Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll find out about a pilot program to provide free OMNY cards to 700 City of New York students. We’ll also get details on the nor’easter that’s lingering after lumbering across the New York area over the weekend.
The email, sent to 54,000 City University of New York students, included what amounted to a lottery entry.
The prize was one of 700 free OMNY cards being distributed as part of a pilot program paid for with a $700,000 appropriation from the City Council. The students who applied for the cards had to confirm that they met eligibility requirements, which included enrolling in courses to earn at least 12 credits in both the fall and spring semesters. They also had to attend at least two courses in person each semester.
The recipients, who were chosen by random selection, were notified last week. Another 300 students who applied were told that they had been placed on a waiting list, in the event some of the cards ended up going unclaimed.
“We know that transportation costs are one of the unfortunate hidden drivers of dropout rates among CUNY students,” said Julie Menin, the City Council speaker.
Ninety percent of students, she said, commute by public transit, spending an average of $1,000 to get to class during an academic year.
“If they don’t get that $1,000,” she said, “they could drop out of college.”
She added: “We know the need is urgent and the demand is high. We don’t want students dropping out because they can’t get to class. That’s inexcusable.”
Menin is to appear at City College, on Convent Avenue near 138th Street, to launch the CUNY OMNY program. Shaun Abreu, the majority leader of the Council and the chairman of its transportation committee, is scheduled to join her, along with the chancellor of CUNY, Félix V. Matos Rodríguez.
Menin said the location was significant because the neo-Gothic buildings on the City College campus were constructed with Manhattan schist that was excavated for subway tunnels. (The campus opened in 1907, three years after the city’s first subway line began running.)
She said the pilot program aligned with the Council’s push to improve transit affordability, which has centered on the Fair Fares program for half-price bus, subway and paratransit rides for lower-income New Yorkers. Fair Fares was expanded to add roughly 25 percent more recipients — about 340,000 people — under the budget agreement with Mayor Zohran Mamdani for this fiscal year.
The mayor had resisted widening the program as he pushed to make buses free. But he said in June, after the budget agreement was announced, that he supported the Fair Fares expansion. Last week, the Council passed a bill to make it easier for people receiving food stamps and cash assistance to register for Fair Fares. Only 40 percent of those eligible for the program have signed up.
In a city where the cost of living continues to rise, Matos Rodríguez said the CUNY OMNY cards would “ease a real financial burden and help CUNY students focus on what matters most: their education.”
More than 28,000 students on CUNY’s 26 campuses already have unlimited OMNY cards under programs that provide broader financial support. The 700 students chosen for the new, free cards can use them from next week through the end of the fall semester in December, and again during the spring semester.
Akkeem Polack, the chairman of the University Senate and the student trustee on the CUNY board, said that students had been pushing for three years to arrange free OMNY cards and that they had sought $700,000 from New York State and $700,000 from the city this year.
“Only the city came through,” he said.
“Every single day, people find my Instagram or find my number, asking how they can be added to the pilot program,” he added.
One such student, who had just transferred to York College, a CUNY school in Jamaica, Queens, told him that she had been caught jumping a turnstile and had been issued a ticket.
“She can’t afford it every day,” he said.
Weather
Another rainy day is ahead. Temperatures will approach 66 before dropping to around 59 tonight. Look for mostly cloudy skies in the evening.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Shemini Atzeret).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They call me the brass master,” said Christopher Santana, who maintains the shine on the 7,600 linear feet of brass surfaces at Grand Central Terminal. They’re vulnerable to smears and smudges — as well as to graffiti, ketchup, stickers and even vomit.
The latest New York news
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The daredevil aviator: In 1910, there was no greater journalistic mission than following, by train, the dapper daredevil Glenn Curtiss flying a bamboo-framed biplane about 150 miles from Albany to New York City. The coverage spanned half a dozen pages, including The Times’s first front-page photograph: a shot of Curtiss’s takeoff from the outskirts of Albany.
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Body found in Central Park: An unidentified woman was found dead inside a gazebo near the Central Park Boathouse restaurant. Officials said she had been stabbed multiple times and had suffered severe head injuries.
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A complicated and emotional encounter: Body camera footage shows officers trying to reason with Pamela Cisneros — who was killed while wielding two knives in Times Square — as she repeated that she was “tired of this world” and urged the officers to come at her.
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Line dancing in New York: Line dancing is experiencing a resurgence in New York City. You can line dance nearly every night of the week in bars, dance studios, even a roller rink. And you’re as likely to find the crowd clad in cutoff shorts and crop tops as boots and denim.
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A beloved steakhouse gets a new owner: After Donohue’s Steak House, an old New York saloon, closed in June, Jon Neidich, a downtown restaurateur, signed a lease to rehabilitate, restore and open the space as a new restaurant.
The nor’easter drifts on
The nor’easter is not gone yet. That’s the word from the National Weather Service, which says that the storm will weaken as it drifts east. That means more rain today — and in low-lying coastal areas, the potential for more flooding.
Much of New York City had recorded more than two inches of rainfall by Sunday afternoon, with eastern Long Island and parts of New Jersey seeing totals closer to three to four inches.
Utility companies worked through the weekend to restore electricity where the storm had knocked down power lines. More than 14,000 customers were without power in Suffolk County on Long Island on Sunday afternoon, along with just over 3,400 in Nassau County. More than 4,600 were out in Monmouth County and Ocean County on the Jersey Shore. The city’s Office of Emergency Management said in a social media post that it had received 500 reports of trees knocked down by the storm.
METROPOLITAN diary
Pointers
Dear Diary:
My daughter Emily and I were finally on a long-planned trip to New York.
She had explicitly warned me many times that I was not to point at people and things while we were in the city. She was capable of seeing the Chrysler Building and lines for pizza without my help. I didn’t need to aim my finger at them.
Apparently, I do this all the time. Apparently, my dear daughter finds this embarrassing. Apparently, she finds me embarrassing.
I cooperated. I sat on my hands on the subway. The Empire State Building’s omnipresence no matter where we stood in Manhattan was left unpointed at. Places we’d seen on “Law & Order” barely elicited a nod.
But the Museum of Modern Art? I was stunned. Overwhelmed. Everything cried out for pointing. Yet I stood firm.
We were on the fifth floor looking at a Mondrian. My daughter moved closer.
“Dad,” she said. “Look at this. This is so cool. Look at that line. It actually kind of looks like he made a mistake.”
What I saw was this: her finger, as if in slow motion, extending forward to within inches of the canvas and pointing.
Like a Gotham superhero, a security guard swept down on her and said: “Please keep your distance. Do not touch. Step back, please!”
I couldn’t have been happier.
— Dave Hancock
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post For 700 CUNY Students, the Prize Is Free Subway Cards appeared first on New York Times.
