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The MTA Is Making Millions Off Your Old MetroCards
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 17, 2014
Modified Jan 17, 2014
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 17, 2014
Modified Jan 17, 2014
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With heartfelt eulogies on the soon-to-be-extinct MetroCard already bringing tears to our eyes, now's as fine a time as ever to remember what the MetroCard was really good for—grifting money from tourists! It turns out that the MTA has been making a boatload off unused MetroCard cash, scoring $200 million in the decade leading up to 2010.
Not that this information—laid out in a Times piece today—comes as a surprise to anyone who's had to swipe the six empty and/or expired MetroCards sitting in their wallet before finding a working golden ticket, just as the express train's closing doors pull down your pants and taunt you. If you're not chained to a weekly or monthly card, chances are you've lost a couple bucks at some point and, like the dimes rattling at the bottom of your tote bag, the MTA will use it to pay for lunch. "Expired card value does benefit the M.T.A. It gets counted as fare box revenue," MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.
Though, naturally, the real "victims" here are out-of-town visitors who haven't yet mastered the art of penny-pinching at the vending machine and can't stop looming over you on the F train as they try to decipher the subway map. "Are veteran riders leaving tens of millions of dollars on unspent MetroCards?” Straphangers Campaign staff attorney Gene Russianoff asked the Times. “Doesn’t sound like the New Yorkers I know. I am thinking it’s families running late to catch their flight, who will discover value-filled MetroCards at the bottom of their purses or crammed in their wallets as they arrive home in some city less frenetic than New York."
Lest you think the MTA is some money-grubbing organization out to snatch commuters' spare change, you can actually transfer leftover money from expired MetroCards to new cards, as long as you return the card within two years of its expiration date. And when it comes to the real terror for commuters—losing that $112 monthly card on Day 6—the MTA will refund the balance as long as you purchased the MetroCard with a credit, debit or ATM card.
Tagged
metrocard
MTA
subway
Rebecca Fishbein
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