New York: practical tips

The MetroCard is gone

The fact to bring up to date, because half the internet still tells you to buy a MetroCard. You can’t: the MTA stopped selling and refilling them on 31 December 2025, after 32 years. Cards already issued are still accepted for a while, and the MTA will announce the final date later, but buying a new one isn’t an option.

The system now is OMNY and it’s contactless: tap your own bank card, phone or watch on the turnstile reader and go. Nothing to buy, no queue at a machine, and it works with the card you already carry. If you’d rather not use your bank card, physical OMNY cards are sold.

One warning: use the same payment method all trip, because the weekly cap is calculated per card.

The tip, and the tax

Two layers of surprise on every price you read. First: tax isn’t included on the label or the menu, it’s added at the till. Second: the tip, which in a waiter-service restaurant is 18-20% and isn’t optional in practice, because staff wages are calculated assuming it. Not leaving it isn’t a gesture: it’s leaving someone unpaid.

Where yes and where no: table service with a waiter, always, taxi, 15-20%, a bar, a couple of dollars a drink, a café counter or a cart, voluntary even if the card machine suggests it forcefully.

Practical rule: look at the menu price and add a third.

The subway runs 24 hours

The New York subway runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it’s one of the very few in the world that does: in London, Paris or Madrid you’re stranded at one in the morning. Not here. That changes how you plan a night.

The trade-off is that, because it never closes, the engineering work happens with the service running, and at night and at weekends lines get diverted, skip stops or run on the neighbouring track. The paper notices taped to the walls are the source of truth.

Check the app before going down and don’t assume the morning train does the same thing at midnight.

Data on your phone

Your European roaming plan stays in Europe: in the United States you’re billed as an international destination. There’s no Switzerland-or-Turkey trap here, nobody confuses New York with the EU, but there is a wrinkle that makes it matter more than elsewhere.

It’s this: since the MetroCard stopped being sold, the transit payment system is contactless with your own phone or card. Add that the subway changes routes at night and you need the app, that you walk a lot here with a map open, and that ordering in some places is done on your phone. Running out of data in New York isn’t an inconvenience any more: it’s not being able to get into the subway. A local eSIM activates on landing and costs a fraction of roaming.