How do I pay for the subway or bus?
Short answer
With the contactless card or phone already in your hand, in the larger systems — there is no national transit card because every city runs its own. New York reads your own bank card at the gate and stops charging once you have ridden enough in a week.
There is no card for the country
Nothing here works like a single card that carries a whole country. Transit is built and run city by city, so the card sold in one city opens nothing in the next, and buying one in advance for a multi-city trip is usually wasted money.
What has replaced that, in the largest systems, is not a better local card but no local card at all. The reader at the gate takes the contactless bank card or phone wallet you already travel with.
New York, as the worked example
The MTA's own guidance is to tap and ride: hold a contactless card, phone or watch to the reader and go. The same card works on the subway and the buses, and a transfer between them is included as part of one journey.
It also caps. Once you have paid for a set number of rides inside a week on the same card, the rest of that week rides free — so the card becomes a weekly pass without you having bought one. The catch is that the cap follows the card, so switching to a different card partway through the week starts the count again.
What to check in any other city
Two questions cover it. Does the gate take a contactless bank card, or does it need the local one? And do fares cap, because a city without a cap will charge you full price eleven times in a day.
Where a local card is still required it is sold at machines inside the station, and a single paper ticket is almost always there as the fallback while you work the rest out.
Good to know
- No national transit card — each city runs its own system
- The largest systems read your own contactless card or phone at the gate
- New York caps a week of fares on one card, so use the same card all week
- Elsewhere, ask whether the gate takes a bank card and whether fares cap
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