New York / Housing guide
What the 2026 MTA Fare Change Means for Your Housing Budget
Homzora editorial team · Updated September 13, 2026
New York no longer has a monthly transit pass. The 30 day unlimited MetroCard was withdrawn in January 2026, along with the 7 day and Express Bus Plus products, and nothing replaced it except an automatic fare cap.
If you are working out what living somewhere costs, that changes the arithmetic. This guide sets out the new structure, what it means for a monthly budget, and who it suits better or worse than the old one.
What actually changed
On 4 January 2026 the base fare for subway, local bus and Access-A-Ride rose from 2.90 to 3.00. Reduced fare went to 1.50, express bus to 7.25, and a single ride ticket to 3.50.
The fare increase is the smaller part of the story. The structural change is that every prepaid unlimited product was retired, and the MetroCard itself phased out entirely. All payment is now tap to ride.
How the fare cap works
Tap the same card or phone for every journey. The first twelve rides in any rolling seven day period are charged at 3.00 each. Every ride after that is free until those seven days elapse.
So the ceiling is 35.00 a week for subway and local bus, or 17.50 for reduced fare riders. Express bus riders have a separate cap of 67.00 covering express bus, local bus and subway together.
Nothing is bought in advance and nothing expires. The seven days roll rather than resetting on a fixed day, which means the cap follows your actual travel rather than a calendar week.
The catch is that it only works if every tap uses the same card or device. Two different payment methods are two separate counts toward the cap.
What it costs over a month
A commuter who hits the cap every week spends 35.00 a week, which across a typical month comes to roughly 150 dollars.
For comparison against the other cities we cover, a monthly pass costs 112.50 in Miami, 95.00 in Atlanta and 75.00 in Chicago. New York is the most expensive, and it is also the only one of the four with no monthly product at all.
That figure belongs in a housing budget rather than beside it. A neighborhood that is two hundred dollars cheaper in rent but adds a daily express bus is not cheaper.
Who this suits better
The change is not uniformly worse, and who benefits depends entirely on how often you travel.
Hybrid and irregular travelers gain. Under the old system a 30 day unlimited pass only paid for itself if you used it enough, and anyone commuting three days a week was often better off paying per ride while wondering whether they had chosen wrong. The cap removes that decision. You pay for what you use, and if you happen to use a lot in one week the ceiling catches you automatically.
Daily commuters are worse off in cash terms, since 35.00 a week is more than the old monthly pass worked out at, and there is no longer an option to prepay at a discount.
Anyone who travelled unpredictably always loses less than under a system requiring a decision in advance. Nothing is wasted now, because nothing is bought.
Putting it in a housing budget
Three things worth doing when comparing addresses.
Count your actual weekly journeys rather than assuming the cap. Someone making eight trips a week spends 24.00, not 35.00. The cap is a ceiling, not a price.
Check whether express bus is involved. At 7.25 a ride with a separate 67.00 cap, an express bus commute is nearly double a subway one. That difference outweighs a good deal of rent variation between neighborhoods.
Add the figure to rent before comparing. Rent plus transit is the number that matters, and it is the one most people never calculate.
We do not publish commute times for New York neighborhoods, because a door to door journey depends on walking distance, waiting, transfers and the hour you travel, none of which we have measured. Make the actual trip before committing to an address.
The bits beyond the subway
Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North weekly and monthly tickets rose 4.5 percent in the same package, and those systems do still sell monthly tickets. NICE buses on Long Island and Bee-Line in Westchester aligned their base fares to 3.00.
If your commute involves commuter rail, the arithmetic is different from what is set out here and worth working out separately.
One figure we are not certain about
Two published news reports give the seven day cap as 36.00 where the MTA own fare change materials state 35.00. We publish the authority figure and record the difference rather than picking whichever reads better.
If a few dollars either way matters to your calculation, check the current figure with the MTA directly.
The short version
No monthly pass exists any more. Twelve rides in any rolling seven days are charged at 3.00 each, everything after that is free, and the ceiling is 35.00 a week. Roughly 150 dollars a month for a regular commuter, which is the most expensive of the cities we cover.
Use the same card or phone every time, count your real journeys rather than assuming the cap, and add the result to rent before comparing neighborhoods.
The full fare schedule is free to download at our New York datasets.
Fare figures are taken from Metropolitan Transportation Authority published materials as of September 2026. Fares change. Verify with the MTA before relying on any figure. Homzora is a housing research platform and is not affiliated with the MTA.