The LIRR Today

New Yaphank-BNL station opens

2026-07-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

The new Yaphank station located east of CR-49 William Floyd Parkway opens today, replacing the existing Yaphank station along CR-21 Yaphank Avenue near the county office building complex. The MTA announced that train service would be moving to the new station at a news conference Friday (in perhaps what will be the most people ever at this station at one time).

The opening of the new station represents the end of a nearly decade-long effort to relocate the station. Plans to construct a new Yaphank station closer to Brookhaven National Lab and William Floyd Parkway were first announced in early 2017. For a very simple and straightforward project, it has encountered a great many delays and other complications, with the LIRR and local officials not coming to an agreement on the site for the new station until late 2021, and construction not starting until 2025. The station was originally expected to open back on May 15, but even that was put off.

The new Yaphank-BNL station (Photo: MTA/Marc A. Hermann)

Officials cutting the ribbon at the new Yaphank-BNL station (Photo: MTA/Marc A. Hermann)

The new station includes features a single, 2-car long platform, a parking lot with 50 spaces, a kiss-and-ride loop, and the standard collection of accessories found at any other LIRR station. As part of this project, the existing Yaphank station will be closed and demolished.

The relocation of the station was intended to make the stop easier to access, as the existing Yaphank station near the county office buildings was often characterized as hard to find, and perhaps that was the reason the station consistently ranks as the least-used station on the LIRR network.

MTA and local officials hope that by relocating the station to a more accessible area, more riders would use the new station than the existing Yaphank station, which consistently ranks as the least-used LIRR station by a considerable margin. (Fun fact: more people used the temporary Shinnecock Hills station in the roughly a week it was open for the US Open in 2018 than have used Yaphank in all of the last 9 years).

New station is actually further away from most places

If the intent was to make the station more convenient and accessible, the location is everything. I visited the new station site a few weeks ago, and I was very surprised to see how out of the way and difficult to reach it was, more than a mile east of William Floyd Parkway, buried deep in a commercial/industrial neighborhood with limited roadway access.

In practice, the new station site is not at all more convenient or accessible than the existing Yaphank station one exit to the west on the LIE. The station site is buried all the way at the east end of an industrial and commercial complex along Ramsey Road and Precision Drive (it is accessed from a traffic circle at the very east end of Precision Drive).

Ramsey Road can only be accessed from the northbound
lanes of William Floyd Parkway

This complex is difficult to reach in the first place, if you are not familiar with the area. If you are travelling south on the William Floyd Parkway, you cannot make a left-turn onto Ramsey Road at the intersection just south of the LIE interchange. It is then not permitted to make a U-turn at the next intersection south with Moriches-Middle Island Road. So you either need to drive nearly a mile south to make a U-turn at Flower Hill Drive, or make a U-turn on the residential streets off Moriches-Middle Island Road. If you are travelling from the north or east, you have to take the ramp to the LIE South Service Road, go all the way to the end of the service road, and then take a ramp that puts you onto Precision Drive.

Accessing the Yaphank-BNL station site from the north or east requires a confusing detour onto the LIE South Service Road.

If you are coming from the south, you have to do a U-turn using the LIE North Service Road to get out, as the only exit from this entire complex puts you north on William Floyd Parkway.

By time you add in all of this extra maneuvering (not even counting the time getting lost trying to make a U-turn on William Floyd Parkway), the new Yaphank-BNL station is actually a longer drive for most people compared to staying on the LIE for one more exit to the existing Yaphank station!

If you are coming from the east (example starting point is the Wading River Road exit on the LIE), Google Maps shows it taking 9 minutes to drive the 6.1 miles to the new Yaphank-BNL station site. That is 2 minutes and a tenth of a mile longer than staying on the LIE one more exit to Yaphank Avenue for the existing Yaphank station.

One of the main selling points of a new Yaphank-BNL station was providing better connectivity to Brookhaven National Lab, which is among the largest single-site employers on Long Island, and a renowned facility that attracts researchers from far and wide. No station site, even on the BNL grounds east of the LIE overpass, would be walkable to the main cluster of buildings on the BNL campus which is more than a mile north of the tracks. But even if you were to drive or run a bus, it would take 11 minutes to go from Berkner Hall to the site of the new Yaphank-BNL station. That is 1 minute longer than it would take to drive west one exit on the LIE to the existing Yaphank station.

The proposed station site is also not walkable to any residential areas. Even though the new station will be about 700 feet as the crow flies away from the nearest house, the closest residential neighborhood is on the south side of the tracks in Shirley, and the station is being built on the north side of the tracks. The LIRR has not built an overpass or grade crossing to make this station walkable to that community. You couldn't even walk it if you wanted to, since the William Floyd Parkway overpass over the LIRR tracks does not have sidewalks. Instead, to reach their house 700 feet away, the person living in the nearest house would have to take an 11 minute drive, detouring via the LIE North Service Road to get home from the station. It would actually take 2 minutes less for this person to drive home from the existing Yaphank station than the new platform built 700 feet from their house.

What about the new Country Pointe Meadows apartment complex to the northwest of the LIE interchange? Can't walk there either, as there are no sidewalks on the William Floyd Parkway north of Ramsey Road. You would have to drive from there to the new Yaphank-BNL station, which Google Maps says will take about 8 minutes. That is two minutes longer than just driving to the existing Yaphank station.

So is the new station closer for anyone? Well, if you work in that commercial/industrial complex right where the station is, sure. That complex initially contained some biopharma companies that sprout up in the shadow of BNL, but most of the new construction that has happened there are logistics and trucking companies. While there are sidewalks in this area where you could conceivably walk someplace, you could only really reach one (currently cleared but undeveloped) site within the 0.25 mile radius typically considered acceptable for walking. And according to Census data, most of the 849 people that work in this complex come from the nearby towns to the south and northwest (e.g. Shirley, Mastic Beach, Mastic, Coram, Centereach), not accessible by train. Less than 5% (40 people) reverse commute from New York City.

Ultimately, the problem with the exiting Yaphank station is not necessarily that it is hard to access (and, if it was, this new station certainly doesn't address that). Rather, the LIRR's train service offered here is next to useless. With only five westbound (four on weekends) and four eastbound trains per day, there is simply little reason to utilize this station when you can just stay on the LIE, drive to, and park for free at, Ronkonkoma station less than 15 minutes to the west, where the LIRR offers substantially more peak and off-peak service. At the end of the day, MTA and LIRR have not solved the root cause of Yaphank's low ridership. It's like the going to the hospital for a broken arm, and the doctor ignoring that to treat a pimple on your nose. The MTA has said that they are initiating a study of potential infrastructure improvements to support more service east of Ronkonkoma, but we have been down this road before...

With these types of projects, the devil is always in the details. And here, the MTA got the details wrong.

LIRR back on track after 3-day strike

2026-05-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

For the first time in more than 30 years, LIRR employees went on strike last weekend after the MTA and a coalition of LIRR unions failed to reach an agreement on a new contract. Workers walked off the job and all LIRR service was suspended systemwide at 12:01am last Saturday, May 16. Service is now back to normal after a deal was struck Monday evening, with service being restored from noon on Tuesday, May 19.

LIRR workers picketing outside the 33rd Street entrance at NY-Penn Station

The dispute involved the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Transportation Communications Union, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Together, these organizations represent around 3,500 employees (about half of the LIRR’s represented workforce), including train engineers, dispatchers, clerical employees, station agents, signal and communication workers, electricians, and machinists.

The prior contracts between the LIRR and these unions ended and became amendable in June 2023. Over the course of the last 3 or so years, the parties have been negotiating on and off, including National Mediation Board mediation and two Presidential Emergency Boards which weighed proposals from both sides and have made recommendations to resolve the matter. But when the clock struck midnight last week, the parties had not come to an agreement, so for the first time since 1994, LIRR service shut down systemwide due to a strike.

No trains available at NY-Penn Station due to the strike
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The strike certainly disrupted daily life on Long Island for many, but most Long Islanders seemed to be able to make do without their railroad, at least for a few days. Many just stayed home for the two days (either working from home or taking time off), others that had to travel have driven, taken the limited contingency bus services, or existing NICE and SCT bus services. The MTA reported that only about 2,000 riders availed of the contingency buses. Traffic was worse, but not apocalyptically so.

In the final days leading up to the deadline last week, the two sides were not all that far apart. The parties were largely on the same page with 3%, 3%, and 3.5% retroactive raises for 2023, 2024, and 2025. Where they disagreed was over the increase for 2026, the fourth year of the contract. The unions wanted 5% raises to bring the overall wage increase a little ahead of inflation. The MTA wanted 3% raises to keep with a more conservative pattern they had been seeking with the agency's other bargaining units, but had continued negotiating and offered a lump-sum payment that would bring the total increase for 2026 closer to 4.5%, but not fix wages at that level until the next contract was resolved.

I remarked on Friday before the strike that, with the field of play as it was, we (the riders and taxpayers) had already basically lost. The MTA had already taken reform of the LIRR's archaic and painful work rules off the table, and the only real remaining point of contention seemed small enough (half a percentage point or so) that resorting to such extraordinary action as self-help wasn't likely to dramatically change the outcome. The math didn't really favor a strike for the unions—certainly not a protracted one. As workers on strike don't get paid, a weeklong strike would result in 2% lost wages, more than eating up any difference they would gain over just taking the MTA's prior offer.

But there were clearly larger undercurrents that were keeping the two sides from striking a deal in the lead up to the deadline.

For the unions, some suggested that they were holding out to bust the pattern for the benefit of the MTA's subway and bus unions, utilizing their ability to strike to leverage better wages for subway and bus workers, who are covered by New York State's Taylor Law and are not allowed to strike. But I don't know how likely that is—LIRR workers and unions generally couldn't be bothered about what is good or bad for subway and bus workers. And certainly not at their personal expense. More likely, the unions have been feeling their political power dwindling in the post-Cuomo years and were looking to get back closer to the center of attention. The State's public sector unions were a major source of political support for former Governor Andrew Cuomo, especially in the suburbs, and he went to much greater lengths to show them love with significant investments in infrastructure across the state. But in recent years, the game of electoral politics in New York has changed and now-Governor Kathy Hochul has sought and obtained her support in other areas.

For the MTA, sticking to the pattern and keeping overall wage increases down was key to maintaining the agency's relatively stable financial outlook. The MTA operates on a system of pattern bargaining, meaning one set of unions typically gets the same deal as all of the others. When that pattern changes, other unions will point to it in future negotiations and argue they should get the same thing. Several contracts now even have explicit "me too" clauses. While granting a larger increase to the 3,500 LIRR workers might not break the bank this month, breaking the pattern could have a large impact on the MTA's finances if they have to offer the same raises to the 40,000+ TWU workers whose contract is coming up for negotiation in the near future.

The departure board at Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal was blocked out with "No Passengers" trains, and stairways up to the LIRR platforms were gated off (Photo: The LIRR Today)

In the end, the MTA largely caved, agreeing to a 4-year, 6-week contract that grants wage increases of the 3%/3%/3.5% for 2023-2025, a 4.5% increase for 2026 plus a $3,000 lump-sum payment. The MTA did not win any substantive givebacks in terms of work rule concessions, increased contributions for healthcare, or productivity reforms. But it did get trains moving again after a 3.5 day suspension.

However, even though the MTA was unable to hold the pattern or secure productivity reforms, I believe that the strike and ensuing disruption was still moderately fruitful... The strike focused more attention to the significant levels of inefficiency and waste brought about by the LIRR's union contracts, and, even though the strike was disruptive, most people were able to bear it out and public support was generally positive. But, most importantly, it showed that the Governor is willing to take a few lumps, even in an election year, instead of caving in the eleventh hour to keep the peace. This will hopefully demonstrate to the MTA that the backing will be there should they one day grow the brains or the balls to really tackle these labor issues in future rounds of contract negotiations.

Self-help is never convenient, but it is a very effective tool at keeping unions in line, and we need to take extraordinary measures to address the extraordinary problems of inefficacy, waste, and low productivity that plague the LIRR today.

East Side Access hasn't saved travel time for most riders

2026-01-25T18:00:00.005-05:00

One of the MTA's major selling points for the $12+ billion East Side Access project was the significant time savings it would offer Long Islanders who want to commute or travel to Manhattan's East Side, saving them, as the MTA claimed, 40 minutes of travel time every day. But results from a past MTA Customers Count survey shows that East Side Access and the more than $17 billion in capacity improvement projects the LIRR has brought online has not resulted in door-to-door travel time savings for most riders.

The long amount of time it takes to exit from the ESA
caverns water down much of the time savings
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

As part of the MTA's bi-annual online customer satisfaction survey in Fall 2024 (about 18 months after full service began to East Side Access) LIRR riders were asked a series of special supplemental questions about their most recent inbound weekday LIRR trip. Respondents were asked some additional questions about how their travel patterns have changed since before East Side Access opened. One question asked riders whether their total travel time (door to door travel) for their last weekday inbound trip changed since East Side Access opened in 2023. Riders could respond in 5 minute increments.

Overall, 45% of respondents said that the opening of East Side Access and LIRR service to NY-Grand Central resulted in a reduction in their door-to-door travel time. 34% say there has been no change in their door-to-door travel time. 21% of respondents said that their travel time has gotten longer since the start of East Side Access.

Drilling down into the time ranges, only 22% of riders say that East Side Access is actually delivering that 40+ minutes a day in travel time savings the MTA celebrated. 10% of respondents are saving 15-20 minutes on their weekday inbound trips, 6% are saving 10-15 minutes, 5% report saving 5-10 minutes, 2% report saving less than 5 minutes. On the other side of the coin, 1% of respondents say their trips have gotten longer by less than 5 minutes, 5% longer by 5-10 minutes, 5% longer by 10-15 minutes, 4% longer by 15-20 minutes, and 6% of respondents say their travel times have gotten longer by 20 or more minutes.

While there are always winners and losers in any major service overhaul or schedule change, the fact that more than 1 in 5 respondents say their travel time has gotten longer thanks to the fruits of more than $17 billion in capacity improvements is quite disappointing.

I am actually surprised that even as many riders responded that they are saving travel time as they did. When you look at just the schedule times, running times have gotten longer due to trains generally making more stops and more schedule padding. Then when you add in connections, which can be long especially during off-peak hours, it eats away at a significant chunk of that travel time savings. Riders tend to underestimate their actual travel time, and riders were also being asked to compare their travel time to trips in 2022, when LIRR was still running reduced rush-hour service, with more local trains and awkward gaps between trains.

The phrasing of the questions were also quite confusing. Riders were asked to evaluate their most recent, westbound, weekday trip, which looks like it tripped a lot of people up (and also limited the universe of trips that have been impacted by these changes.

Depending on what branch you are on, there may be more winners or losers. The branch with the most riders reporting travel time savings is in the City Terminal Zone (Jamaica and points west) where there are more trains making local stops and travel times tend to be short in the first place. On the Long Island branches, fewer riders responded that East Side Access has reduced their travel times.

Branches with the most riders reporting their travel time has decreased include the Far Rockaway Branch (48% of trips shorter), Port Washington Branch (47% of trips shorter) and West Hempstead Branch (46% of trips shorter).

While the West Hempstead Branch reported a higher share of riders seeing travel time savings, they also saw the most riders reporting that East Side Access changes resulted in longer trips, with 32% of riders saying their trips are now longer than they were before East Side Access. That is followed by the Long Beach Branch (31% of trips longer) and Far Rockaway Branch (27% of trips longer).

The branches that had the fewest riders reporting additional travel time are mostly the diesel branches, where there were very little service improvements or changes with East Side Access.

Travel time changes were perceived more positively by off-peak riders, where 45%-52% of off-peak and reverse-peak riders reported that their trip was faster than before East Side Access (but also remember, in the last few years leading up to the completion of East Side Access and Third Track, LIRR reduced off-peak service on several lines that resulted in longer than usual baseline travel times). But during the AM Peak period, where there are many more riders, fewer riders reported that East Side Access has saved them time, while 1 in 4 AM Peak riders say their journey is now longer than it was before.

This correlates to trip purpose...riders who are travelling for or commuting to work (which tend to travel during the peak periods) have the largest share of riders reporting that their travel times have gotten longer, with 26% of riders saying their trip takes longer than it did before East Side Access. For non-work leisure travel—where riders tend to have more flexibility on when they travel so they can steer towards direct trains with shorter travel times—fewer riders report that their travel times are longer.

It might come as no surprise that travel time changes are heavily correlated to what city terminal you are using. Riders that are travelling through NY-Grand Central, as you might guess, overwhelmingly report that their trips are shorter. But on the other hand, nearly half of Brooklyn riders say that East Side Access has lengthened their travel times. For those still using NY-Penn Station, there are more people that say their trips are longer than shorter.

This pretty clearly shows that most of the travel time savings for those headed to Midtown East is coming at the expense of longer travel times for most other riders.

Long walks eat up most East Side Access travel time savings

Even though NY-Grand Central may be better located for those who work on the East Side, the design of the new station—where the LIRR trains are buried in a cavern 140 feet below street level—means that it takes quite a while to just get out of the station once your train pulls in and the doors open. This is significantly different from the LIRR's other terminals, where the layout is simpler and more compact (NY-Penn Station isn't quite simple, but the layout is compact...if you know where you are going, you can get from the street to your train very quickly).

Shortly after East Side Access opened, I measured walking times between different locations at the LIRR's major terminals to offer a more empirical look at actual door-to-door travel times. The deep caverns and long escalators mean that it can take several minutes after your LIRR train pulls in to actually get to the street or the Subway. At NY-Grand Central, the fastest possible route from LIRR trains to the street (to 47th Street and Madison Avenue) takes more than four and a half minutes. If you are going to one of the other GCT entrances more central to 42nd Street, it can take between six and eight minutes to wind your way through the concourses, staircases, ramps, and escalators to even just get out to the street—then you have to actually walk to your destination.

Even if you were to assume that the location of East Side Access would save someone travelling to the East Side the 40 minutes a day the MTA alleges, if you are spending 7 minutes just walking to or from the train inside the station, that immediately wipes away 14 of those 40 minutes...

These walking times are markedly higher than what we see at NY-Penn Station. While the layout of NY-Penn Station is a lot more confusing, it is also a lot more compact—so if you know where you are going and enter through the right entrance, you can get to your platform quite quickly. From 7th Avenue (where most LIRR riders enter), you can get to your train in as little as 90 seconds. From 8th Avenue, again you can get to the LIRR tracks in as little as 1 minute, 3 seconds and in most cases under 2 minutes. Even if you enter all the way west at 9th Avenue through Moynihan Train Hall, it only takes a little over 3 minutes to reach LIRR trains.

The LIRR's alternate terminals in Brooklyn and Queens are even easier and faster to navigate through. If you are travelling through Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal, you can walk from the street to the platform in about 30 seconds.

And at Hunterspoint Avenue, the single LIRR platform can be reached from the street in just about 24 seconds.

All of these extra minutes and seconds really add up, especially if you have to cover more distance on foot once you leave the LIRR terminal to get to your destination. This is especially an issue at NY-Grand Central, where the LIRR terminal is set up further north (between 45th and 48th Street) from the main hub of activity closer to 42nd Street on the East Side.

If you are connecting from the LIRR to the Subway, that takes a lot longer at NY-Grand Central as well. Getting from the north end of the caverns at NY-Grand Central to the Lexington Avenue Line platforms at NY-Grand Central takes over 10 minutes (so long that when the MTA posted a video showing the fastest walking route, they had to speed up the video). That's nearly twice as long as it takes to get to the Subway at NY-Penn Station, where it takes about five minutes, and significantly longer than it takes at Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal (a little over 2 minutes) or Hunterspoint Avenue (less than 2 minutes).

Again the long walking times cancel out most of the time savings offered by East Side Access. If you are commuting from Long Island to Lower Manhattan (Wall Street and Broad Street, for example), travelling via NY-Grand Central takes the longest out of the LIRR's four city terminals. The fastest route from Jamaica to Wall Street & Broad Street are:

via Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal: 33 minutes, 32 seconds
via Hunterspoint Avenue: 40 minutes, 15 seconds
via NY-Penn Station: 41 minutes, 43 seconds
via NY-Grand Central: 44 minutes, 20 seconds

A fun fact: if you are coming from the Lexington Avenue subway platforms at NY-Grand Central, it actually takes less time to get to the LIRR platform at Hunterspoint Avenue than it is to trek to the other side of the Grand Central complex!

If you are sticking around Midtown, the long walk to the Subway at NY-Grand Central means that it is often faster to just walk to your destination on foot than to connect to the Subway for a short hop. If you are trying to get to Times Square (corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue), it takes a little over 6 minutes to get there from the LIRR platforms at NY-Penn Station vs. over 19 minutes from the LIRR platforms at NY-Grand Central.

The 40-minute fallacy

There was never all that much truth behind the MTA's claim that East Side Access would save riders "40 minutes a day". Even according to the trip planner on the MTA's own website, riders can get from NY-Penn Station to NY-Grand Central in as little as 11 minutes (and if you compare that to the walking times I have recorded, that matches up). So it was really only saving at most 22 minutes a day (11 minutes there + 11 minutes back).

Then when you back out the extra walking time from the caverns at NY-Grand Central, it's even less. Measuring total travel times from the east end of LIRR trains to the corner of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, it takes about 11 minutes, 14 seconds to get there from NY-Penn Station on the Subway vs. 8 minutes, 20 seconds to walk there from the LIRR caverns.

So the real savings in terms of onward travel time after you get off your LIRR trains is not 40 minutes, it's more closer to 6 minutes...

Therefore, any travel time savings perceived by riders is either purely perceived (a one-seat ride seems faster than a similar trip with one or more transfers...and when there are delays it sometimes is) or the result of other schedule changes not directly related to the location of the new terminal (for example, some trips from the South Shore to Brooklyn got faster because all express trains stop now stop at Jamaica, where before the only way to get to Brooklyn was on slower, local trains).

Overall, it's a bit disappointing that the more than $17 billion spent on LIRR capacity improvements did not result in any travel time savings for most riders. It's another example of how the details for how these projects really matters. Burying a new train station so far below ground it takes several minutes to even get to the surface washes away a lot of the benefits of a project. Not focusing enough on measuring outputs (actual frequency improvements or travel time savings delivered for riders) not just inputs (the amount of money spent on a project) is a critical misstep that leads to situations like this, where the LIRR is running fewer peak trains to/from Long Island than they were in 2019, and most riders haven't seen their travel times improve.

MTA sneaks in major changes to LIRR, Metro-North refund policy

2026-01-07T15:00:00.003-05:00

New fares and tolls took effect across the MTA's subways, buses, railroads, and crossings on Sunday, including some of the most sweeping and anti-customer changes to ticket policies on the LIRR and Metro-North in decades. In addition to raising fares between 4.5% and 8%, the MTA is dramatically reducing the validity period for one-way tickets, eliminating the 10-trip ticket and its 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate travel, and other changes, including:

Dramatically shorten the validity period for one-way and round-trip tickets from 60 days to 1 day (with all tickets expiring at 4:00am on the next day). This means riders will be unable to save their tickets and use them again on another day in the event their travel plans change, or there is a disruption in service that forces them to alter or abandon their journey.
Eliminate the 10-trip ticket and its accompanying 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate travel. This would be replaced with a buy-10-get-1-free pilot offer, if all tickets are used within 14 days. This will significantly increase costs for those who travel frequently off-peak, or between intermediate stations on Metro-North. The MTA's buy-10-get-1-free pilot offer is a joke of a replacement as all 11 trips need to be taken within 14 days (if you are taking 11 trips within 14 days, you are beyond the breakeven point for just getting a monthly ticket).
Introduce a day pass for unlimited travel, priced at 10% less than two one-way peak tickets on weekdays (except in NYC, where there will be no discount) or the price of two off-peak tickets on weekends. While this provides those who want to stop-over or take multiple trips a more affordable way to do so, the vast majority of LIRR and Metro-North riders are not making more than two trips per day, so it delivers no real benefit. And the weekday day pass is more expensive than buying 1v peak and 1 off-peak ticket or 2 off-peak tickets. So if you decide to head home early before rush hour, or stay late in the city for dinner or an event, you end up losing money over buying separate tickets.
Make the Peak CityTicket and Far Rockaway Ticket permanent fare products, and having CityTicket replace the full-fare one-way tickets for travel within New York City.
Accept half-fare tickets on all trains, including during the AM Peak period. This restriction was seldom enforced to begin with and made the MTA less than $190k per year in additional revenue.
Allow children up to 17 years of age to travel with $1 Family Fare tickets when accompanied by an adult. Child fares remain available only to those who are younger than 12, so if you are travelling with more than four children, or 12-17 year olds are travelling on their own, they must still pay the full adult fare.
Increase the onboard surcharge from $6 to $8.

Accepting half-fare tickets for seniors, Medicare beneficiaries, and people with disabilities, along with increasing the age for the Family Fare from 12 to 17 are good improvements, but seniors/half fare riders and children account for only about 5% and 1% of LIRR ridership, respectively. For the 94% of riders that pay for full-fare tickets, these changes are overwhelmingly negative as they dramatically reduce flexibility, increase costs, and will end up with riders paying much more out of pocket to ride the LIRR and Metro-North.

LIRR and Metro-North fares are already the most expensive and second-most expensive rail fares in North America, by a considerable margin. These fare changes now make LIRR and Metro-North fares not only the most expensive in North America—but now also the least flexible.

A new day pass (photo byu/pokemonhgharris innycrail)

Significant changes to refund policy

Along with the new fare policy changes, the MTA has posted a new refund policy for LIRR and Metro-North tickets on its website. Under the new policy, one-way tickets are now completely non-refundable, regardless of their purchase price.

This means that one-way tickets are now completely worthless after they expire at 4:00am the next morning, and you can't even get a partial or full refund if you don't use the ticket like you could before this past weekend.

More than 36,000 LIRR riders sought refunds for tickets in 2024, so this impacts a significant number of riders who wish to recover at least some of the value of their unused tickets. The MTA implemented a $10 administrative fee per refund transaction for tickets purchased from December 30, 2010 to discourage riders from seeking refunds of lower-value tickets (the railroad has admitted in the past that this was really a revenue protection measure to prevent riders from getting refunds of unused one-way tickets). The LIRR raked in more $2.5 million in refund fees between 2013 and 2024.

Under the new refund policy, one-way tickets are non-refundable except for an extremely short window immediately after purchase (paper tickets can be submitted for a refund with no fee only for 30 minutes after purchase, only at the station they were purchased, and only if there is a ticket window open at the time; mobile tickets can be submitted for a refund only for 2 minutes after purchase). After that point, the tickets are non-refundable. The railroads will continue to offer pro-rated refunds for monthly and weekly tickets in the same way as the previous policy, and still subject to the $10 fee.

In a statement, MTA Spokesperson Aaron Donovan said "the new ticket policy is designed to discourage customers avoiding conductors so they don't pay the fare, an increasing problem since mobile ticketing was introduced. Unused tickets can be refunded within the timeframes indicated."

The MTA has snuck in this significant change to fares, making it public only this week after the other fare changes were made. These changes to the refund policy were not included in the public hearing notice or any of the materials or literature distributed by the MTA in order for the public to comment on the proposed changes, nor were the changes approved by the MTA Board. Fares and fare policy have traditionally been within the purview of the MTA Board, and the MTA has historically sought and obtained MTA Board approval for any changes to fares—until now.

The new refund policy seems to run contrary to a New York State law that requires the MTA to allow riders who purchase a fare the ability to transfer any remaining balance for two years after expiration. In 2017, the NYS Public Authorities Law was amended to add a new section 1266-k, which states:

"Expired fare transfer policy. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, the authority shall, within ninety days of the effective date of this section, establish an expired fare transfer policy that may be amended from time to time. Such policy shall provide any person who purchases a fare the ability to transfer any remaining balance for two years after such fare is deemed expired."

In March 2018, the MTA sought and obtained MTA Board approval to extend the refund period for unused one-way, round-trip, and ten-trip tickets to 2 years after expiration. At the time, the MTA said that they were extending the refund period "to bring the Railroads in compliance with [the 2017] amendment to the Public Authorities Law". The MTA said at the time that "in order to best comply with the requirements of the law, Metro-North and LIRR recommend that the period during which a refund can be obtained be extended for an additional two years." This action item was approved by the MTA Board at the time.

After being extended in 2022, this law remains in force until December 31, 2029. Yet the MTA has underhandedly reverted the extension to the refund periods it said in 2018 were necessary to comply with the law. The new refund policy gives riders no mechanism to transfer the remaining, unused balanced on their one-way tickets after the fare is deemed expired (or, even before it expires).

When asked how the new refund policy complies with section 1266-k of the NYS Public Authorities Law, the MTA declined to comment.

The MTA also appears to have circumvented the approval procedures for fare and toll changes required under state law. Section 1266(3) of the NYS Public Authorities Law states in part that:

"Any such fares, tolls, rentals, rates, charges or other fees for the transportation of passengers shall be established and changed only if approved by resolution of the [MTA Board], and only after a public hearing..."

State law requires that any changes to fares, charges, or other fees require the approval of the MTA Board, and can only be made after a public hearing. The ticket refund policy is part of the LIRR's passenger tariff, and is part of the terms and conditions of sale. A change to the refund policy is a change to the fare (the law makes no limitation to only changes in the fare rates, it says "any changes to fares"). Also, the new refund policy changes/eliminates the $10 refund fee ("charges, or other fees") for one-way tickets which would trigger the requirement regardless.

But in this case, the MTA has made a change to fares/charges/other fees entirely on its own, without a public hearing, and without MTA Board approval.

The MTA did not respond to questions about why these changes were left out of the public hearing notice, why the public was not given the opportunity to comment on these changes, and why they made this change unilaterally without MTA Board approval—since they are essentially undoing a past action that was taken by the MTA Board in 2018.

In a statement, Lisa Daglian, Executive Director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said "As the new fare policies go into effect on the LIRR and Metro-North, riders have a lot of changes to adapt to, including some that we have strenuously supported for years. Allowing seniors and disabled riders to use their discounts in the AM peak and extending the Family Fare to age 17 makes it more affordable to ride and encourages more people to get onboard. Conversely, the loss of the 10-trip and changing the round trip to a Day Pass are not things we supported. However, as change moves forward, it should be as easy as possible for riders to adapt to the new policies and to find them easily. Having refund policies that largely eliminate the ability to get your money back on a One Way ticket in the event of a service disruption or last minute change of plans on a separate webpage – and not including them as part of the hearing or outreach process – does not help engender rider trust or support as they contend with higher fares. The MTA has come a long way in being more transparent and we call on them to discuss any such changes at upcoming Board meetings so the public can weigh in and be heard."

Riders left high and dry during service disruptions

Aside from the fact that the MTA's new refund policy very likely violates state law, making one-way tickets non-refundable is yet another horribly anti-customer move that will leave riders high and dry with worthless tickets in the event of a service disruption or suspension.

Previously, if your train was canceled or there was a service disruption that required you to alter or abandon your travel plans, you could save your one-way ticket for another 60 days (10-trip tickets for 180 days) and use them again on a later date. But under the new policy, riders who cannot complete their trip the same day due to a service disruption have no apparent recourse to get their money back—even though LIRR or Metro-North failed to uphold their end of the bargain and transport them to their destination.

The MTA's "Pledge to Customers" states that LIRR and Metro-North may waive the $10 refund fee and give riders a full refund for tickets in the event a service suspension is declared on the MTA website. Like every other article of the "pledge to customers", this was frequently ignored by the LIRR and Metro-North, but it was official policy to waive the refund fee during service disruptions, and you could get a full refund if you fought hard enough.

When asked whether it would continue to honor its "pledge to customers" going forward, the MTA declined to comment.

As recently as last week (before the new fare and refund policies took effect), LIRR's "customer service" representatives were refusing to offer refunds for tickets after LIRR suspended service on the Port Washington Branch due to switch issues.

@thelirrtoday.com Bought paper CityTicket from Bayside to Grand Central at 5:20 pm, the 5:30 pm gets cancelled, and branch service suspended. Meanwhile:

— goodcow (@goodcow.bsky.social) January 2, 2026 at 5:38 PM

The MTA has a unique and amazing ability to create bad will in the eyes of its passengers. Slashing the validity period of tickets, eliminating any option for riders to get a refund if they can't or don't use their tickets, and refusing to offer any sort of amelioration to passengers when they fail to provide service will leave people with an unbelievably bad taste in their mouth.

Fare changes hurt fastest growing LIRR ridership segment

These fare changes will increase the out-of-pocket costs paid by riders much more than the 4.5% increase to the base fares. The significant increases in out-of-pocket costs ignore some pretty clear correlations between fare pricing and ridership recovery since the COVID-19 pandemic:

In New York City, where average LIRR fares have declined by 7.7%, ridership has fully recovered and actually exceeds pre-pandemic levels
For Long Island stations, where average LIRR fares have increased by 9.5%, ridership is down 26% compared to pre-pandemic

Lower fares = more riders. Sometimes, so many more riders that the growth in ridership actually generates more revenue than increasing fare prices. At the end of the day, it's not that complicated... Yet instead of making any fare changes in a manner that was revenue-neutral (or actually lowered out-of-pocket costs for riders), the MTA is making these changes particularly hurt for off-peak and discretionary/occasional riders.

Off-peak ridership has fully recovered, and actually now exceeds pre-pandemic levels across the LIRR. Off-peak ridership has increased by 13% since 2019, and has grown 17% year-over-year, largely fueled by increases in intra-city ridership thanks to the expansion of CityTicket. Meanwhile, commuter ridership is down 51% since 2019.

Instead of realizing this trend and looking for ways to continue to lower the cost of off-peak rail travel (which costs the least to provide but has among the most expensive per-trip fares), they are implementing a series of sweeping fare changes that hit the most price sensitive ridership segment the hardest. It really causes one to scratch their heads...

But now emboldened by billions in new tax dollars flowing into its coffers and no sort of accountability for growing ridership (or lack thereof), the MTA seems to not care less about the impact these fare changes will have on ridership growth or overall revenue.

The MTA keeps trying to argue that these fare changes are necessary to curb fare evasion, or riders avoiding conductors so they don't pay the fare. But really the core issue is that conductors are not doing their jobs and collecting tickets. The LIRR's fare collection failure rates were unacceptably high before the MTA stopped publishing them in mid-2022. In 2019, LIRR conductors failed to collect 5.3% of fares. Even in 2022, when ridership was much lower than it is today and service was reduced freeing up more collectors, LIRR conductors were missing 5.2% of fares. LIRR's fare collection failure rate also did not spike dramatically after mobile ticketing was introduced in mid-2016—suggesting that mobile ticketing is not in fact a major driver of whether conductors can or cannot collect all fares, despite the MTA's claims.

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, conductors have been making much less of an effort to do more than one sweep for tickets (e.g. checking tickets again after Jamaica, or collecting tickets from intermediate riders). After spending $17+ billion in capacity improvements, there should be no reason why there is ever a LIRR train so crowded the conductor cannot get through to check tickets. All of the issues the MTA imagines of riders reusing tickets, waiting to activate mobile tickets until the conductor arrives, etc. would not be an issue if they made conductors actually do their jobs and collect all tickets. After all, hundreds of other railroads across the nation and the world manage to offer mobile tickets without having these problems... The MTA says the fare policy changes are "giving riders more flexibility", but the only real flexibility being offered here is now the assistant conductor has the flexibility to read both the business and the sports section of the Post instead of doing a second ticket check after Jamaica...

These types of fare policies (short validity periods, non-refundable tickets, etc.) are a bit more common on systems that operate with proof of payment—and if the MTA were making these changes as part of a concerted move towards proof of payment and crew size reform, then maybe they could be worthwhile. But instead, riders are getting stuck with all of the inflexibility and inconvenience of proof of payment, without any of the cost savings of crew size reform.

At the end of the day, making the most expensive rail fares in North America the least flexible is a recipe that is bound to hurt ridership recovery and growth, especially among off-peak/discretionary riders, where the railroad has until now been seeing promising growth.

Friday travel still much lighter on LIRR

2025-12-12T06:00:00.006-05:00

As we have gone through many phases of return to office, one trend that has stuck around is fewer people commuting into work on Fridays. While the busiest days of the week for LIRR ridership tend to be Wednesdays and Tuesdays, ridership on Fridays remains much quieter, especially at the peak of the peak during the morning and evening rush hours.

LIRR stations and trains tend to be quieter on Fridays
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The figures below are derived from the LIRR's live passenger loading data, which estimate the number of passengers in each car or on each train based on load weigh data, automated passenger counters, or screenshots from the CCTV system. These live loading conditions are displayed on TrainTime and on AVPS displays. The results are modestly more representative of day-to-day conditions than the daily and monthly ridership figures that the MTA publishes (which are based on ticket sales and outdated assumptions, and indicate when people are purchasing their tickets, not necessarily riding trains). Though the live loading data has other drawbacks—it is not that precise, quantifiable numbers are only available for electric MU trains, and some trains do not report ridership figures if the train number is entered wrong, the data isn't communicating, or there is some other issue.

The figure below shows the average total passengers on LIRR electric trains by the day of the week through the first three quarters of this year. Because of some of the shortcomings I mentioned above, especially that it only considers electric trains and ridership at the peak load point (which could be east or west of Jamaica, resulting in passengers being double counted), I wouldn't read too much into the numbers you see on the charts—but rather the relative difference between the different days of the week.

Overall, the busiest day of the week for LIRR travel is on Wednesdays, followed closely by Tuesdays (when ridership is about 1% lighter), then Thursdays (about 4% lighter than Wednesdays), and Mondays (about 12% lighter than Wednesdays). Ridership on Fridays is considerably lower, about 19% fewer total passengers than Wednesdays.

But what is really interesting is how much lighter traffic is during the peak hours on Fridays. When you look at the average total passengers based on the hour the train arrives or departs its western terminal, the data shows ridership patterns on Fridays are quite different from the other days of the week. While there is still a pronounced peak going westbound in the morning peak and eastbound in the evening peak, those peaks are considerably less extreme than the other days of the week:

While overall ridership on Fridays is only about 19% lower than Wednesdays, ridership on Fridays during the peak of the morning peak (arriving city terminals between 8:00a and 9:00a) is just about half of what it is on Wednesdays. In the evening, the trend is similar: between 5:00p and 6:00p ridership on Fridays is also about half of what it is on Wednesdays.

Earlier in the peak periods, when you tend to see more tradespeople or shift workers riding, there not much difference in ridership depending on the day of the week. But at the times when the most 9-to-5 office workers are travelling, the difference is much starker. Similarly, ridership during the morning reverse-peak period also shows little variation depending on the day of the week.

And on Fridays, LIRR makes up with ridership at other times of the day. Going westbound, ridership in the evening reverse-peak heading into the city tends to be noticeably higher on Fridays. Friday ridership heading into the city between 6:00p and 7:00p is 36% higher than it is on Wednesdays. Going eastbound, ridership tends to be slightly higher in the mid-afternoon, between 1:00p and 4:00p, suggesting people are heading out of the office or starting their weekend journeys earlier. Similarly, there is another spike later in the evening, like between 10:00p and 11:00p, when events let out and people want to head back home.

But the key difference is the steep difference in ridership at the peak-of-the-peak on Fridays. Considering peak service is the most expensive to provide, this could offer an opportunity to redistribute some service to other parts of the day, or the weekend. In October 2023, the Connecticut DOT implemented service reductions on the New Haven Line, and cut an additional 7 trains on Fridays. In most cases, two express trains were combined into one that made more stops. Metro-North also expanded this to a similar degree cutting some and shifting other Friday trains on the Hudson and Harlem Lines. Taking an approach similar to this—moderately trimming back peak direction service on Fridays—and reallocating some of those trains to bolster service on Friday evenings or parts of the weekend when more discretionary riders are travelling.

On Fridays, AM Peak trains are considerably less crowded almost universally across the board. There are only 6 trains that top 50% full, and three of those run before 6:30a.

Looking at ridership by branch, the difference between mid-week and Friday ridership is the most stark on the West of Babylon, Far Rockaway, Hempstead, West of Huntington, Branch (Friday ridership is 21% less than Wednesdays),

The MTA and LIRR should look for new, creative ways to encourage more ridership growth on Fridays. Redistributing some trains to provide better reverse-peak and evening service could result in faster and more convenient trips, and less crowding after special events. Last year, Transport for London did a pilot program offering off-peak fares all day on Fridays. While the pilot program did not demonstrate lower fares on Fridays spurring more ridership, the three-month pilot program was relatively short, and considering the difference between LIRR's peak and off-peak fares are quite a bit steeper, and this could be an interesting idea to fill trains more on Fridays.

IRS increases pre-tax limits for transit and parking for 2026

2025-12-10T06:00:00.003-05:00

The IRS is increasing the monthly pre-tax deduction limits for transit and commuter parking to $340 per month for 2026 (this is an increase of $15 over 2025 to account for inflation). Note that these limits are separate (in other words, you can elect both $340 for transit and $340 for commuter parking). As LIRR fares will be going up on January 4, including a bunch of changes that will make travel more expensive, be sure to check your enrollment to make sure you are taking advantage of one of the best ways to save while riding mass transit.

Commuter benefit plans allow people who ride mass transit or park at a transit station or near their work to use pre-tax dollars to cover some or all of their commuter costs. Commuter benefit plans can offer some major tax savings for riding transit, allowing you to save on Federal, state, and local taxes (as well as Social Security and Medicare taxes). Paying for your commute with pre-tax dollars can save someone who is in the 24% Federal tax bracket (earning between $89,076 and $170,050) as much as $1,367 per year, or $1,506 if you live in New York City.

If your commuting expenses top $340 per month, double check your elections to make sure you are able to take full advantage of these pre-tax benefits. If you have both pre-tax and post-tax funds deducted from your paycheck, most benefits providers will automatically adjust the pre-tax amount.

A couple of reminders to maximize your potential savings using pre-tax plans, if you haven't used these programs in the past or aren't fully up to speed on the procedures... Even if you only take the train occasionally, you can still save money by allocating a small amount each month. Since policies and procedures vary slightly depending on the company administering your pre-tax plan, be sure to double check with them, but generally these same ground rules apply:

If you have your election loaded onto a pre-tax credit/debit card, you can usually roll over unused funds from month to month with no expiration (as long as you don't leave your employer, then all unused funds are forfeited back to your employer, usually after 90 days). So if you are currently commuting less than daily and your commuting costs vary from month to month, you can elect for slightly more than you think you'll use and rollover the extra to the next month.
Unlike pre-tax parking funds (which are restricted for parking near work or parking at a transit station enroute to work), you can use pre-tax transit funds for any qualified mass transit provider, even if you aren't travelling to and from work. This includes:

Riding rail, subway, or bus trips outside of your normal commute
Riding ferries (including the small island ferries like the Fire Island Ferries and the North Ferry to Shelter Island, as long as they accept credit card payments)
Riding inter-city ground transportation, including Amtrak, Greyhound, Megabus, Trailways, etc. (but not air travel)
Riding mass transit in other cities (e.g. taking CTA in Chicago, BART in San Francisco, etc.)
Riding in vanpools (vehicles with at least 6 or more seats for passengers)

There is no express limitation on using pre-tax transit funds to pay for transit expenses for your spouse, dependents, or even other people. So if you have a spouse, child, parent, etc. that doesn't work or isn't eligible for transit benefits, you can pay for their mass transit tickets with your pre-tax funds.
Unlike pre-tax parking funds (which are limited to $340 in total per month), there is no monthly spending limit for pre-tax transit funds. So if you're commute costs typically exceed $340, you can start your elections a few months ahead of time and accumulate money on your card, then spend that down over time (and cover the whole cost of a more expensive monthly with pre-tax dollars, even if it exceeds $340).
The LIRR and Metro-North have eliminated paper tickets for Mail & Ride (now only available on eTix). If you previously had your pre-tax benefits transmitted directly to Mail & Ride via wire transfer, be sure to switch your election to be loaded onto a credit/debit card, because once it's sent to Mail & Ride, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get that back.
If you have had your transit benefits "suspended" during the pandemic, double check your card's expiration date—chances are they didn't automatically mail you a new one if your elections were suspended.
Many transit benefits providers are finally starting to issue cards with contactless chips that can be used with OMNY readers on NYC Subways and Buses. If your card doesn't have a chip, call your benefits provider and see if they'll send you a new one (you may have to say you lost your old card).
The $340 limits are separate for transit and parking—so even if you elect the full $340 for transit, you can elect an additional $340 a month for parking to defray costs for parking meters or permits, either at your usual train station or near your workplace. Some benefits providers allow you to "flex" your funds after they have been unused for one month. So you may be able to use leftover parking funds to pay for transit, and vice-versa.
For parking only, double check what forms of payment your municipality or parking operator accept for permits/meter fees (several don't take credit cards, and even if they do, town and village clerks' offices usually don't have the right merchant code to accept the prepaid debit cards). Most transit benefits providers will reimburse you for out-of-pocket parking costs paid by cash or check, but you usually have to set that up upfront as part of your monthly election.
Leaving your employer and still have funds leftover? Most benefits providers will cut you a check for remaining post-tax funds on your card. If you still have pre-tax funds, you can purchase a physical OMNY card and load up to $300 worth of stored value onto your card. This money will stay on your card and remain with you even after your transit benefit card is deactivated, and you can spend it down over the life of the card (which is good for many years). Note that the MTA restricts the amount you can load on the card, to about $136 per 72-hour period. So you may need to buy multiple cards, or visit a OMNY vending machine.

If you work in New York City and you work for a for-profit or non-profit organization that employs 20 or more people, your employer must provide you with commuter benefits under a law that entered into force in 2016. If you haven't signed up for it before, check with your employer for more details.

NICE Bus confirms OMNY will be available by January 4

2025-12-04T06:00:00.002-05:00

NICE Bus has confirmed that OMNY will be coming to Nassau County's buses by January 4, which coincides with the recently approved increase in the base fare from $2.90 to $3.00 (Nassau County has also approved a similar fare increase to $3.00) and the MTA's plan to end MetroCard sales by December 31, 2025.

NICE Bus has joined as an OMNY affiliate, similar to the Roosevelt Island Tram, which means that riders will be able to pay with contactless credit/debit cards in addition to physical OMNY cards. Riders will also be able to benefit from the same free transfer rules as exist today with MetroCard. Fares paid on NICE buses will count towards the $35 7-day fare cap (the MTA's elimination of the 30-day unlimited pass will also affect NICE riders)

OMNY readers have started appearing on NICE buses, though they are not active yet:

I saw a NICE bus with an Omny reader at 168th Street terminal
byu/Downtown-Inflation13 innycbus

In the meantime, riders will be left in a bit of limbo during this transition phase. The two MetroCard Vending Machines at the Hempstead Transit Center will be removed on December 17, meaning riders will not have a way to refill their MetroCards on Long Island for the last few weeks of the year (and MetroCard Vending Machines are becoming fewer and further between at NYC Subway stations).

Once NICE transitions to OMNY, restrictions will be roughly the same as they are now with MetroCard (for example, the OMNY cards issued by the NYC Department of Education to students that allow for four free Subway/Bus rides per day will not work on NICE, nor Fair Fares NYC).

NICE says that they will continue to accept coins on buses (which is different form the MTA, which is ending the acceptance of coins on their buses), which will create an interesting gray area. At least until NICE replaces their MetroCard fareboxes with new fareboxes, NICE will probably continue to issue MetroCard bus transfers. Whether they will be accepted on NYCT or MTA Buses will have to be seen. NICE will also continue to offer mobile ticketing through Masabi's JustRide platform. Mobile tickets can only be used on NICE buses, and are not valid for transfers to NYCT, Suffolk Transit, Long Beach Bus, etc.

OMNY readers have also been spotted on Westchester's Bee-Line buses as of last month, though they have not confirmed an exact date when they will be turned on.

NICE and Bee-Line are the final operators expected to join as OMNY affiliates, along with Roosevelt Island Tram and AirTrain JFK which already accept OMNY. This is a disappointingly short list, as the MTA failed miserably at making OMNY the One fare payment system for all of Metro New York.

Combo Ticket sales

2025-11-30T06:00:00.013-05:00

As New Yorkers travel over the river and through the woods on one of the busiest travel days of the year, the MTA's $12 billion East Side Access project makes regional connections between the LIRR and Metro-North at NY-Grand Central fairly easy. The MTA introduced the "Combo Ticket" in 2023 for riders making these sorts of cross-railroad journeys, but ticket sales data shows that not many riders have been availing of the Combo Ticket.

On paper, the new link seems like it should be quite synergistic. Long Island's social and economic connections to the Bronx and the Hudson Valley are fairly close, and there are three bridges conveying cars back and forth, filled bumper-to-bumper most hours of the day. Before East Side Access, getting between Long Island and the Hudson Valley using mass transit was a chore, requiring one to either walk between NY-Penn Station and NY-Grand Central or take the Subway.

But despite the new connection allowing riders to go between the railroads in the same building and a first-of-its-kind ticket allowing travel across the two railroads, there has not been a flood of riders purchasing them. In a little less than two years from the opening of East Side Access through the end of 2024, the MTA sold 224,238 total Combo Tickets across both railroads. While uptake was slow initially, Combo Ticket sales leveled off in the summer 2024. The best month last year for Combo Ticket sales was October, where the two railroads together sold 15,479. But most months, the LIRR and Metro-North barely broke 14,000 tickets per month together.

Combo Tickets are priced at the one-way off-peak fare for the railroad who is selling it, plus a flat $8 surcharge that allows travel to any destination on the other railroad (for Metro-North, this includes the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines only, but not the West of Hudson or other CTrail lines). It is valid for a one-way trip on the day of sale only (and expires at 4:00am the next morning).

LIRR generally sells about 25% more Combo Tickets than Metro-North, meaning more people are starting their trips on Long Island and heading northward than the other way around. When you look at the station-by-station breakdown below, it's not hard to see what is driving that.

Combo Ticket sales have likely been as week as they are because they are quite expensive. Despite the LIRR and Metro-North using the same ticket stock and the same ticketing systems (both for paper tickets and mobile ticketing), the MTA is not selling point-to-point tickets across the two railroads that could be priced according to the actual distance traveled. For example, you cannot buy a ticket from White Plains to Woodmere...instead, Combo Tickets are sold only to NY-Grand Central, and then there is a flat $8 surcharge that is good to any destination on the other railroad. That means you can use the Combo Ticket to travel to Woodmere...or Woodside...or Westhampton. Because of the very wide variety of possible trips, the MTA attempted to shoot for someplace in the middle. But they overshot.

While there is a risk people use these tickets for very long joy rides out to the East End or to the upper ends of Dutchess County, Census data shows that the wide majority of cross-CBD trips are only going a short distance on the other side (for example, from Long Island to the Bronx, or the Hudson Valley to Queens, or even shorter from Queens to the Bronx).

Of all of the commuters between LIRR territory (Queens, Nassau, Suffolk counties) and Metro-North territory (Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Fairfield, New Haven counties) that would benefit from East Side Access and the Combo Ticket, more than 70% of those trips begin or end in New York City. There are only about 80,000 supercommuters between Long Island and the Hudson Valley/CT.

Because the wide majority of cross-railroad trips begin or end in New York City, the flat $8 surcharge means that the Combo Tickets wind up being more expensive than buying two one-way tickets, since if you are travelling to/from a New York City station, you can buy a one-way CityTicket for $5 or $7, which is less than the $8 Combo Ticket surcharge. For example, if you are travelling from White Plains to Jamaica, it is cheaper to buy a regular one-way Metro-North ticket from White Plains to NY-Grand Central, then a LIRR CityTicket from NY-Grand Central to Jamaica ($9.75 + $5.00 = $14.75) is cheaper than buying a Combo Ticket ($17.75).

Because of how complicated the MTA's fare structures are on LIRR and Metro-North (and the fact that the railroads don't even have the same rules...for example, Metro-North charges fares on outbound AM reverse-peak trains while LIRR does not), the number of different fare combinations is incredibly confusing, and probably a big barrier that is stifling how many people are actually travelling across the two railroads.

When you look at who is actually purchasing Combo Tickets (since all Combo Tickets are sold to/from NY-Penn Station, we can only see the origin station on the railroad the rider is purchasing the ticket from, not the final destination on the other railroad), there are generally two patterns:

people purchasing tickets to/from Jamaica for travel to/from JFK Airport, likely being bamboozled into paying more with a Combo Ticket than they would if they bought a $5/$7 CityTicket for LIRR, then a one-way Metro-North ticket
much longer trips from the extremities of the LIRR and Metro-North system, where the difference between peak and off-peak fares waters down the penalty of the flat $8 surcharge...these origins tend to be big college towns, so the primary users are likely college students travelling back home

The table below shows the number of one-way tickets sold from that station through the end of 2024:

Station Name	Tickets	Station Name	Tickets
Jamaica	25,083	New Haven	7,456
Ronkonkoma	6,647	White Plains	7,119
Hicksville	5,184	Poughkeepsie	6,583
Stony Brook	4,276	Fordham	5,650
Forest Hills	4,004	Stamford	4,438
Mineola	3,675	Yankees-E 153rd St	4,405
Woodside	2,898	Beacon	4,334
Huntington Station	2,835	New Rochelle	3,953
Babylon	2,339	Bridgeport	3,341
Kew Gardens	2,250	Tarrytown	3,010
Valley Stream	2,167	Yonkers	2,579
Deer Park	2,020	Ardsley-on-Hudson	1,550
Rockville Centre	1,986	Woodlawn	1,451
Long Beach	1,921	Fairfield	1,420
Farmingdale	1,883	Croton-Harmon	1,302
Lynbrook	1,800	West Haven	1,262
Hempstead	1,660	South Norwalk	1,260
Freeport	1,590	Mount Vernon East	1,254
Baldwin	1,484	Ossining	1,219
Queens Village	1,322	Peekskill	1,190
Flushing-Main Street	1,312	Bronxville	1,072
Merrick	1,288	Brewster	1,057
Great Neck	1,273	Fairfield-Black Rock	1,034
Rosedale	1,216	Fleetwood	995
Port Washington	1,206	Scarsdale	984
Mets-Willets Point	1,180	Pelham	971
Laurelton	1,149	Tremont	964
Elmont-UBS Arena	1,119	Pleasantville	940
Locust Manor	1,103	Greenwich	913
New Hyde Park	1,100	Rye	911
Manhasset	1,062	Southeast	887
Floral Park	1,050	Mamaroneck	875
Westbury	1,026	North White Plains	852
Massapequa	1,025	Westport	823
Wyandanch	1,005	Botanical Garden	769
Far Rockaway	1,004	New Hamburg	746
Syosset	1,001	Port Chester	736
Bayside	997	Cold Spring	716
GC-Nassau Boulevard	965	Mount Vernon West	707
Bellmore	951	Larchmont	701
Wantagh	896	Williams Bridge	648
Bethpage	863	Dobbs Ferry	645
Lindenhurst	814	Katonah	642
Massapequa Park	757	Milford	632
St. Albans	745	Riverdale	617
Brentwood	729	Marble Hill	610
Hollis	706	Harrison	593
East New York	672	Spuyten Duyvil	588
Bay Shore	656	Darien	583
Seaford	648	Stratford	563
Amityville	627	Waterbury	560
Central Islip	600	Melrose	552
Cold Spring Harbor	584	Garrison	550
Brklyn-Atlantic Term	581	Mount Kisco	542
Flushing-Auburndale	580	Tuckahoe	533
Port Jefferson Station	565	Crestwood	523
Flushing-Broadway	538	Irvington	518
Copiague	522	Hastings-on-Hudson	493
GC-Merillon Avenue	506	Hawthorne	482
East Hampton	505	Golden's Bridge	444
Flushing-Murray Hill	471	Hartsdale	443
Little Neck	448	Chappaqua	441
Oceanside	409	Wassaic	402
Carle Place	404	Wakefield	341
GC-Central Station	369	Greystone	338
Stewart Manor	352	Croton Falls	295
Sayville	343	Ludlow	272
Bellerose	340	Danbury	269
Patchogue	339	Noroton Heights	269
Montauk	331	Bedford Hills	248
Kings Park	325	Morris Heights	244
Southampton	323	Cortlandt	219
Island Park	322	Cos Cob	218
Northport	319	Old Greenwich	205
Hewlett	298	New Canaan	203
Nostrand Avenue	297	Glenwood	198
Bridgehampton	285	East Norwalk	185
Lawrence	254	Valhalla	163
E Rockaway-Ocean Av	251	Purdy's	155
Cedarhurst	247	Bethel	138
Mastic-Shirley	237	Derby-Shelton	131
Douglaston	228	Dover Plains	131
Woodmere	208	Riverside	127
Lakeview	185	Scarborough	121
West Hempstead	183	Harlem Valley-Wingdale	111
Gibson	182	Springdale	109
GC-Country Life Press	178	New Haven-State Street	96
Locust Valley	171	Philipse Manor	92
Inwood	167	Pawling	87
Amagansett	164	Rowayton	87
Islip	161	Green's Farms	80
Westwood	157	University Heights	73
Westhampton	153	Norwalk-Merritt 7	62
Smithtown	148	Naugatuck	56
Speonk	143	Glenbrook	47
Plandome	139	Branchville	44
Hampton Bays	139	Tenmile River	44
Glen Cove	138	Southport	41
Greenvale	135	Ansonia	30
Hempstead Gardens	128	Patterson	23
Malverne	124	Wilton	22
Sea Cliff	123	Seymour	21
St. James	108	Cannondale	20
E Rockaway-Centre Av	105	Manitou	16
Bellport	99	Talmadge Hill	12
Glen Head	97	Breakneck Ridge	11
Riverhead	88	Redding	9
East Williston	80	Beacon Falls	5
Greenlawn	76	Appalachian Trail	2
Oyster Bay	72	Mount Pleasant	0
Glen Street	69	Highbridge Facility	0
Great River	69	Stamford Yard	0
Roslyn Heights	66	Bridgeport East Yard	0
Oakdale	64	Reeve's Crossing	0
Greenport	57	NY-Grand Central	0
Southold	38	Harlem-125th Street	0
Belmont Park	24	Pearl River	0
Albertson	22	Nanuet	0
Mattituck	14	Spring Valley	0
Pinelawn	12	Sloatsburg	0
Medford	6	Tuxedo	0
Yaphank	6	Harriman	0
NY-Penn Station	4	Salisbury Mills-Cornwall	0
Rail Hudson Valley	1	Campbell Hall	0
Long Island City	0	Middletown-T of Walkill	0
Hunterspoint Avenue	0	Otisville	0
NY-Grand Central	0	Port Jervis	0
Shinnecock Hills	0	Rail Long Island	0
Hillside Facility	0
Boland's Landing	0
Meadowlands	0
Yankee Stadium	0

On the LIRR side, Combo Ticket sales are driven heavily by Jamaica. Again, this is presumably JFK Airport passengers being tricked into thinking this is a better deal than buying two one-way tickets (theory #1). After that, the list generally follows the list of LIRR's busiest stations, interspersed with the local Main Line stations in Queens (which have a fair number of people commuting up to the Hudson Valley) and Stony Brook (which has a lot of college students, theory #2). What is not high up on the list are Mets-Willets Point and Elmont-UBS Arena, suggesting that not many Hudson Valley sports fans are using Combo Tickets to take the train to the game.

On the Metro-North side, I was frankly surprised to see the top Combo Ticket trip generators were so far on the outer extents of the Metro-North system (New Haven, Poughkeepsie, Beacon). All three of these stations are also big hubs for people driving from even further away in Upstate New York or northern or eastern Connecticut, suggesting that maybe these are even longer trips from places like Ulster County, the Capitol District, Hartford, etc. White Plains and Stamford are major job centers, so it's not surprising to see them on the list (I would wager that White Plains and Stamford are the top destinations for LIers using Combo Tickets). Many of the other top origins are college towns: New Haven, Poughkeepsie, Fordham, New Rochelle, Bridgeport, Fairfield.

My big takeaway from the numbers is that Combo Tickets aren't being used by people making trips on a regular basis, and certainly not cross-CBD commuters. The Combo Ticket only proves to be worthwhile for more longer-haul trips, like going to or from college on the opposite side of the region, that people aren't doing on a regular basis.

If you wave off the weak Combo Ticket sales as a consequence of MTA's sloppy job pricing the tickets, are there other indicators that show this new, incredibly expensive connection between LIRR and Metro-North is being well used? Not really... As part of MTA's Customers Count survey, the MTA collects origin and destination information, including how riders get to their origin station.

Weighting by trip frequency, less than 0.2% of LIRR riders say they connect from Metro-North, a very small figure. More riders say they connect to LIRR from non-MTA rail services like NJTransit or PATH than connect from Metro-North.

LIRR7: How do you usually travel from home to the LIRR station?	Percent
Walk only	39.2%
Personal vehicle you drove yourself (car, truck, van, or motorcycle)	26.8%
MTA Subway (including SIR)	13.4%
Dropped off by a friend / family member	5.6%
Other (specify)	4.5%
For hire vehicle (taxi, car service, dollar van, Uber, etc.)	3.0%
Picked up by a friend / family member	1.7%
Bicycle / Bicycle sharing, scooter	1.6%
MTA Local, Limited, or Select bus (Bx, B, M, Q, S and SBS routes)	1.5%
Non-MTA bus or jitney	1.2%
Non-MTA rail (NJ Transit, PATH, Amtrak, Hartford Line, Shore Line East)	1.0%
MTA Metro-North Railroad	0.2%
MTA Express bus (BxM, BM, QM, SIM and X routes)	0.1%
MTA Access-A-Ride	0.0%

Is this likely to grow over time? With the MTA's current level of effort, probably not.

At present, fares for these cross-CBD trips are just way too expensive. The Combo Ticket is expensive on its own, and often not cheaper than buying two individual tickets (which are priced at the first and second most expensive rail fares in the western hemisphere). The MTA, outrageously, does not allow LIRR monthly tickets to be used for an equivalent distance on Metro-North and vice-versa. So if you want to commute from Mineola to White Plains, you have to buy two Combo Tickets per day ($35.50 per day, $745.50 total for a month) or buy two monthly tickets ($513.00 total). That's incredibly expensive and it is certainly cheaper to drive.

Maybe more people would take the two railroads for these trips if it was faster than driving. But even with rush hour traffic and the bridges, the 2+ trains are rarely faster. This is made worse, of course, by digging the LIRR terminal deep in a cavern below Grand Central. It can take over 6 minutes to walk from the LIRR tracks to the Metro-North tracks at NY-Grand Central. And with Grand Central North now closed on weeknights and all weekend, it can take over 10 minutes to walk between the two railroads. That's not much faster than just walking or taking the Subway from NY-Penn Station! Couple that with the pared down off-peak service to GCT (which means long connections at GCT and even longer connections at Jamaica if you're going to a busier branch), the MTA is just not really trying to be competitive on travel times.

There is not much the MTA can do at this point to solve the travel time issue, but they can make cross-CBD travel much more competitive on price by overhauling and improving the Combo Ticket. There are a few things that need to happen:

MTA should sell point-to-point Combo Tickets, pricing for the total distance of the journey (with a steep discount). The MTA's new rail ticket vending machines can sell tickets for both railroads (meaning you can buy a Metro-North ticket from a LIRR machine and vice-versa). But they are still not selling tickets across the two railroads.
If MTA is going to keep the flat Combo Ticket pricing, then the $8 surcharge should be reduced considerably, probably to $5. If a few small handful of people take advantage of that to take long joy rides out to Montauk or Wassaic, then so be it. Most of the unserved demand is clearly for shorter-haul trips.
LIRR and Metro-North should reciprocally accept each other's monthly tickets to travel an equivalent distance on the other railroad, that way taking the train actually becomes a feasible option for daily commuters (and it would make it much easier for sports fans to use the connection, since a regular commuter on one railroad could use their monthly for an occasional trip on the other railroad to Yankee Stadium, Willets Point, UBS Arena, etc. instead of having to buy a full-priced, separate ticket). All other cities that use zone systems allow riders to use their passes for an equal number of zones on the other side of the CBD.

Again, we see how fare pricing has the opportunity to fuel or suffocate ridership growth, especially for these new types of markets and connections that have been made possible thanks to the tremendous investment of public money in projects like East Side Access. But again the MTA is not really putting in enough thought to leverage these investments as much as possible.

The MTA did not respond to questions about whether they have plans to improve the Combo Ticket, or use the new ticket machines to sell point-to-point tickets. The Combo Ticket did not get even a mention in the latest round of MTA's very aggressive fare policy changes, so likely it will remain the status quo for at least a while longer.

Elimination of 30-day Unlimited MetroCard would make frequent Subway travel among most expensive in the world

2025-11-19T06:00:00.004-05:00

The series of fare and toll changes approved by the MTA Board this past September includes a number of fare policy changes that will drive up the out-of-pocket costs for riders far more than the stated 4% increase in the base fares. The MTA's elimination of the 30-day Unlimited MetroCard—with no replacement or corresponding product being made available through OMNY—will significantly increase the out-of-pocket travel costs for the most frequent Subway and bus riders.

Riders queue at a diminishing number of MetroCard
Vending Machines across the system (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The 30-day unlimited MetroCard, which has been available since the early days of MetroCard, offers unlimited Subway and bus rides across New York City, Nassau, and Westchester Counties for $132. There are similar versions that offer 7-day unlimited passes for the Subways and buses for $34, and for express bus riders priced at $64. While the MTA currently offers a 7-day fare cap for riders paying with OMNY or contactless (and plans to make that permanent and introduce a 7-day fare cap for express buses, similar the 7-day Unlimited Express Bus Plus MetroCard), it will not be bringing the 30-day unlimited option to OMNY or contactless.

7-day and weekly passes have traditionally been priced higher to encourage riders to buy up for the more expensive 30-day or monthly passes, which provide better value. Therefore, buying four separate 7-day or weekly passes usually works out to be more expensive than buying a 30-day or monthly pass (and also usually leaves you a few days short each month).

For NYCT's case, the elimination of the 30-day unlimited option will stiff its most frequent riders with a whopping 14% increase in their out-of-pocket commuting costs over the course of a year.

	Current 30-day unlimited	Current 7-day unlimited	Proposed 30-day fare cap	Proposed 7-day fare cap	Change
Days in year	365.25	365.25		365.25
Days per period	30	7		7
Periods per pear	12.18	52.18		52.18

Cost per period	$132.00	$34.00	none	$35.00
Total cost per year	$1,607.10	$1,774.07	none	$1,826.25	+14%

Fare capping vs. prepaid unlimited passes

The MTA says that doing away with the practice of having riders prepurchase unlimited passes in favor of fare capping provides riders with better value, allowing riders to keep money in their pockets for longer and makes fares more flexible.

In a statement, MTA spokesperson David Steckel said “85% of riders already use tap-and-ride because they know fare capping eliminates upfront costs and guesswork about which type of MetroCard to buy, makes unlimited rides available automatically, and ensures that they never leave money behind.”

It is definitely true that fare capping takes away the upfront guesswork and provides better flexibility in the event that travel plans change partway through a week or a month. But that flexibility coming at the price of higher total out-of-pocket costs is choice that the MTA is making, and does not necescarily mean it provides better value for all riders.

The MTA says that, pre-pandemic, riders were leaving behind $170 million of fare value annually by using unlimited 30-day and 7-day MetroCards less than the number of trips needed to break even with the pay-per-ride rate. That is a very compelling statistic, but the MTA has not presented any data or seem to have done any evaluation of how the shift towards fare capping with OMNY has changed rider behavior. For example, we don't know what percentage of riders hit the fare cap more than once but less than four times a month (meaning they are saving money with fare capping, but not spending more than they would if they just got a 30-day Unlimited MetroCard).

Fare capping rose in popularity across the Americas from advocates who argued that it was more equitable—since riders who are struggling to scrape by or living paycheck to paycheck may not be able to front the entire price of an unlimited pass upfront at the beginning of the month. But we have been sold up the river in a pretty big way by this thinking. First off, there are better ways to help the very small population of riders who cannot afford mass transit through social fare programs that offer reduced or free fares for those riders. Let's be honest, is someone that has more than $1.45 but less than $17 in their bank account really paying the Subway fare, or are they just jumping the turnstile? And, at the end of the day, is requiring these riders to pay 14% more in total out-of-pocket costs over the year really doing right by them?

Upfront sunk cost vs. incremental per-trip costs

The shift away from prepaid passes to fare capping changes the whole psychology of how riders evaluate the cost of travel using mass transit—and the approach being taken by the MTA and other agencies across the nation run counter to what is considered best practice elsewhere in the world.

When you purchase a prepaid unlimited pass, that is, for right or for wrong, a sunk cost. Therefore, the marginal cost of each additional trip you take is zero. In fact, you are encouraged to use mass transit as much as possible to squeeze the most value out of your pass. Pre-pandemic when I would have a LIRR monthly, if I was going into the city on a weekend, taking the train was a no-brainer...since it didn't cost me anything extra.

But with fare capping, almost every trip has an incremental cost, and there is a very visible reminder of that each time you use the system and get a notification from your bank or mobile wallet. The marginal cost of every trip is high, and that is a cost that could be avoided if you just didn't make that trip, or used a bike or walked. The less you travel, the more you save.

In the several years since MTA launched fare capping, I have hit the cap a handful of times—but never by accident. Each time I hit the cap, I knew in advance I would be taking more than 12 trips that particular week. And once I knew I was going to hit the cap, I would take the Subway or bus for all sorts of extra trips, including short hops that I would not ordinarily take the other weeks.

Unlimited passes also discourage fare evasion. If I have a prepaid unlimited pass, there is no sense in jumping the turnstile or walking past the bus driver—I already paid. But with fare capping, fare evasion is an opportunity to save money, especially if you don't expect to hit the fare cap.

New York's multipliers are among the highest in the world

A major reason why unlimited passes have historically been not that popular in New York—pre-pandemic, unlimited MetroCards were used for only about half of trips—is because of how expensive they are. NYCT's multiplier (the ratio between the price of a single trip and the unlimited pass) have historically been very high, among the highest among major metro systems across the globe. Because of how expensive they were, the unlimited MetroCards didn't make a lot of sense for many riders (e.g. if you were a suburban commuter taking only two trips a day on weekdays), and you really had to use the Subway or bus multiple times a day to get your money's worth.

With the elimination of the 30-day unlimited option, that will get even worse. The price of unlimited travel for a 30-day period will rise from $132 to $152.19 under these changes, a 50.7 multiplier over the $3 base fare.

The table below compares the cost of a single trip to the cost of unlimited travel for 30 days for major metro systems across the United States and the world. For any transit systems in foreign countries, their current fares were converted to US dollars using the exchange rate in effect on October 1, 2025. For all agencies, the cost of unlimited travel for 30-days was determined by taking the cost of best value unlimited pass or fare cap and prorating it for a 30-day period. For example, calendar monthly passes are prorated downwards to account for the five extra days at the end of the year; annual passes are prorated downwards; 1- or 7-day passes are prorated upwards to put all agencies on an even playing field. The multiplier is the cost of unlimited travel for 30-days divided by the single trip cost:

City	Single Trip	30-day	Multiplier	Fare capping?
New York (NYCT - from Jan 2026)	$3.00	$152.19	50.7	7-day
London (TfL)	$3.90	$197.17	50.6	1-day, weekly
Miami (MDT)	$2.25	$112.50	50.0	1-day
New York (NYCT - current)	$2.90	$132.00	45.5	7-day
Los Angeles (LACMTA)	$1.75	$78.30	44.7	1-day, 7-day
San Francisco (BART)	$2.40	$102.50	42.7
Dallas (DART)	$3.00	$121.94	40.6
NY-NJ (PATH)	$3.00	$120.75	40.3
Philadelphia (SEPTA)	$2.90	$114.33	39.4
Sacramento (SacRT)	$2.50	$98.56	39.4
Baltimore (MdMTA)	$2.00	$77.00	38.5
Atlanta (MARTA)	$2.50	$95.00	38.0
Cleveland (RTA)	$2.50	$95.00	38.0
Boston (MBTA)	$2.40	$88.70	37.0
Essex County (Newark Light Rail)	$1.85	$68.01	36.8
Seattle (Sound Transit)	$3.00	$106.44	35.5
Portland (Tri-Met)	$2.80	$98.56	35.2	1-day, monthly
Paris (RATP)	$2.93	$102.63	35.0
Salt Lake City (UTA)	$2.50	$85.00	34.0	1-day, weekly
San Juan (Tren Urbano)	$1.50	$50.00	33.3
Twin Cities (Metro Transit)	$2.00	$65.00	32.5
Washington (WMATA)	$2.25	$72.00	32.0
Pheonix (Valley Metro)	$2.00	$64.00	32.0	1-day, weekly, monthly
Denver (RTD)	$2.75	$86.73	31.5	1-day, monthly
Hudson County (HBLR)	$2.60	$80.82	31.1
St. Louis (MetroLink)	$2.50	$76.88	30.8
Chicago (CTA)	$2.50	$75.00	30.0
San Francisco (Muni)	$2.85	$84.76	29.7
San Deigo (MTS)	$2.50	$70.96	28.4	1-day, monthly
Honolulu (Skyline)	$3.00	$80.00	26.7	1-day, monthly
Copenhagen (Metro)	$4.72	$108.58	23.0
Rome (ATAC)	$1.76	$40.45	23.0
Madrid (Metro)	$1.76	$38.54	21.9
Lisbon (Metro)	$2.17	$46.23	21.3
Warsaw (WTP)	$1.21	$25.77	21.3
Bratislava (IDS BK)	$1.28	$25.33	19.8
Brussels (MIVB)	$2.70	$52.97	19.6
Milan (ATM)	$1.99	$31.78	15.9
Berlin (BVG)	$4.46	$67.03	15.0
Hamburg (HVV)	$4.57	$67.03	14.7
Amsterdam (GVB)	$3.99	$57.98	14.5
Zurich (ZVV)	$5.78	$83.52	14.4
Munich (MVV)	$4.81	$67.03	13.9
Veinna (Wiener Linien)	$2.81	$35.15	12.5
Prague (PID)	$1.45	$14.49	10.0
Barcelona (TMB)	$3.11	$25.43	8.2
Luxembourg	$0.00	$0.00	0.0
PA-NJ (PATCO)	$1.40	none	none
Houston (METRORail)	$1.25	none	none

New York's forthcoming 50.7 multiplier is the highest in the nation, and significantly leads most major European cities.

In fact, you can see a significant difference in how the pricing of unlimited passes is approached in the United States vs. major cities in Europe. With the exception of London and Paris, the two most expansive and expensive metro networks in Europe, every other major city prices its unlimited passes at multipliers lower than the lowest American city, Honolulu. Transit operators elsewhere have cracked the code that lower-priced passes, even when purchased upfront, encourages more transit ridership from the people who live and work in the city by making transit travel very affordable and at a near-zero marginal cost.

Take the example of Vienna. Wiener Linien offers an annual ticket that costs €365 for unlimited travel across the city, which works out to just €1 per day. At just €1 per day, it is a no-brainer for anyone who lives or works in Vienna to just buy the annual pass. And once you have the annual pass, taking the train 5 times a day doesn't cost anymore than riding once per day.

Fare control in Vienna is simple and straightforward,
since most riders have an unlimited pass, they just
walk on (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Again, this has significant knock-on benefits in deterring fare evasion. Because the annual pass is such a great deal, you can assume that roughly 100% of riders who live or work in Vienna (which make up the wide majority of transit users) have an annual pass. There is no incentive for them to fare evade, so they just don't. That means that the potential population of fare evaders is very small to begin with (tourists, who would often be let off with a warning anyways) to the point where Vienna's metro stations don't have any turnstiles or fare control infrastructure. Nevermind all of the new attachments and complications the MTA is spending money on to combat fare evasion in NY. In Vienna, if you have an annual pass, you just walk on.

Unlimited passes pay for themselves in as little as 8.2 trips per month in Barcelona, 15 trips in Berlin, or 23 trips in Rome—half the breakeven point of what the MTA will have in New York.

As the MTA continues to grapple with the fare evasion problem on Subways and buses, the push away from prepaid fares and towards OMNY/contactless with fare capping without addressing the high multiplier has made the problem avoidably worse.

By eliminating the 30-day unlimited option, the MTA is punishing its most frequent and loyal riders with a whopping 14% increase in their out of pocket costs, and making it more difficult to grow ridership and combat fare evasion, too.

MTA seeks to advance fare policy changes, slashing validity periods

2025-09-29T00:01:00.003-04:00

The MTA is moving forward with its plan to hike fares and tolls, as well as make a number of fare policy changes that will make rail travel less flexible and more expensive, with a set of fare and toll hike resolutions being put before the MTA Board this week. Some are being implemented as permanent changes to the tariff, others as "pilot" programs.

Subway and bus fare changes

MetroCard Vending Machines are quickly disappearing from
stations as the MTA ramps up the transition to OMNY
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

For the Subways and Buses, MTA is seeking a ten-cent hike in the base fare from $2.90 to $3.00. Single ride tickets would increase by a quarter to $3.50, and express bus fares would increase to $7.25. Disappointingly, the MTA is eliminating the 30-day unlimited ride option for the most frequent Subway and Bus users with the sunset of MetroCard, which is expected at the end of this year. The MTA is increasing the 7-day rolling fare cap to $35 and introducing a 7-day Express Bus rolling fare cap of $67 as a pilot program.

This represents a massive 14% fare increase for the most frequent riders of the Subways and Buses, who now must pay more for 7-day caps then they previously would have with the 30-day unlimited MetroCard option. By increasing the cost of unlimited travel to this degree, the MTA is punishing its most loyal customers—and also running counter to worldwide best practices, which have shown that cheaper monthly or annual passes actually increase transit ridership (since you have already paid for the pass, it costs you nothing to take an additional trip on the weekends or after work, etc.)

	Current 30-day unlimited	Current 7-day unlimited	Proposed 30-day fare cap	Proposed 7-day fare cap	Change
Days in year	365.25	365.25		365.25
Days per period	30	7		7
Periods per pear	12.18	52.18		52.18

Cost per period	$132.00	$34.00	none	$35.00
Total cost per year	$1,607.10	$1,774.07	none	$1,826.25	+14%

The MTA is also seeking to eliminate cash payment on buses, and increase the fee for new OMNY cards to $2.00 once MetroCard sunsets.

Fare hikes and fare policy changes for LIRR, Metro-North

On the railroads, the base fare prices for tickets will increase between 4.5% and 8%—but the MTA will really be hitting the wallets of riders with its proposed fare policy changes, which make tickets less flexible, eliminate discount options, and will drive up the overall cost of rail travel for the fastest growing ridership segments. MTA is seeking approval for the following changes:

Dramatically shorten the validity period for one-way and round-trip tickets from 60 days to 1 day (with all tickets expiring at 4:00am on the next day) (pilot)
Eliminate the 10-trip ticket and its accompanying 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate travel. This would be replaced with a buy-10-get-1-free pilot offer, if all tickets are used within 14 days.
Introduce a day pass for unlimited travel, priced at 10% less than two one-way peak tickets on weekdays (except in NYC, where there will be no discount) or the price of two off-peak tickets on weekends.
Make the Peak CityTicket and Far Rockaway Ticket permanent fare products, and having CityTicket replace the full-fare one-way tickets for travel within New York City.
Accept half-fare tickets on all trains, including during the AM Peak period (pilot)
Allow children up to 17 years of age to travel with $1 Family Fare tickets when accompanied by an adult (currently, children 12 years or older need to buy full fare tickets) (pilot)
Increase the onboard surcharge from $6 to $8 (permanent change)

The MTA has walked back its proposal to have one-way tickets expire within 4 hours of sale, which was met with stiff backlash from riders. But the MTA's replacement plan, where tickets would still need to be activated but would expire at 4:00am the next morning, is still a dramatic rollback of flexibility that is nearly as bad. Tickets expiring the same day leaves riders with no way to reuse the most expensive rail tickets in the western hemisphere in the event their travel plans change, or they have to seek a different way of getting to their destination in the event of delays or a disruption in service.

The elimination of the 10-trip ticket also hurts riders who travel semi-frequently off-peak (or outside NYC on Metro-North) by eliminating the 15% discount. MTA's proposed replacement is nonsensical due to the very short 14-day cycle—few people would be buying 11 or more tickets in a 14-day period (and, if they are, they would likely be better off just buying a monthly).

These fare policy changes target off-peak riders the most. These riders are the most price-sensitive, and also happen to be one of the only segments where LIRR ridership has fully recovered and is actually growing. MTA's plan to make travel much more expensive and much less flexible for these riders simply makes no sense.

The undercurrent of the MTA's proposed fare policy changes is the continuing failure of conductors to collect all fares, despite LIRR's spending on conductors topping $300 million last year (and the average conductor needing to collect 20% fewer tickets than they did pre-pandemic). The "simplification" of the fare structure moves fare policies similar to what we see on proof of payment systems—but without the cost savings. MTA is transferring all of the burden and inconvenience of proof of payment to riders, but not passing along the savings. I can put up with all of Ryanair's extra hoops and restrictions because they will fly me halfway across Europe for $20 when the flag carriers want $200. But MTA is charging KLM prices for Ryanair service.

Fare increases stifle ridership growth instead of fuel it

In a post-pandemic era where riders have many more options for how frequently they travel and how they get there, fare pricing is a key mechanism the MTA can use to drive transit ridership recovery and growth. If done right, new riders can offset lower sticker prices on transit fares and passes. But for riders that are especially sensitive to price (e.g. off-peak and discretionary trips, people who can flexibly work from home, etc.), fare increases can directly stifle transit ridership recovery and growth.

The MTA's proposed fare policy changes punish the agency's most loyal Subway and Bus riders with a massive 14% increase in their annual out-of-pocket commuting costs as well as the most price-sensitive group of rail riders with increases of up to 23% to out-of-pocket commuting costs. Emboldened by billions in new tolls and taxes flowing into its coffers, the MTA seems entirely disinterested in using the powerful lever of fare pricing to grow ridership.

New TVM's go live with old interface

2025-09-22T07:00:00.119-04:00

The new ticket vending machines being rolled out for LIRR and Metro-North have gone live for riders to purchase tickets and test. The new machines have been installed in the place of old ones at a handful of stations across both railroads (usually the busier stations with more than two machines). The machines are being rolled out are being built by Scheidt & Bachmann under a $134 million no-bid contract to replace the existing Ticket Vending Machines (TVM) and Ticket Office Machines (TOM) for both railroads.

The new TVM's are just as responsive and fast as the existing machines. I tried one at NY-Penn Station a few days after they went live. The new machines were nice, but they didn't work for me. I tried buying a ticket, but the transaction declined twice, so I gave up (it obviously wasn't a problem with my card, I was able to buy the exact same ticket with the exact same card at an old TVM right next to it). When I tried to tell the ticket agent at the ticket windows, the ticket agent was incredibly rude and raised her voice to me when I suggested she let someone know about the issue so the machine could be taken out of service and the issue addressed, so other riders wouldn't have the same problem. I'll stick to the old machines for now.

The new machines have launched with virtually the same user interface as the old ones, with the characteristic yellow headers and white text on a black background. Though while this interface is quite familiar to regular and semi-occasional riders, they have a number of shortcomings that the railroads should be taking this opportunity to address to make buying tickets easier, faster and more intuitive.

The start screen of the new TVM (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The only appreciable difference from the starting screen is that the language selections across the bottom have been swapped from three buttons with the common alternate languages expected for that area with a single button with a bunch of flag symbols in circles that take you to a menu where you can select any of the languages available.

There is also a new "read ticket" button that takes you to a new workflow that allows you to scan the barcode on a ticket (printed from the new machines) where it displays the data from the ticket. The barcode is scanned by a small reader that is just above the screen. It shows (in very small text) the ticket serial number, type, origin, destination, sold date, and expiration date. The only action that you can take is re-purchasing the same ticket.

The screen where you can scan a ticket to read its details. It is basic and doesn't tell you where the barcode should be scanned (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The 2D barcode reader above the screen (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The results of scanning a ticket (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The only other new and noteworthy thing with the ticket vending machines is that they can dispense tickets for both the LIRR and Metro-North. Despite the LIRR and Metro-North having the exact same TVM and TOM hardware (an even a common support system backing both up) today and since the early 2000's, the railroads would not sell tickets for each other. This generally wasn't a problem until East Side Access opened and the railroads started sharing a terminal at NY-Grand Central. You could only buy LIRR tickets from a LIRR machine or ticket window, and could only buy Metro-North tickets from a Metro-North machine or ticket window. This is less than ideal for riders who are unfamiliar with the administrative delineation of MTA's mainline rail services, and the fact that LIRR did not have any spare TVM's for East Side Access and had to boost machines from other stations for GCT.

Once you select the origin and destination, the machine swaps to the interface for that railroad (the TVM interfaces and workflows are slightly different between LIRR and Metro-North...instead of harmonizing the two, the new machines just staple the two interfaces together and switch to the other if you pick a different origin and destination).

But the tickets are sold only for LIRR or Metro-North trips. Once you select a station on one railroad (other than GCT which serves both), only destinations from that same railroad are available. In other words, you cannot buy tickets for travel across both railroads (e.g. a ticket from Hicksville to Fordham, or from Yonkers to Jamaica). For that, you must continue to buy Combo Tickets from the separate menu.

LIRR and Metro-North stations together on the same screen/machine (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Other than those minor changes, the workflows are the same. Including all of the confusing points and shortcomings of the current TVM's. For example, LIRR buries the discounted $5/$7 CityTickets under separate menu that you have to know to look for. If you select "one way" and punch in a CityTicket-eligible origin and destination, the only options shown are the full-fare peak and off-peak tickets, which cost significantly more (the LIRR has sold more than 3 million full-fare tickets between CityTicket-eligible station pairs, fleecing an extra several million dollars from unsuspecting riders). But if you pick a Metro-North station pair, CityTicket is available in the normal workflow.

Metro-North will let you purchase CityTickets through the normal workflow....

...while LIRR buries them in a separate menu and only sells the full-price tickets through the normal workflow. On the same machine! (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Hopefully the LIRR and Metro-North are just using the same interface as a corner-cutting measure to get these ticket machines up and running fast and are hard at work at designing a new user interface (and doing extensive user testing) to come up with a new interface that will make it easier and more straightforward for riders to purchase tickets.

Last but not least, the tickets themselves have a new layout. The stock is still the same (for now, will that change in the future, we don't know). The content of the ticket is mostly the same, just rearranged.

The characteristic triangles and other symbols on the punch blocks have been replaced with larger text blocks in the top-left corner.
The stations have been shifted down and to the right, and are in a cleaner sans-serif font.
The zones are in slightly larger circles. In the photos I have seen, they are all in clear text in a black circle. This is a change from the current ticket layout, where the zone numbers on tickets to/from zone 1 are in black text, while tickets no to/from zone 1 are the inverse (clear text in a black box). This allows conductors to easily see at a glance west of Jamaica whether the rider has a ticket that's valid to/from the city terminals or not.
The expiration date is printed in bold text above the punch blocks in bigger text that says "Valid for __ ride(s) thru [expiration date]". This took the place of the very small "fine print" text that would print in the bottom-right corner of the ticket.

The ticket also includes a barcode in Aztec format (common for transport ticketing as it stores information more densely for smaller-format paper tickets vs. a traditional QR code). The barcode looks too small to be easily scanned at a decent distance. They are quite a bit smaller than the barcodes on NJTransit's tickets, and NJT conductors often have difficulty scanning tickets from the window seat in a three-seater without leaning over (or, more commonly, rudely gesturing that you lean over and bring your ticket closer to them). Nor are they printed in a white block for maximum contrast. We will have to see if the railroads plan to introduce new ticket stock in the future that allows for a more optimal and efficient layout.

New LIRR Ticket Format
byu/xraf1553 inLIRR

In general, this new ticket layout removes some of the quick visual indicators that allow conductors to differentiate different ticket types (e.g. the symbol for off-peak tickets are triangles with the point at the bottom, while peak tickets are the opposite with the point of the triangle at the top) or zones (as mentioned above).

I suppose the railroads will be relying on the conductors beginning to scan all tickets at some point in the future (similar to what they now do on NJTransit) and letting the device determine whether the ticket is valid or not. Apparently, because even the MTA spends more than a half-billion dollars a year employing conductors, they cannot be relied upon to read and punch tickets correctly. Before the MTA quietly stopped publishing fare collection metrics in mid-2022, the LIRR's incorrect fare collected rate (the number of times a conductor collected the wrong fare, e.g. an off-peak ticket on a peak train) topped 10%-15% most months, which is pretty outrageous.

Hopefully the launch of the new ticket machines is only a start of what will be several months more of effort to modernize and improve the ticketing infrastructure for the railroads, instead of a series of corners hastily cut to get the new machines in service quickly because the MTA fumbled OMNY so badly. We will have to see...

LIRR strike off for now as unions request Presidential Emergency Board

2025-09-15T19:00:00.002-04:00

A potential strike by several LIRR unions that would have suspended all rail service systemwide as soon as this Thursday is off for at least the rest of this year as leaders of the unions representing these workers requested that the White House appoint a Presidential Emergency Board to help mediate the dispute. A Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) is a relief valve of sorts that interrupts either side from seeking self-help under the Railway Labor Act, a federal law that regulates labor disputes between rail carriers and their workers. A PEB sets back the earliest start date for a strike or lockout by at least 90 days.

The current dispute involves five LIRR unions representing six collective bargaining units that make up a little over half of the railroad's workforce. The unions include:

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen, which represents locomotive engineers
Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen (Local 56), which represents signal and communications workers
Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen (Local 241), which represents technical engineers, architects, draftsmen, allied workers, load dispatchers, staff managers, assistant staff managers, and fire marshals
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents machinists
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents electricians
Transportation Communications Union, which represents clerical employees, ticket clerks, and other miscellaneous employees

(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The characters are a little different from the last serious LIRR strike threat in 2014, when a larger coalition representing most of the railroad's workforce was threatening to walk off the job before then-Governor Andrew Cuomo intervened to broker a deal that maintained mostly the status quo. This time, most unions, including the ringleader from the 2014 strike and the largest LIRR union (the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, SMART) have already accepted a deal from the MTA that offers 9.5% raises over three years and aligns with the pattern set by other city, state, and MTA unions this cycle. These unions are instead holding out, hoping that they can bargain separately for higher raises.

The MTA and the holdout unions were engaged in a mediation process with the National Mediation Board, which is one of the first steps in the labor contract negotiation process. Only the mediators can declare an impasse and release the parties from mediation, which means this process can often take a long time. Unless it doesn't...in August, the National Mediation Board released the parties from mediation in an unexpectedly abrupt move.

MTA officials have criticized the holdout unions for not coming to the negotiating table to work out their differences, and instead fast-tracking moves for a strike (including by holding strike authorization votes before the unions were even released from mediation. As recently as this past weekend, union officials said that they would not request a PEB, seemingly determined to push this dispute to the brink of self-help.

In a statement, MTA Chief, Policy and External Relations John McCarthy said “After months of radio silence, these outlier unions have finally admitted that they weren't serious about negotiating. They never had a plan to resolve this at the bargaining table. If these unions wanted to put riders first, they would either settle or agree to binding arbitration. And if they don’t want to strike, they should say so - and finally show up to the negotiating table. This cynical delay serves no one."

Either party, the National Mediation Board, or the governor of an impacted state can request the White House empanel a PEB. The wording in the law suggests that the parties can request and then the President may empanel a PEB, so just a request from the unions may not officially hit the pause button. Though it would be extraordinary if the White House declines to empanel a PEB, putting a self-help immediately back on the table...

Generally a PEB will meet with the two sides to formulate what they consider fair proposals or recommendations to resolve the dispute, and publish those in a report to the President within 30 days. The parties then enter into a cooling off period for 60 days (30 days for railroads not considered commuter railroads) where they can continue to negotiate, but cannot engage in self-help. If no agreement is reached 30 days after the report and recommendations of the first emergency board, then the National Mediation Board holds a public hearing.

After the full 60 days, if no agreement has been reached, then either side may seek help, unless one of the parties or the governor of an impacted state requests a second PEB. In the event there is a second PEB, then both sides submit what they consider their "best and final offer" and the PEB selects what they think is the most reasonable of the offers. The publication of that report then sets off a final 60-day cooling period, after which either side may seek self-help.

If the process above plays out in its entirety, a strike may be put off until at least next spring. But there are a few ways the process may be short-circuited along the way, so we will have to stay tuned.

Leaders of the holdout unions had said they were seeking raises beyond the 9.5% over three years the MTA was offering, but prior to Monday, had not made public what they were seeking. In a statement on Monday, the union leaders said they would accept MTA's offer of 9.5% over three years, but were seeking a 6.5% wage increase in the fourth year.

Union leaders say that wages and the MTA's proposal does not keep up with inflation and increases in cost of living in this region. Unlike workers who are governed under the State's Taylor Law and Triborough Amendment (which requires employers to continue increasing wages at the same rate as under the previous contract), rail contracts remain in force until a new agreement is reached--but wages stay fixed while the negotiations carry on, which puts pressure on the wallets of workers as prices go up but their wages remain fixed. When a new contract is ratified, workers typically get back wages depending on the terms of the agreement.

The MTA counters that any wage increases beyond the pattern established with the other unions need to be offset by givebacks in the form of work rule concessions or other changes to benefits. Archaic and outdated work rules in many of these contracts cost the LIRR millions in penalty payments each year, including those that give engineer's a second day's pay for operating both an electric and diesel locomotive in the same shift, or working multiple classes of service in the same shift. These work rules are remnants from an era of railroading that has long passed, and it is time the MTA hold firm and negotiate them out once and for all.

I have no issue with LIRR workers making a decent living, or even seeing wage increases beyond the established pattern or the rate of inflation. But wage increases must be paired with productivity improvements. LIRR's workforce is among the least productive in the US passenger rail industry (if not beyond), with overstaffing and excessive downtime rampant across different crafts and departments. MTA and LIRR must use this opportunity to bargain for productivity improvements that will allow them to drive down costs and improve service in the long run.

Blank departure boards at NJT's Hoboken Terminal during a 4-day
strike by locomotive engineers in May 2025 (Photo: The LIRR Today)

In this post-pandemic era where ridership remains only about 80% of what it was pre-pandemic, and work from home and other flexible arrangements are much more commonplace for workers, this is the perfect opportunity for the MTA to hold firm with the unions and demand productivity improvements as part of a new contract. A four-day strike by NJTransit's locomotive engineers this past spring shows that management can take a stand with unions without the world coming to an end. Some short term pain for the long term gain of being able to reduce the LIRR's stratospheric cost base and make it easier and more affordable to improve service in the future would be well worth it. Governor Hochul and the MTA should see through the required processes, but remain prepared to hold firm and stand up for what's best for LIRR riders.

Public Comments: Proposed Changes to MTA Fares and Tolls

2025-09-14T11:00:00.019-04:00

The following public comments were provided on the MTA's proposed changes to fares and tolls for 2025-2026.

While the MTA’s proposed changes to the base fare and toll rates are understandable given continued inflation and the stabilization of service reliability across the MTA network, many of the MTA’s proposed fare policy changes for the LIRR, Metro-North, and NYC Transit will significantly increase the out-of-pocket costs transit riders will need to shell out to use mass transit. The dramatic reduction in the validity period of one-way tickets and the elimination of the ten-trip ticket for LIRR and Metro-North, along with the elimination of the 30-day unlimited option for NYC Transit will increase costs for riders, and likely have a suppressive effect on ridership growth.

The MTA has attempted to sell these proposed fare policy changes as increasing flexibility and helping to “keep more money in riders pockets”. But while the proposed changes may leave more money in our pockets on Monday or Tuesday, there will be a lot less left in our pockets come Friday, the end of the month, or the end of the year. The dramatic reduction in validity periods for one-way tickets on the LIRR and Metro-North significantly reduces flexibility, leaving riders with a near-worthless ticket in the event their travel plans change.

These fare policy changes are extremely anti-rider, making rail travel more expensive and less flexible. These changes will stifle off-peak ridership growth, where discretionary travel is most sensitive to price. There is a clear correlation between average fares and ridership. On the LIRR, the expansion of CityTicket has led to average fares for travel within New York City to decline, to 7.7% lower than they were in 2019. As a result, LIRR ridership in New York City has fully recovered and now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. But, on the other hand, for travel to/from stations in Nassau and western Suffolk counties, average fares are up 9.5% as the MTA has not kept its fare pricing up with changes in commuting patterns. As a result, Long Island ridership languishes at only 74% of pre-pandemic levels.

Average fares—the actual amount that riders need to pay out of pocket for each trip, and how those average fares are influenced by the fare structure—matters far more than an increase to the prices of base fares.

Reduction of validity period for one-way LIRR, Metro-North tickets

The MTA’s proposal to dramatically shorten the validity period for one-way rail tickets from 60 days to just 4 hours significantly reduces flexibility and will make taking the train more expensive and more difficult for discretionary trips.

The MTA’s attempted justification for this change is a spurious allegation that 55% of mobile ticket users activate their mobile tickets in front of conductors, and that has been slowing down ticket collection. While this is certainly an eye-popping number, the MTA has not provided any level of detail to backup that figure, and it seems to bear little resemblance to the reality of what riders actually observe onboard trains. First off, nearly a third of trips taken using mobile tickets are time-based monthly or weekly passes, which don't even need to be activated since they are always valid. Neither railroad is systematically scanning all mobile tickets (conductors typically only scan tickets when there is a visual indicator that it was activated less than 2 minutes ago or the time does not match the device time), and it's unclear whether the basis for this is all mobile ticket activations or just those that are scanned. The LIRR has also considerably expanded its use of gate collection—at considerable expense—where riders have their tickets checked before they board a train (and in many cases, they are activating and having their mobile tickets immediately scanned at the stairs, before they even board the train).

The LIRR’s fare collection failure rates (which the MTA stopped publishing in mid-2022) has not shown any correlation between fare collection failure rates and the introduction of or increase in use of mobile ticketing. Instead, the railroads appear to be using this claim to paper over the fact that conductors are putting in less effort to actually collect all tickets, despite having 20% fewer tickets to check with virtually the same conductor headcount as pre-pandemic. Most conductors can’t be bothered to collect intra-Island fares, or do more than one full sweep for tickets before spending the rest of the trip in their cabs. LIRR and Metro-North should do more to monitor and hold conductors responsible for fare collection, instead of forcing riders to shoulder the consequences of their failures.

There's not even much evidence that this change will actually even address the purported issue. If people are waiting until the conductor comes to activate their mobile tickets because they don't want to 'waste' a ticket if it is not going to be collected, now those people are just going to wait until the conductor comes to purchase their tickets in the first place. The MTA has provided no evidence that their previous efforts with notices, e-mails, and blocking accounts of users who wait to activate tickets has had any meaningful effect on this issue to date.

The MTA's proposed fare changes stick riders with all of the inconvenience and inflexibility of a proof-of-payment system, without the considerably lower costs and lower fares that proof-of-payment typically brings. LIRR fares remain roughly twice as expensive as the national average on a per-mile basis, and this will only make it worse.

Taking away the flexibility to save and use these incredibly expensive one-way tickets later if plans change is very anti-rider, and implementing it in this way will leave riders feeling burned if they buy a ticket and can't travel, they want to change their plans, or if their train is late or canceled and they have to abandon their journey, etc. It will inevitably leave a bad taste in people's mounts, and likely discourage train travel—after all, if I drive and my plans change, it doesn't cost me anything to leave the car in my driveway.

Day pass too expensive for most use cases

The proposed new day pass option for the LIRR and Metro-North are priced too high to be useful for most people. Given how rail trips tend to be longer in distance and time, and rail service is less frequent than rapid transit service, the number of people who do “hop on, hop off” rail travel and may find a day pass useful is quite low.

Most rail riders will make at most 2 trips in one day. The proposed weekend day pass offers no discount over the price of two one-way off-peak tickets, while offering even less flexibility if you don’t need to make a return journey. On weekdays, the proposed weekday day pass would offer a modest 10% discount over the price of two peak tickets and could offer a slight savings to those who travel out and back on two peak trains, but the day pass would be more expensive than two one-way off-peak tickets or one peak and one off-peak ticket.

Again, the proposed changes would make train travel less flexible and more expensive for riders. If a rider purchases a day pass and then decides to travel back on a different day, or travel back on an off-peak train on weekdays, they lose the ability to use the rest of their ticket value on another day and end up losing money.

The MTA should retain the existing option to purchase round-trip tickets with a 60-day validity period. The day pass would be an ok addition to supplement, not supplant the existing ticket types, though MTA should offer a deeper discount to make it worthwhile to use.

Elimination of 10-trip tickets punish frequent riders

The MTA’s proposed elimination of the 10-trip ticket for the LIRR and Metro-North is again another move that punishes frequent riders and makes train travel more expensive for discretionary trips. The existing 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate 10-trip tickets takes the edge off of high one-way fares and provide a reasonable alternative for riders who travel frequently, but not often enough to buy a monthly ticket.

The proposed buy-10-get-1-free program which MTA has billed as a replacement will be largely useless for most riders with the unreasonably short 14-day window to buy and use all 11 tickets. If someone is travelling 11 times in a 14-day window (more realistically 12 since they are making round-trips), that means they are travelling 22 to 24 times in a month. In that case, it would be cheaper to just buy a monthly ticket, since the breakeven point for most zones is 20 trips.

Again, the elimination of the 10-trip ticket will increase out-of-pocket costs for riders while offering less flexibility. LIRR and Metro-North should retain the 10-trip ticket with its existing 180-day validity period, and it should expand the 15% discount to peak trips and offer an intra-Island version for the LIRR.

Half-fare tickets valid on all rail trains

The MTA’s proposal to accept half-fare tickets on all trains (including inbound AM Peak trains, which currently do not honor them) is a positive change and would bring LIRR and Metro-North into line with peer systems across the country.

Elimination of 30-day unlimited pass punishes most frequent subway riders

For New York City Transit, the MTA’s proposal to eliminate the 30-day unlimited pass and not replace it with an equivalent fare capping product is again another example of how a change that will purportedly make fare payment more flexible is actually an extra, hidden fare increase in disguise.

The proposed elimination of the 30-day unlimited pass option will punish NYCT’s most frequent and loyal riders. Replacing a 30-day unlimited MetroCard with an equivalent amount of 7-day fare caps will result in NYCT’s most frequent travelers paying more than 11% extra out of pocket by the end of the year.

While it is admirable that the MTA wants to expand the use of fare capping to benefit riders who may not be able to foresee their full travel plans over the course of a week or month, the MTA has presented no evidence that fare capping has had any meaningful effect on growing transit ridership. While a 30-day unlimited pass is an upfront cost, once that upfront cost is sunk, riders are encouraged to use the Subway or Bus as much as possible to get the best bang for their buck. On the other hand, with fare capping, each additional trip comes at a marginal expense, that could be potentially avoided if they can find another way to their destination.

Again, here is an example of where “simplification” actually means “higher costs” for riders. The MTA should retain the 30-day unlimited option (or replace it with a 30-day or 28-day fare cap), and it should make these unlimited passes more affordable to encourage greater use of mass transit.

Simplify without increasing out-of-pocket costs

It is good that the MTA sees the need to simplify its complicated fare structure, but these proposed changes miss the mark by miles as they will significantly increase the out-of-pocket costs riders will need to pay to use mass transit. The MTA should go back to the drawing board and look for ways to simplify its fare structure while keeping average fares consistent or lower than they are today.

If the MTA wants to grow ridership, it must do more to keep average fares and out-of-pocket costs for riders low. This is especially true for off-peak and discretionary trips, where riders are particularly sensitive to price. To exact these kinds of fare increases on the segment of the ridership that has shown the strongest recovery but is also the most sensitive is folly. The LIRR and Metro-North are pricing themselves into irrelevance—with fares like these, it will be cheaper for two people travelling together to drive into Manhattan (even with tunnel tolls, a congestion charge, and garage parking) than it would be to take the train. If you're travelling from further east, it would be nearly cheaper to drive alone than buy two one-way peak tickets or a day pass from Ronkonkoma.

MTA should strongly reconsider the proposed fare policy changes, keep the existing 60-day validity period for one-way tickets for the LIRR and Metro-North, retain the 10-trip ticket and expand its discounts for LIRR and Metro-North, and maintain or offer an equivalent fare caping product for the 30-day unlimited pass for NYC Transit.

You can take the LIRR out of Penn Station, but you can't take the Penn Station out of the LIRR

2025-08-27T18:00:00.001-04:00

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to tour East Side Access a few times over the years it was under construction. During one of the tours, one of the consultants that the MTA hired to do communications for the project was explaining how it was actually better that the MTA spent a few extra billion to build LIRR its own cavern below NY-Grand Central (instead of sharing the lower level tracks with Metro-North, as some wish they would have). It was better because LIRR would have its own tracks and not have to share with other railroads, and therefore tracks would be posted on departure boards and riders wouldn't have to wait in suspense for numbers to appear—the practice much reviled at NY-Penn Station.

I was admonished for rolling my eyes. After all, LIRR has no roommates at its other city terminal (Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal), yet plays the same track withholding game there. But I was assured that, this time, it would be different.

Clearly, bad habits are hard to break.

While the completion of the MTA's $12 billion East Side Access project gave the opportunity for LIRR riders to travel directly to Manhattan's East Side for the first time, and gave the railroad significantly more city terminal capacity and flexibility, LIRR has brought its much disliked track witholding procedure over to the East Side. This has left riders congregating at the bottom of the escalators, sitting on floors, and just gumming up the works because the track their train will depart from hasn't been posted yet.

Passengers mill about at the 45th Street cavern node waiting for the track for their train to be posted (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Riders are left in suspense for the track assignment for a train departing in 9 minutes (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Germany's DB is not shy about letting riders know
track assignments nearly 6 months in advance

Walk into practically any other major railway station across the world—including many just as big as NY's terminals and even busier—and you will almost always see a departure board filled with track assignments. Germany's Deutsche Bahn will tell me what track my regional/commuter or inter-city train will depart from in mid-December, nearly 6 months from now, but LIRR struggles to communicate track numbers more than 10-15 minutes in advance at its brand new $12 billion terminal.

LIRR has said that this practice is necessary because operational circumstances can force track changes, and they don't want people to wind up on the wrong track or train and have to move a few minutes prior to departure. But even at NY-Penn Station, where the station is far more constrained and the LIRR shares tracks with two other railroads, track assignments (especially during peak hours) are remarkably consistent from day to day, and during off-peak hours they can be reasonably predicted based on track and tunnel outages. At the other terminals, LIRR has full control and should be able to know in advance which tracks trains will depart from. And even with witholding track numbers until 10-15 minutes in advance, there are still plenty of occasions where there needs to be a last-minute track change because the crew discovers some sort of issue with the equipment, so this doesn't avoid these last-minute scrambles anyways.

Riders have to resort to sitting in all sorts of awkward
places in the ESA caverns (Photo: The LIRR Today)

This has been made more frustrating by the fact that the way the ESA cavern was designed, it is a rather hostile place to wait for a train. When the station opened, there was no seating on the cavern mezzanines, meaning people waiting either had to stand around or sit on the floor. The only seating on the whole LIRR complex was a small, ticketed waiting room on the Madison Concourse that is 2+ minute escalator ride from the trains, and, therefore, is seldom used.

After I'm sure what were plenty of complaints, the MTA installed 14 benches (for a total of 28 seats) in the cavern at the 47th Street cavern node back last October. Earlier this month, the MTA added 14 additional seats at the 45th Street cavern node (which is the busiest) and 28 seats at the 46th Street cavern node, for a total of 70 seats. The MTA even held a press conference with LIRR President Rob Free to celebrate them finally solving this pretty obvious problem, some two years after the station opened. The things MTA considers news...

Riders waiting for their track assignment at the 46th Street cavern node (Photo: The LIRR Today)

In addition to LIRR bringing this disliked and unnecessary procedure over to the East Side, the disease has also spread upstairs. Historically, Metro-North posted track numbers hours in advance on the departure boards across the terminal. A few years ago, Metro-North cut this down to only posting tracks 30 minutes in advance (which, considering most of their stations are served at least half-hourly during the day, wasn't a huge deal). But last October, Metro-North cut this even further, posting tracks only 20 minutes in advance. Because if there is one thing decades of this practice have shown with LIRR riders, witholding tracks is a clear crowd-pleaser. MTA has been touting better knowledge sharing and collaboration between the two railroads, but somehow they only manage to share the worst/dumbest policies and practices.

Metro-North now also withholds track numbers from riders (Photo: The LIRR Today)

At the time, Metro-North said the change "will mean less waiting on platforms for train doors to open." Whether you are standing around on the platform or standing around on the concourses (which, while architecturally significant also lacks any real seating for passengers), you are still standing around, waiting for your train to depart. Why shouldn't it be up to the passenger to decide what is most convenient for them?

The frustrating part—and what makes MTA and LIRR's celebration of something as simple as adding a few benches ring very hollow—is that there are already thousands of seats at Grand Central... On the trains! They just need to post the track numbers in advance, and then people can go straight to their train and take a seat there. Very few other terminals introduce this mandatory middle step where you have to mill about a station and then scramble to get on your train a few minutes before departure.

LIRR service to NY-Grand Central maxes out at 19 trains per hour across 8 station tracks and 4 pocket tracks, meaning they only need to turn one train every 20 minutes on each track during rush hours, and have practically unlimited flexibility in the off-peak periods. During both peak and off-peak periods, LIRR usually schedules turns for at least 15-20 minutes, meaning they could very well have track numbers posted and allow riders to go straight to their trains and wait onboard. Upstairs, Metro-North tends to have even longer turns at all hours of the day.

Door open buttons allow passengers to operate doors
when they are ready to board, instead of needing a train crew
to open the entire train at once (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Even with Metro-North reducing the time track numbers are posted to 20 minutes so there will be "less waiting on platforms for train doors to open", there have still been plenty of occasions where train crews do not have the train ready for passengers to board, so riders end up having to stand around on the platforms anyways. (unless the train is going to a yard, LIRR almost always leaves the train doors open when trains are waiting in the station at NY-Penn Station, NY-Grand Central, and Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal—even when the trains are left unattended). Practically everywhere else in the world has also found a solution to this, where trains are equipped with door open buttons that allow passengers to open the doors themselves instead of heating or air conditioning the entire station with every door left open.

There is no way to tell from this screen that the 7:14 train to
NY-Grand Central is actually 15+ minutes late, it just lingers on
the departure board with no track listed 8 mins after departure

This problem has also been solved many moons ago by railroads everywhere else by having a status column on the departure boards that allow the railroads to communicate whether a train is ready for boarding (or if there is some other issue). Then, if the track is always posted, the riders can decide whether they want to wait on the concourses or on the platform. A status can also allow the railroads to communicate other issues, for example, if the train is late or canceled. Today, if a train is canceled at NY-Penn Station, NY-Grand Central, Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal, or Jamaica it just vanishes off the departure boards leaving riders to scratch their heads about what happened. If a train is departing late, it just lingers on the departure boards, usually without a track assignment.

The departure board at New Haven lists track assignments for upcoming trains, and notes which ones are boarding—so riders have the choice of deciding whether to wait in the waiting area or go out to the platform for the later trains (Photo: JJBers/Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to it just being plain annoying, witholding track numbers also creates a false sense of urgency—riders have to go straight to the cavern at GCT or the Main Gate Area at NY-Penn Station so they can be at the closest possible spot to scramble for a seat on the train. The MTA should be using its digital signage assets to give riders more information to encourage them to spread out through the station better. By giving riders information about track assignments upfront, and pairing that with more contextual wayfinding signage that points people where they need to go and how long it will take for them to get there, riders can take greater comfort in knowing that they can stop at one of the shops or restaurants on the concourses and still make it in time for their train.

Using digital signage to shepherd riders through different parts of the station at the right times would give riders more information while helping spread them out more throughout the station.

More airports have started adding walking times to
departure boards (Photo: The LIRR Today)

Airports recognize the value of this level of communication, since it serves the double purpose of keeping air passengers shopping in their duty free stores and also not showing up to gates at the last minute and delaying departures.

The MTA has had a great deal of difficulty finding tenants for all the new retail space it built on the Madison Concourse for East Side Access—almost all of which sits vacant two and a half years after the place opened. But it has nobody to blame but itself—by witholding track info, riders naturally rush down to the caverns so they can be in position for when the train posts. As a result, foot traffic on the Madison Concourse is very quiet, especially outside of rush hours.

The LIRR has been boasting about its record-setting on-time performance figures. The LIRR is definitely operating more reliably, but the dividend of that should be an end to this practice of witholding track numbers. Posting track numbers in advance forces the railroad to be more disciplined—it has to get the trains into the terminal, on time, and on the right track so they don't have to make track changes. And that means that trains will get out on time from their initial terminal more often since they are less likely to wait for a late arriving inbound train. This would have even more positive downstream effects on reliability across the railroad.

But the LIRR excels at making things more complicated than they need to be. So while you may be able to take the LIRR out of Penn Station, it is apparently difficult to take the Penn Station out of the LIRR.

New Ticket Vending Machines being installed at stations

2025-08-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

New Ticket Vending Machines are starting to be spotted at busier stations across the LIRR, including at NY-Penn Station, NY-Grand Central, Mineola, and Hicksville. The new ticket machines are not yet in service, but appear to be undergoing testing.

The new machines are part of the MTA's New Fare Payment System efforts for the LIRR and Metro-North. The MTA was originally expected to bring OMNY to the LIRR and Metro-North (the OMNY pseudonym meant it was supposed to be the "One" farecard for all of "Metro New York"). But given that OMNY has been plagued by delays and technical issues, the MTA last year hastily changed course, dumping OMNY for the railroads and awarding no-bid contracts to Scheidt & Bachmann and Masabi to continue and upgrade the current legacy ticketing systems. As part of that move, Scheidt & Bachmann got a no-bid contract valued at up to $134 million to replace the existing Ticket Vending Machines (TVM) and Ticket Office Machines (TOM) for both railroads.

A new S&B Ticket Vending Machine installed in the Exit Concourse at NY-Penn Station (Photo: The LIRR Today)

The new ticket machines are similar to the new Charlie Card vending machines being rolled out by the MBTA in Boston. I got an up-close look at S&B's latest TVM design at InnoTrans last year--the machines contain some basic functionality improvements but do not appear to be a herculean leap forward in terms of functionality. But even refreshing the tech and the hardware in the machines, which were first rolled out in 2000 and are well beyond their useful life of 12-14 years, will be a help.

The two big changes that seem to be visible are a new bill accepter that should be able to give change in cash (ending the days of TVM's spitting out a pocket-full of dollar coins, and allowing bills to be recycled by the machine, cutting down on how frequently they need to be serviced).

(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The inner workings of a similar SBB TVM
on display at InnoTrans in Berlin last year
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The new machines also have a round contactless card target (that is different from the rectangular contactless target for payment cards similar to the ones on the current TVM's). While OMNY will likely not come to the railroads to any real degree, it is expected that riders will be able to use the balances on their black and white OMNY cards to buy paper rail tickets at these ticket vending machines.

This is miles short of the convenience of pay-as-you-go fares with farecards and contactless, where riders can just tap on fare validators at the start and end of their journeys to pay their fare. Other railroads across the country, from as far south as Miami to as far west as California, have offered pay-as-you-go fares on mainline rail with their farecards for many years. Earlier this year, SEPTA became the second (and the largest) mainline railroad to bring pay-as-you-go fares to contactless credit/debit/mobile wallet payments. If implemented properly and with full fare parity with other ticket sales channels, this is by far the most convenient fare payment option for both riders and the railroad.

We will have to see if these new TVM's for LIRR and Metro-North will be able to sell and reload OMNY cards. Given that the OMNY system is account-based, it should certainly be possible (if a Walgreens can add value to your OMNY card, the LIRR and Metro-North should be able to as well). One of the main drawbacks of MTA's joint MetroCard offerings was that, due to turf wars between the railroads and NYCT and the limiting technology of MetroCard, LIRR and Metro-North machines could only sell pre-valued MetroCards and could not read or refill balances to the cards.

But I hear that it is highly unlikely riders will be able to take advantage of pay-as-you-go payments on the LIRR and Metro-North. You will instead need to stop at a TVM or purchase a mobile ticket, and won't be able to use your OMNY card or OMNY-compatible card or device to just "tap and go" to the same degree you can on city Subways and buses.

(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The new ticket machines are also expected to be able to print QR codes on tickets (similar to NJTransit), which would allow for the implementation of electronic ticketing, and train crews to cancel tickets by scanning them instead of punching holes in them.

While it is disappointing to have seen the MTA fail so spectacularly to make OMNY the universal fare payment system the region sorely needs, at least there is a little bit of progress being made on replacing the last of the legacy fare equipment.