Subway token booths have long been one of NYC's premiere spots for underground workers to catch some zzz's or grab a handful of eeew's, but those days may be coming to an end (yet again). MTA chairman Thomas Prendergast says he's serious about moving remaining subway token booth clerks out of the booths.
"What we’re trying to do is move to a day where we are actually utilizing our employes in ways that are rewarding for them...but also provide a more needed service for us in the form of a customer service agent that would be able to be out and about in the station," Prendergast said during a state Senate committee hearing on authority finances, according to the News.
Of course, the MTA started getting rid of token booth clerks back in the mid-00s, when they turned 600 workers into "station agents" (spending about $2.5 million alone on changing the uniforms). But hundreds of those clerks were laid off in 2009 because of the recession, and the program to convert booths into "kiosks" lost funding.
But with a new capital plan in place—one which will begin to phase out the Metrocard in favor of a new form of "fare payment technology" over the next decade—Prendergast seems confident that now is the time to push out the booths: "We can all understand and agree, a visible presence of someone on the platform observing and seeing something going on and reporting on it is of value to the system, and that’s the direction in which we’d like to move," Prendergast said.
The News adds: "There were 3,303 token booth clerks a decade ago. There are 2,600 now. There will be far fewer in 2025." The MTA's debt is also currently greater than that of at least 30 of the world's nations, so, there are a lot of factors involved. But we certainly wouldn't be against full-on concierge-type service, especially if workers were outfitted with peppermint pocket candies or binaca spritzers.
