A Brief History Of How New Yorkers Have Paid For The Subway

8 photos

Subway tokens, tickets and MetroCards of the past.

Gothamist / New York Transit Museum

New York City Transit token booth clerk Cajun Wallace waits on a line of subway riders at the Woodside Station in the Queens. The first work day of the $1.50 subway and bus fare.

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A New York subway rider inserts a token into a turnstile at the Rockefeller Center station, June 1980.

AP/Shutterstock

Henry Peters, turnstile maintenance man, dismantles an-IRT turnstile at the Times Square subway station, when New York City's new 10-cent subway fare was inaugurated. William Reid, chairman of the board of transportation points as commissioner Sidney H. Bingham of the board of transportation looks on.

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New brass tokens, top row, are contrasted with older versions below at the Transit Authority headquarters in New York upon the arrival of the new tokens which had a stainless steel "bull's-eye" center.

Ron Frehm/AP/Shutterstock

Five-borough token TimeSaver Pak, c. 1995.

New York Transit Museum, New York City Transit Photographic Collection

A mechanical token vending machine, 1966.

AP/Shutterstock

MetroCard production, 1998.

Michael Coughlan, New York Transit Museum New York City Transit Photographic Collection

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