City Council takes steps to improve cumbersome Fair Fares enrollment process

Riders rallying on the steps of City Hall for improvements to the Fair Fares program with NYC Council Members Crystal Hudson, Shaun Abreu, and Council Speaker Julie Menin, May 2026

Right now, even though more than 1.3 million New Yorkers are eligible for half-price bus and subway rides through the Fair Fares program, only around 380,000 are currently enrolled. Despite spending millions on advertisement, general awareness and enrollment amongst eligible riders has remained relatively low since the program began in 2019.

Now, thanks to City Council legislation sponsored by Council Member Crystal Hudson and championed by Speaker Julie Menin, current recipients of SNAP and other city-administered benefit programs will be able to opt-in to apply (or reapply) for Fair Fares based on the information they’ve already submitted to HRA. The bill also orders the Commissioner of Social Services to work with state agencies to establish a system to identify and notify other eligible New Yorkers that the city may not be aware of. By eliminating the bureaucratic hurdles of the current process, like requiring annual application submissions to remain enrolled, the City Council has taken a major step towards getting discounted OMNY cards into the hands of every eligible New Yorker.

Along with the most recent increase to the program’s income eligibility threshold to 200% of the federal poverty level, this marks another major step towards eliminating unaffordable transit as a barrier for working New Yorkers. But there’s still more to that can be done to expand the reach and potential of the Fair Fares program: further increasing the income limits to reflect the actual cost of living in New York, using Fair Fares as a vehicle to deliver free transit to New Yorkers, and utilizing the vast networks of city and state data to create a truly automatic enrollment process.

You can check to see if you qualify and learn how to apply for Fair Fares here.