PORT AUTHORITY — The Metropolitan Transit Authority will release limited-edition MetroCards featuring an image of a MetroCard in honor of the swipeable yellow card as it’s phased out.
“We’re calling it the Meta-rocard,” said Zaynab Ahmed, an MTA spokesperson. “Hopefully, Zuckerberg won’t have anything to say about that.”
The MTA planned to end the MetroCard by 2023, replacing it with a new contactless payment system called OMNY (One Metro New York), which officials have described as “definitely a privacy violation of some kind.”
Unlike other commemorative cards, which are available for purchase at select subway stations for a brief period of time, the MTA will distribute these special editions to its conductors and station crew. MTA workers are free to hand out MetroCards to riders as they see fit, whether to someone who is a commute regular or a rider who is particularly kind.
In anticipation of rowdy crowds attempting to get the last special card ever, the MetroCards of a MetroCard have no value pre-loaded and cannot be used to swipe in.
“We’re broke, remember?” Ahmed said.
Pigeon Post 