Un-fare! NYC subway, bus riders accidentally hit with price hike — weeks early
The MTA’s troubled new OMNY fare system hit scores of subway and bus commuters with a not-so-welcome surprise this week: the approved 15-cent fare hike — nearly a month early.
Red-faced transit-agency officials said the company it hired to build out the new fare set-up, Cubic Systems, was supposed to be testing out how it would handle the rate boost to $2.90 a ride, but the price bump accidentally went live Monday.
“This was due to a testing error by Cubic, the vendor building out OMNY,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said in a statement. “We immediately directed them to fix the issue and it’s now resolved.”
The agency was not able to say how many riders were hit. But it said everyone charged $2.90 would get the 15 cents refunded back to the card or account they used to tap into the system.
“We’re grateful to customers for bringing this to our attention quickly, and apologize for the inconvenience,” the MTA added.
The snafu is just the latest in a string of problems with Cubic and OMNY, many of which were detailed in a Post investigation published in May that examined how the program fell years behind schedule and blew its budget by more than $130 million.
The MTA has assigned a dozen or fewer staffers to the project, which insiders say resulted in massive employee turnover and burnout — and meant that Cubic’s computer programming got just a fraction of the needed oversight.
