A Naked Card and an Old Subway Car

I stumbled upon this article on the web last night called “The MTA Exposed!” It was written by a self-described “hobbyist” who has apparently committed himself to decoding the MetroCard and, though it is still a “work-in-progress,” writing his own (free) electronic ticket. Despite the exciting title, the author’s investigative efforts hadn’t uncovered anything particularly incriminating about the MTA, though he was able to glean an impressive amount of information about MetroCard code using just some receipts and an old tape recorder.

I mention the hobbyist and his website because I found, at the bottom of the page, the above photograph. Here you can actually see the data tracks on the MetroCard, thanks to some magnetic developer fluid (the fluid makes data recorded on tape or other magnetic material visible to the naked eye). The top strip contains tracks one and two, where information about your card's expiration date, remaining fare, etc. is stored. The bottom strip is track three, and is encoded with the card's serial number.

In other news, I visited the Transit Museum today in my own investigative effort, and recommend a field trip if you are in the area. There are a lot of very cool artifacts, including a display of old turnstiles going back all the way to the original, pre-automated ticket-chopper machine used when the subway first opened in 1904. At one point, before World War II, the turnstiles were wooden, which suggested to me a time (probably fictional) when things were more beautiful and more natural, and made with more care than they are now. I hate feeling nostalgic for times I never experienced—whenever it happens, I try to walk around imagining the present through the soft-focus, simplifying lens of time. I imagine someone standing in the Transit Museum fifty years from now, marveling at the old stainless steel turnstile, wishing she could have lived in a time when commonplace things were made out of natural materials rather than thick antibacterial plastic. And it works, kind of.

The Transit Museum is located in an old subway station, and you can go down to the tracks and walk through some of the antique cars. On a day like today, there isn’t much traffic through there, and the old upholstered seats in car R10 are a good place to sit and think.