With the arrival of OMNY’s tap-and-go payment system, New York City has bid farewell to the MetroCard on New Year’s Eve. However, the iconic plastic fare card can still be celebrated at the New York Transit Museum. The museum’s special exhibition, FAREwell, MetroCard, highlights the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) technological strides and long-standing partnership with the arts, available for viewing until spring.
“This is a bit unusual. We don’t typically do exhibits for something extant in this subway,” said Transit Museum curator Jodi Shapiro to Hyperallergic. “But the MetroCard represented a huge technological leap in our transit system, and we felt we should bring it to the fore and tell people about it.” The museum in Downtown Brooklyn, known for its collection of vintage rail cars, trolleys, and buses, attracts transit enthusiasts eager to explore the city’s historical mobility.
The museum also serves as a popular filming location, featuring historic trains and the preserved Court Street station, which is still linked to the subway system. Films like the 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and its remake with Denzel Washington, as well as Carlito’s Way (1993), were shot there. When Al Pacino’s character dashed through the 1960s-era “Redbird” cars, the MTA was introducing a prototype of the bendable fare card that would eventually replace subway tokens in 1994.
The transition to MetroCards was significant, as magnetic strip cards weren’t yet commonplace in the U.S., though they had been used in cities like Paris and San Francisco. New infrastructure was developed to accommodate this change, including a facility to encode the cards and manage transactions. “This was all technology that didn’t exist before the MetroCard was chosen,” Shapiro explained. “It was one of the biggest technological leaps in the subway’s history.”
While some lament the end of the MetroCard era, others view its successor, the OMNY system, as a progressive step. OMNY accepts contactless payments through credit cards, smartphones, and wearables, reducing the need for cash. “I can’t see them not continuing that type of promotion of the arts and poetry on the OMNY card,” Shapiro said, hinting at a future where art continues to play a role in the transit experience.
