free transfer would have worked.)
Finally, there's the odd fact that OMNY doesn't seem to work for PATH like Metro Card did; instead PATH has an apparently identical, yet nonetheless distinct, system called "TAPP". Why don't these work together? I have to assume the reason is political rather than technical, and that probably it'll be fixed at some point, but it's still a problem.
I should figure out who to complain to about this, I guess. :-/
