New Yorkers who depend on the MetroCard for greater than swipes and dips are grudgingly bracing for the transit system’s acquainted farecard to succeed in the tip of the road.
With gross sales of the plastic silver that pays for subway and bus journeys ending on New 12 months’s Eve, the MTA says nearly 94% of commuters have totally shifted away from the gold-and-blue playing cards in favor of the OMNY tap-and-go fare-payment system that debuted in 2019.
“I remember the transition from tokens and it really blew people’s minds,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief government, mentioned after the transportation authority’s December board assembly. “It was a difficult transition, not everyone was comfortable swiping.”’
However those that stay hooked up to the cardboard that started changing the long-lasting token 31 years in the past aren’t fairly able to let it go.
A commuter makes use of their MetroCard at Union Sq., April 29, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
For aficionados that embrace artists and songwriters — consider the catchy 1999 Le Tigre track “My My Metrocard” — the most recent evolution in how fares are paid is proving to be as difficult as it’s for vacationers to grasp the swipe on the turnstiles.
“I had to buy an OMNY card and I felt brokenhearted,” mentioned Thomas McKean, an East Village artist who, for near 25 years, has created intricate collages by clipping previous farecards.
MetroCard collectors are additionally feeling blue over the past of what the MTA says are 3.2 billion farecards encoded since 1994, which embrace 700 that made up a MetroCard gown featured within the Broadway musical “In Transit.”
“I started to collect them after my younger son mentioned that one of the cards he was using had an advertisement, it was for 1-800-MATTRESS,” mentioned collector Lev Radin, recalling a long-ago limited-edition card for the defunct bedding firm.
Radin’s stash, which he shops in plastic sheets inside albums, options no less than one copy of each card ever offered to the general public and a few that by no means had been issued. Amongst them is the unique and largely blue MetroCard first issued in January 1994 to be used on just a few subway strains.
Others in his set are copies of the greater than 400 limited-edition playing cards distributed over the many years or offered in station MetroCard merchandising machines. In response to an MTA spokesperson, MetroCard promotions final 12 months generated $641,000 for a state authority with a $20 billion annual price range.
A piece by artist Thomas McKean, Dec. 26, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Branded MetroCards included 5 that celebrated the New York Rangers 1994 Stanley Cup, a Modell’s-sponsored model given to followers at Yankee Stadium in 1997 (with a $1.50 fare on it) for the primary Subway Sequence sport, one from 2000 that touted the Principally Mozart and Lincoln Heart festivals and a 2022 commemorative card that was out there at 4 Brooklyn stations for the The Infamous B.I.G.’s fiftieth birthday.
Radin owns copies of every, together with the ultimate three branded playing cards issued final December, which function the phrase “Instagram” leaning on the entrance rather than the same old “MetroCard.”
However the Bronx grandfather mentioned he has no concept on the precise measurement of his stash.
“I never counted and I can’t say how many I have,” he mentioned.
Now Radin is among the many previous couple of coming to phrases with an emblem of the subway that may quickly be gone for good and changed by OMNY, a system whose rollout has encountered delays and software program glitches.
“The token, the subway bullet and the MetroCard are these things that when you see them, you immediately think of New York,” mentioned Jodi Shapiro, curator of the ”FAREwell, MetroCard” exhibit that’s on the New York Transit Museum by the spring. “New Yorkers are pretty emotionally attached to their transit system.”
For McKean, meaning coming to phrases along with his provide stream ultimately drying up, although he estimates that he can nonetheless make inventive use of the 5,000 to six,000 previous playing cards in his condominium “for at least a few years.”
“I stopped believing [the MTA] about the end of the MetroCard and I said, ‘Oh, they’re so disorganized, they’ll never do it,’” he mentioned. “So I was living in a fool’s paradise — and then it kind of dawned on me that they’re serious this time.”
Artist Thomas McKean on the Chelsea Market exhibit of his MetroCard collages, Dec. 26, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
McKean stashes his provide of previous MetroCards in a wood field that he calls “kinda like a chop shop.” There are separate compartments for the weather of the playing cards that he has fastidiously clipped with scissors.
“In one, I have cut out the M, because that’s very usable,” he instructed THE CITY. “Another one has the circle with the MTA logo, another compartment has the black stripe.”
McKean mentioned he started making his items “sort of on a lark” till he observed the “beautiful glossiness” of the fare playing cards and the way completely different print runs may produce completely different colours.
“So the yellow went from a canary yellow to an orange to an ochre and the blue went from a light blue to medium to quite a dark blue,” he mentioned. “So if I’m cutting out those little strips to make a sky, it’s not just one flat blue, it’s little variations in tone, much like the real sky.”
Previous to 2013, when the MTA utilized a $1 “green fee” to every new card buy, McKean mentioned he would scavenge for what commuters left behind in stations.
“People were quite slovenly,” he mentioned.
A MetroCard work by artist Thomas McKean on show at Chelsea Market, Dec. 26, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
However whilst he would get “a lot of sorrowful sorrowful looks from people,” McKean mentioned he was pulling in fairly a number of hauls off of station flooring and from behind MetroCard merchandising machines.
“There were a lot there,” McKean mentioned. “So I discovered a few motherlodes of Metrocards.”
He mentioned he additionally has obtained previous playing cards within the mail and some months again, he met somebody who handed him a purchasing bag filled with them.
“It was a thrilling moment for me,” he mentioned. “It was like a kid getting a whole lot of candy at one time.”
Now McKean, who mentioned he used the token till its remaining day in March 2003, is working out of time to construct that offer.
Judi Shapiro helped curate a MetroCard exhibit on the metropolis’s Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn, Dec. 19, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Whereas the final of the station MetroCard merchandising machines will quickly vanish, the MTA has mentioned the playing cards will stay usable for a number of months into 2026.
“New Yorkers really don’t like change, but they accept change and then they come to love change,” mentioned Shapiro, the Transit Museum curator. “I think MetroCard is a symbol of all of that, as the token was.”
Associated
