“MetroCards are like money,” said Karen Burnett, a cashier who was overseeing an order of seven-day unlimited cards. In a run of 5,000 cards, worth $34 each, that’s $170,000 of product, destined for a network of bodegas, newsstands and small retailers, who sell them to commuters.
During the MetroCard’s heyday, two shifts of workers encoded cards 16 hours a day, producing 180 million a year. In 2013, after the M.T.A. began to charge riders a $1 fee for new cards, production fell nearly by half.
