Did MTA kill the unlimited day pass?

I figured it had to do with scammers, my friends in Queens always complain about people trying to get a free swipe from them.

I think though since it is such a touristy area, they could have found a way to sell them only to out of city people.

I spent most of my day off Friday riding the subway (it was "Another Rainy Day in New York City" to quote the song from, er, the band Chicago!) and the first thing I noticed was that I couldn't buy a one-day pass. I did notice plenty of signage "Don't accept a 'swipe' offer" still hanging so the explanation for the dropping of the pass makes some sense. But since I am officially a tourist when I visit the city these days, I missed the opportunity to buy one.

On the other hand... the pricing options that are available don't really make sense-- $10 with 70 cent bonus, when the rides are $2.25? That's 4.75 rides (rounding off). Seems to me that there need to be some updates to the selections...

I rode a train in all five boroughs, including the Staten Island Railway (with the ferry connection of course), and made the $10 Metrocard last all day. It helps that if you ride the subway to South Ferry and then take the Staten Island Ferry to St. George, "admission" to the Staten Island Railway is considered to be a free transfer. The same is true going the other way as well, as I found out first-hand.

umtrr-author wrote:...On the other hand... the pricing options that are available don't really make sense-- $10 with 70 cent bonus, when the rides are $2.25? That's 4.75 rides (rounding off). Seems to me that there need to be some updates to the selections...

The bonus is a flat rate of 7% on purchases of $10 or more, so if you were to buy $20 worth you'd get $21.40. It's not adjusted by dollar amount purchased.
You'd have to put $32.10 on a MetroCard to get a free ride.

The trick is to do a little math before you go. For every purchase of $10 or more you get a 7% bonus. Now most people just spend the $10 and leave the last $0.70 on a card doing nothing--so what you have to do is find just the right amount so you only have a couple of pennies left over.

You can add a custom amount to the MetroCard in intervals of 5 cents (so $10.00, $10.05, $10.10, $10.15 can all be added). Find the right 5 cent interval together with your 7% bonus and you'll end up having just the right amount you need, with only 1-4 cents left over. (be sure to figure it out before you step up to the machine, though. People would get fairly mad if they saw you spending 20 minutes trying to find just the right dollar increment.

Naturally, "there is an app for that" so the fun of math is taken out of this process. There are also a couple of online calculators as well.

umtrr-author wrote:...I rode a train in all five boroughs, including the Staten Island Railway (with the ferry connection of course), and made the $10 Metrocard last all day. It helps that if you ride the subway to South Ferry and then take the Staten Island Ferry to St. George, "admission" to the Staten Island Railway is considered to be a free transfer. The same is true going the other way as well, as I found out first-hand.

Yup the free transfer is good between the SIR and:

MTA Tariff Policy wrote:Pay your fare with Pay-Per Ride MetroCard and transfer free between SIR and local buses or subways as long as you use your MetroCard again within two hours. Use an Unlimited Ride MetroCard and ride as many times as you like, including transfers.

If you ride a local Staten Island bus to SIR, you can transfer free to SIR and then transfer again free to these lower Manhattan subways and buses:

(1) at South Ferry
(4)(5) at Bowling Green or Wall St
(2)(3)(4)(5)(A)(C)(J)(Z) at Broadway-Nassau/Fulton St
(2)(3) at Wall St
(J)(Z) at Broad St
(N)(R) at Whitehall St or Rector St
and the M5, M20 and M15 +SBS+ buses

So you could essentailly get 4 trips out of your MetroCard for one $2.25 charge:
Local SI bus -> SIR -> Subway south of Fulton street -> Local bus in Manhattan/Bx/Qns/Bklyn (as long as it's all done in 2 hours)

Thanks for the tip. I'm sure I'll be back to NYC before my Metrocard with the leftover money expires in January 2014, so as long as I remember to bring it (!) I should be able to increment the right amount of money.

That four-ride on one fare from SI into the "main" subway system sounds like an interesting challenge. Let's see... it's 42 minutes from Tottenville to St. George, and the ferry ride is about 25 minutes... seems possible to start with a bus ride and then tack on a generous 5 minutes to get from the ferry to a subway stop.