OMNY: an Easy Way to Pay Fares on Subways & Buses

For a long time, visitors to New York City had to buy a separate MetroCard at a machine and swipe it to use the subway or bus. (You can also use cash to pay for a bus.) MetroCards come in two types: stored value (pay $2.75/ride, with free transfers within two hours) or unlimited rides for a week ($33) or 30 days ($127).

You can still do all that.

But you don't have to, which means you can save time.

Thanks to the new OMNY reader system, you can simply use a credit card (or smartphone/smartwatch) to pay for rides; please see instructions here. And while OMNY does not (yet) offer the equivalent of a 30-day MetroCard, it does have a (limited) weekly fare-capping system.

The fare cap is aimed at commuters, so it runs Monday through Sunday; that means that after 12 rides, all future rides are free. Unlike the weekly MetroCard, which you can start on any day and will run seven days, the OMNY weekly cap runs from Monday through Sunday.

That means that if, for example, you start on a Friday, it will not last seven days. In that case, you'd be much better off buying a weekly MetroCard.