The subway and bus fare in NYC is expensive: $2.90 includes only a ride and a transfer, with limits. You can’t transfer from subway to subway if it requires you to leave the fare control area (in most places), and you are limited to one subway->bus, bus->bus, or bus->subway transfer. Compare this to a system like Muni in San Francisco, where the fare is $2.50 and includes unlimited transfers within 2 hours of the initial fare being payed, and it’s rough.

I aged out of Muni’s Free Muni for Youth Program last year, but wasn’t super impacted because I was mostly riding my bike, something I am privileged to be able to do. I was, however, riding and relying on Golden Gate Transit, paying upwards of $12 in fares most days that I went to work.

But it wasn’t until I moved to New York and started using transit a lot more that I began to really hurt from the cost of fares. The high fare and limited transfer policy has resulted in me trying to optimize my trips around reducing fares. The lack of unlimited transfers prevents me from making the most efficient trips (ie subway->crosstown bus->subway), and often discourages me from taking transit if I can conceivably walk (even if it is far).

I’m currently doing a research project on fare free transit, and in researching, I discovered Fair Fares, NYC’s program to subsidize local transit fares for NYC residents below 120% of the federal poverty line. Realizing I qualified, I decided to apply. Even finding the application proved difficult, and involved a lot of searching.

Once I made it to the Access HRA page, it took me longer yet to find the application, which is a buggy, slow React app that is difficult to navigate. When I first tried to apply, the application was down for maintenance, with no estimate of when it would be back up. It was like this each time I checked over the next couple days. If English wasn’t my first language I think I would have had even more difficulty. After finally filling out my application on the 8th of October, I received a long, English email confirming my submission. I had to download an app to upload documents (for some reason not an option on the web app), and after I had finally done that, I waited.

I repeatedly checked the portal to see if my application had been reviewed. Eventually, I gave up and checked less frequently. On the 30th of October I checked and found that I had been approved. I received no notification of this. The portal said that my MetroCard had not yet been mailed for a couple days. It finally says it has, but I have not received it as of the time of writing. I do not plan to use the MetroCard, I’m hoping to transfer it to OMNY. I’m a very literate person who is well versed on the inner and external workings of transit agencies and government, and I cannot for the life of me figure out whether OMNY even has support for Fair Fares yet. Without OMNY and its fare capping, I will spend more on fares. The Fair Fares and OMNY website both make differing claims about support, and as far as I can tell, OMNY does not yet support Fair Fares. I am not the only one with this confusion, a quick search turned up 10s of people on Reddit and other forums with the same questions, most unanswered. In the twenty nine days it has been since I submitted my application, I have paid $150.00 in fares, not including railroad fares.