In message , Paul Corfield
writes

For most journeys, though, it's like New
York - you just buy tokens from the booth and it's one token per trip,
no matter how long or how short.

The New York City subway stopped accepting tokens in 2003.

Really? I was last there in 2001 so didn't know. Why did they do
this? What do they now accept instead?

They replaced it with the magnetic stored value / unlimited ride pass
called Metrocard. A great step forward in my view - once you've learnt
the correct swipe speed through the top mounted reader on the turnstile.

http://mta.info/metrocard/index.html

The only downside I found when I was there last year... I bought a
Metrocard with a 1 week 'travelcard' loaded the first week. Then I
realised as I was staying in Downtown Manhattan I was walking virtually
everywhere, so I thought I would just load some prepay on it the second
week like Oyster. No, you have to get a whole new card even though it
looks exactly the same and comes from the same machine. I think they're
missing a trick there as there were loads of dead Metrocards lying about
the place.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
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