MTA acknowledges OMNY defects
But it's not in a hurry to fix them
MTA (New York's subway operator) is poised to phase out the old swipe cards by the end of the year. I previously wrote about many issues with the new OMNY chip card (here, here, and here). Recently, MTA has acknowledged these issues. Yet, they will retire the old system without fixing these problems!
First up. The OMNY card uses a tablet for scanning, and yet the spacious screen real estate is wasted without showing riders useful data: not how much is being charged for the trip, not a list of recent charges, not how much value remains on the card. According to this news report (link), MTA has raised the "possibility" of showing remaining balances. I want to be a fly on the wall to hear the opponents of displaying the data. The old swipe card system using the tiniest screen still managed to show such data.
Second, many riders complained about the lack of "visibility and transparency" relating to free rides. Absolutely agree. The real problem, as I explained in two blog posts (here and here), is the mind-numbingly complex new method of rewarding free trips. The PR agency decided to dumb down the math, which compounds the problem because what they are promoting on the trains is a lie. They can't possibly be computing the free rides the way they are described to the public.
In a prior post, I guessed at what the real method of rewarding free rides is. While that method gets the job done, it is difficult to explain, and impossible for riders to audit without lots of data.
Comparing the OMNY way to the old swipe cards highlights the problem. Riders used to pay upfront the fixed fee for a 7-day travel card, and after the purchase, they could do as many rides as they like, without a care. Now, they don't know what's going on. Nevertheless, we are relieved that the MTA heard the correct feedback: "riders...want... some help building a little trust that this new unlimited ride fare cap is giving them free rides".
They have committed a big rookie mistake of marketing. When you're giving customers a discount or freebie, you better make it super obvious what they are getting.
The first proposed "solution" doubles down on the opaqueness - they are asking riders to spend time going to a website to inspect their historical trips. How is this better than the old swipe-card system, in which riders know at the turnstile that they just received a free ride without needing to do anything else?
In fact, I did a transfer from subway to bus today, and I had no idea if I was charged once or twice. (The transfer to bus should have been free.) If I used the old swipe card, I'd have been told right after the swipe that the ride was a free transfer. With OMNY, the same green light greeted me whether or not I was transferring.
