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Goodbye, scholar MetroCards.
New York Metropolis college students will obtain free OMNY playing cards within the coming college 12 months, permitting for extra versatile journey on weekdays and weekends, Mayor Eric Adams introduced Thursday.
The brand new playing cards — which can be obtainable for the 2024-25 college 12 months — permit for 4 every day journeys, and could be tapped 24 hours per day, seven days per week, for the whole lot of the calendar 12 months, metropolis officers mentioned Thursday throughout a press convention at Transit Tech Excessive College in Brooklyn.
Beforehand, student-issued MetroCards allowed for simply three free rides per day between 5:30 a.m. and eight:30 p.m. on college days. College students had been issued new playing cards every semester, and couldn’t use them on evenings or weekends, which was a burden for college students who come house late from internships or jobs or attend weekend lessons or sporting actions. It additionally restricted college students who needed to commute for different causes, similar to ferrying their siblings round. (Youngsters might solely use MetroCards in the summertime in the event that they had been enrolled in summer time college.)
Now, college students will obtain one card that is still energetic till the beginning of the next college 12 months. The initiative is supported by a mixture of state and metropolis funds. New York state will present $25 million to the coed OMNY card program, whereas the town contributes $50.5 million, up from $45 million, based on a press launch.
“No extra hourly restrictions, no extra restrictions you can’t apply it to the weekends, and no extra restrictions you can’t use it out of the college 12 months,” mentioned MTA Chair Janno Lieber in the course of the press convention. “It’s about flexibility. That’s the distinction.”
New York Metropolis’s subways and buses function 24-hours a day all 12 months, and the fare is $2.90 per experience for many straphangers.
The OMNY playing cards will permit college students to journey on MTA subway strains, native, restricted, and choose buses, on the Staten Island Railway, the Roosevelt Island Tram, and the Hudson Rail hyperlink, based on a press launch. Playing cards can be distributed by faculties initially of the 12 months, with the MTA and Schooling Division partnering to advertise card utilization throughout the town’s college districts.
College students in Okay-12 grades who stay half a mile or extra from their college are eligible for the free transportation playing cards, based on the town’s Schooling Division. On Thursday, college students from Transit Tech Excessive College — which gives coaching for college students keen on careers within the transit business — praised the expanded flexibility of the brand new OMNY playing cards.
“I’m a scholar athlete, so we’ve video games on Sundays and Saturdays, and never being able to journey without spending a dime, it sort of hurts typically,” mentioned Malik Inniss, a scholar on the college, of the prior transit card guidelines. “As a full-time scholar, I don’t all the time have the flexibility to take part in internships and work.”
The brand new playing cards come as Adams has cracked down on fare evasion, rising police presence in subways and suggesting hyperlinks between fare evasion and violent crime.
“When it comes all the way down to college students, they’re doing it out of necessity,” Adams mentioned. “They’re attempting to get to highschool. They’re attempting to choose up their niece, their nephew, their sibling, and so they simply don’t have the cash to take action. We try to make it simpler to not have these younger folks have a file as a result of they’re attempting to hold out an exercise that they have to do.”
Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter protecting New York Metropolis. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.
