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Last Wednesday, the MTA announced on Twitter that MetroCard vending machines “may not” be accepting debit and credit card purchases over the following weekend. The temporary outage was due to a scheduled software upgrade on the equipment and provoked public outcry from straphangers who were baffled by the short notice. The MTA quickly changed its tune, stating that they were delaying the outage for a week to “shorten the process and more clearly answer customer concerns.”
On Monday, the authority announced a new plan to upgrade the software on the machines, noting that they will be cash-only from midnight to 6am on Saturday morning. This window is significantly shorter than the entire weekend that officials pitched with just two days notice last week, and throws at least a small bone to commuters who have bemoaned the MTA’s poor communication over the past year.
“After hearing clearly from our customers that they needed more information regarding this upgrade, we reassessed the entire process,” MTA managing director Veronique Hakim said in a statement. “We are aggressively communicating with customers about this upgrade to ensure that we avoid confusion, and limiting the disruption to only the very early morning hours Saturday.”
The software upgrade in question is related to the MTA’s plan to replace the MetroCard with a tap-and-pay system by 2023. The authority has contracted Cubic Corporation to roll out the new technology, the same company that in 2013 bungled the rollout of Ventra, a similar tap-and-pay on Chicago’s CTA.
This weekend’s upgrade will affect all MetroCard vending machines in subway stations, in PATH stations, at JFK’s AirTrain and at LaGuardia Airport.
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