First Lady Claudia Dobles Camargo and Minister Counsellor of the Costa Rican Mission to the U.N. Met with NYC Transit President Seeking Details of OMNY Contactless Payment System

Discussion Highlights MTA’s Global Reputation as Leader in Transit Technology

View Photos of First Lady's Visit

New York City Transit Interim President Craig Cipriano today met with the First Lady of Costa Rica, Claudia Dobles Camargo, and Minister Counsellor Jose David Murillo to discuss international best practices for bringing customers back to public transportation and ensure safety during Covid-19. 

“In Costa Rica confidence has been a huge issue since the government limited capacity. People understood from that, that public transportation was insecure, in terms of health,” said Costa Rican First Lady Claudia Dobles Camargo. “And now we need to call them back to public transportation to regain confidence and to understand how can we manage this situation and how can we provide incentives for people to come back.

New York City Transit Interim President Craig Cipriano highlighted some of the initiatives that the MTA instituted to keep customers and employees safe and healthy during the pandemic.

“What we’ve done is a couple of things to mitigate concerns about returning to the system; from a federal level it is mandated that you must wear a mask on all public transit. All of our buses, trains and stations are disinfected every 24-hours and we provide information to our customers in regard to real-time passenger loading,” said New York City Transit Interim President Craig Cipriano. “Last week was really exciting for me because it was the week with schools opening and we broke a combined over 4 million trips on both buses and subways.”

In highlighting the value of the OMNY contactless payment system, acting OMNY Chief Amy Linden said, “Our fabulous graphics department has done the mask campaigns and they've also done the OMNY graphics. Just getting across that it's touchless, safe, easy, convenient, and people think it's cool and it is really fast.” 

• The MetroCard was first tested in the system in 1993, debuting to the larger public in January 1994. All turnstiles were MetroCard-enabled by May 1997 and all buses began accepting it by the end of 1995. Tokens were sold until April 2003 and acceptance was discontinued that May in subway stations and that December on buses.
• OMNY readers accept contactless cards from companies such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, as well as digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and others.
• Purchasing fare with cash will remain an option. Additional info about OMNY is available at https://OMNY.info.