The MTA’s total shift to tap-to-pay will make fare enforcement easier, MTA brass says — especially on buses where the bulk of fare evasion occurs.
The OMNY system — which allows riders to pay their fare using tap-enabled credit cards, smart devices, or pre-paid OMNY cards — has been in place since 2019.
But the MetroCard system it’s replacing is set to be phased out next year, with no new sales of the iconic yellow fare card as of Dec. 31. And when new fares kick in in January, buses will no longer accept cash for fare payment, making it easier for fare enforcement agents to check proof of payment.
“We’ve been talking about it for months now,” MTA chairman Janno Lieber said Wednesday. “When the transition to OMNY is complete, we’ll be able to have fare enforcement agents get on a bus and say to anybody, ‘please show me your phone, show me your OMNY card — show me that you paid.”
“You can have validation of payment on a random basis… take place across the system,” he added. “We can’t do that now because, as long as we’re accepting coins on the bus, people can say ‘Oh I paid in coins,’ or whatever, which is not the case.”
“Nobody’s paying $2.90 in coins,” Lieber said. “They’re giving us about 75 cents, on average, and a lot of Garden State Parkway tokens from 1958.”
MTA chair Janno Lieber called the spot-checks “European-style” fare enforcement at a public event earlier this week — particularly well-traveled straphangers may also recognize it as a digital version of what New Jersey has done for years on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail.
Indeed, the MTA has already been spot-checking payments on buses in recent years, deploying its unarmed Evasion And Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication teams — known as the Eagle Teams — to buses with wireless readers checking for fare payment. The removal of cash payment on buses is expected to make those checks more effective.
The MTA estimates roughly 44% of bus riders did not pay their fare during the third quarter of 2025.
