THE LAST SUBWAY TOKEN

For 50 years, a brass token made the New York City subway turnstile move. The token arrived in 1953, when the fare rose to 15 cents. Its shape and value changed, but the hand-to-slot ritual stayed familiar. 1

MetroCard entered service in 1994 and gradually replaced the work of carrying, selling, collecting, and counting metal. Token sales ended on April 12, 2003. Just after midnight on May 4, subway turnstiles stopped accepting them; bus fare boxes continued through the end of that year. 23 The MTA's later history confirms the same boundary: subway acceptance ended in May, while bus acceptance ended in December. 4

This video is an AI-rendered reconstruction. The token's appearance was referenced from the New York Transit Museum's historic token image and the period token photograph reproduced by WNYC in the report cited above.