New school year, new student OMNY cards, but no changes to the paper design.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, it was accompanied by a protective plastic sleeve. The city\u2019s Department of Education gives them to students who live more than half a mile from school, with four rides a day.<\/p>\n
A day before the start of school, students with the Transportation Alternatives Youth Activist Committee held a funeral for last year\u2019s cards, widely regarded as flimsy. The cards deactivated on Aug. 31.<\/p>\n
The sleeve is supposed to help make cards last after students complained they would stop working if they got wet or bent, and some schools ran out of replacements.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s cute. I like it, but it doesn\u2019t fit my wallet, and it\u2019s again, not very durable,\u201d Charlie Hawn, a high school senior, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sleeve is a little more annoying in my opinion, because now it\u2019s bigger than a regular card. Yeah, so it doesn\u2019t fit in a wallet,\u201d James Franco, a high school senior, said.<\/p>\n
Other students opted for their own more durable ID card holders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if they just replaced it with a normal OMNY card material or MetroCard material it would be much, much better for us,\u201d Hawn said.<\/p>\n
According to the MTA, the agency is now testing a digital OMNY card to allow students to use their phones instead.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, students said they want to see more than physical changes to the card \u2014 such as giving one to every student.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany students have jobs now, or like, internships, and they just can\u2019t get to them or they have to pay out of pocket, which really adds up quickly, especially on a student budget,\u201d Juniper Wang, a high school senior, said.<\/p>\n
Students argued it will promote the habit of paying versus jumping the turnstile.<\/p>\n
Another issue is that it does not cover express buses or commuter rail. Franco\u2019s parents pay for a school bus for his commute from Queens to Bronx Science.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I took the subway, it would take me, like, two and a half hours. I do live next to an express bus, which would cut the time, like, double it \u2014 it\u2019ll only take like one hour. But the student cards don\u2019t work on express buses, so I can\u2019t use that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The city did not respond to our questions about those issues. Students say the school year may be new, but student OMNY\u2019s problems are getting old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New school year, new student OMNY cards, but no changes to the paper design.\u00a0 Instead, it was accompanied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,1084,9,24,55,54,12,56,87,298,27,296,200],"class_list":["post-346924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-traffic-transit","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-politics","tag-samantha-liebman","tag-top-stories","tag-traffic-and-transit","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}