In two years of high school, Maya Jordan went through six student OMNY cards, the tap-and-go system that allows New York City students to ride the subway and buses for free.
One card disintegrated in the washing machine. Another fell apart in the rain. Others got bent and stopped working. Each mishap meant waiting days for a replacement, forcing her to pay the full fare, $3 a ride, until her new card arrived.
“So many of the issues would be avoided if the cards were made out of plastic,” said Ms. Jordan, 18, who rode the 1 train to the N.Y.C. Lab School for Collaborative Studies.
It’s not just the MetroCard faithful who has a bone to pick with the new OMNY system, according to a report released on Wednesday by the office of City Councilman Harvey Epstein.
The report, which surveyed nearly 700 New York City high school students who use the system, found that the student cards are flimsy, prone to malfunction and difficult to replace. Most problems, the students said, stem from the material of the cards: They are paper and not plastic like the former MetroCard or the OMNY cards distributed at vending machines.
Mr. Epstein and transit advocates are expected on Wednesday to rally outside of City Hall in support of changes to the student cards.
New York City’s vast public transit system is a vital means of transportation for the city’s more than one million students, ferrying them not only to school, but also to extracurricular activities and jobs, which can be miles away from home. It is especially important for middle- and high-schoolers, who can attend school far from home.
“It’s different in the suburbs when kids can drive or take a school bus,” said Kavya Chacko, 18, who helped conduct the survey and recently graduated from the Notre Dame School of Manhattan, an all-girls private high school. She rode the 6 and L trains to school.
The student OMNY cards, which were introduced nearly two years ago, were a significant improvement over the previous MetroCards. They increased the number of daily trips allowed to four, up from three, and allowed students to use them year-round and at all hours.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway and buses, works with the city’s department of education to print about 1.5 million student OMNY cards for public, charter and private schools each year. Students in kindergarten through 12th grade are eligible, but neither the department of education or the M.T.A. would say how many students used them last year.
New York City pays around $50 million a year for the program, which costs about $280 million; the balance is paid by the M.T.A. and the state.
Still, the survey found widespread frustration among students.
Some said they went weeks without their school providing replacement cards. “That’s a cost students shouldn’t be made to pay,” said Juniper Wang, 17, who rides a bus and the subway to LaGuardia High School on Manhattan’s West Side from his home in Flushing, Queens.
Others laminated their cards, only to have them eventually stop working, too.
Mr. Wang, a member of the youth activist committee of Transportation Alternatives, a transit advocacy group, said he wanted a digital option that students could install on their cellphones.
Students also said that eligibility restrictions, such as an exclusion for applicants who live within a half-mile of their school, do not reflect the lives of young people, who often travel for other academic interests.
The survey, conducted by students living in Mr. Epstein’s Midtown and Lower Manhattan council district, included responses from young people citywide, from both public and private schools.
Mr. Epstein said he viewed the card’s shortcomings as an economic justice issue.
Maya Morozov, a student at Trinity School, a private school on the Upper West Side, said that the survey had revealed a major disconnect between the adults who implemented the student card system and the young people who use it.
“It’s easy in government if you don’t have kids and don’t hear about this,” Ms. Morozov, 16, said. “You make this change and don’t see how it actually plays out.”
Shanifah Rieara, the M.T.A.’s chief customer officer, said that the agency was committed to improving the student OMNY cards and listening to feedback from students. She said she knows firsthand the issues with the cards: Her 8-year-old daughter has had several replaced after water spilled on them.
“We want and need them to have a seat at the table,” Ms. Rieara said. “We all know how it is once upon a time where adults have sort of imposed their views on us.”
She said that the M.T.A. is working on several changes to the cards, including the ability for students to tap-and-pay at the turnstile with a phone like other riders can. The agency also plans to replace the paper cards with a durable plastic version around the 2027-28 school year.
M.T.A. officials said they wanted to make sure the new programs worked seamlessly before rolling them out to all students. They do not want students to miss class because of potential malfunctions or feel tempted to jump the turnstile. In the second quarter, nearly half of bus riders and more than 10 percent of subway riders skipped the fare, according to the M.T.A.
A spokesman for Cubic Transportation Systems, the company that designed OMNY, referred questions to the M.T.A.
The M.T.A. stopped selling the MetroCard, the plastic transit pass that debuted in 1993, at the end of last year, and nearly all riders have already switched to OMNY, according to the agency.
But the new system’s rollout has had issues. The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the M.T.A., an independent consumer advocacy group that makes recommendations to the authority, collected hundreds of complaints last year from riders who said that the tap-and-go system sometimes failed to register at fare gates, and that their charges would sometimes appear on their accounts days after the transaction.
The M.T.A. said those technical issues have been addressed, and that some of the features riders miss about the MetroCard — like the ability to see fare history at a glance — will be added to an app.
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