New York subway tips: OMNY, express trains and art underground

The New York subway does not close. The Wikipedia article on the system says it has run 24/7 service every day of the year through most of its history, barring emergencies and disasters, and that 470 of its 472 stations are served around the clock. The 472 is the MTA's count. If a complex of linked stations such as Times Square counts once, the number is 423.

Tap, do not swipe

The ticket is now your phone or your bank card. OMNY, the contactless fare system, replaced the magnetic-stripe MetroCard. It launched on May 31, 2019 on Staten Island buses and at 16 subway stations, and on December 31, 2020 it was active on every bus and at every subway station. It takes contactless bank cards, mobile payments and a physical OMNY card, and the MTA added fare capping on February 28, 2022. MetroCard sales ended on December 31, 2025, so if you find an old one in a drawer, check the MTA's current rules before you count on it.

Local and express

Many lines have both kinds of train. In a typical four-track station the outer two tracks are used by local trains and the inner one or two by express trains. Locals stop everywhere and expresses skip most stops, which is why a train can roar past the platform you were standing on. The fix is to know the stops before you board. Our lines page lists every station on every line in the game, and the same name, different station story covers the 14 St and 59 St problem.

Over the street as well as under it

The first underground line opened on October 27, 1904, and more than 150,000 people paid the 5-cent fare on the first day. Today about 40 percent of the track is above ground, and the oldest structure still in use opened in 1885 as part of the BMT Lexington Avenue Line in Brooklyn. The system runs 25 services over 36 lines. In 2025 it carried about 1.28 billion linked trips, and the daily record, over 6.2 million riders, was set on October 29, 2015.

Stations built to be looked at

Some stations are a destination by themselves. Fulton Center opened in 2014 as a hub that untangles one of the most confusing station complexes in Lower Manhattan, and its Sky-Reflector-Net, a cable-supported dome of aluminum panels, funnels daylight down through the central atrium.

A few blocks away, the Oculus, designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2016, is the white-ribbed centrepiece of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. It links PATH trains, subway lines and a shopping concourse, and its roof is designed to open each September 11 to let a shaft of sky into the hall.

The art is deliberate. MTA Arts & Design, formerly Arts for Transit, was created in 1985 when the MTA began rehabilitating the system. It has put art in more than 260 stations, with work by over 300 artists. When the Second Avenue Subway opened on January 1, 2017, its new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets and the renovated Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station came with permanent installations by Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, Sarah Sze and Jean Shin.

None of that changes how you ride the game. The 7 train crosses Queens above the street for much of its route, and the L train goes under the East River, so you can start with either.