UPDATE On Roosevelt Island Tram OMNY Payment System Installation - Mixed Signals From RIOC And The MTA About Installation Date, Could Be As Soon As June Or End Of The Year

As reported last February 8:

... Roosevelt Island has been waiting for the MTA OMNY payment system to be installed at the Roosevelt Island Tram stations as far back as 2020....

and the Bring OMNY to the Roosevelt Island Tram Online petition has 1404 signatures (1421 as of today).

During the April 3, 2023 Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Board of Directors meeting, RIOC President Shelton Haynes reported being told by the MTA that the OMNY payment system installation for the Roosevelt Island Tram has been delayed until the late 2nd quarter of this year.

This is actually good news if true because:

... During the February 6, 2023 NY State Senate Joint Public Hearing on the 2023-24 Executive Budget Proposal, Roosevelt Island's NY State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright asked MTA Chair Janno Lieber:

The Roosevelt Island Tramway still continues to lack OMNY. Can you tell us why this has been delayed and when you expect it to be installed so that our Roosevelt Island residents and visitors can benefit from this service?

Mr Janno replied: 

The answer is it's projected to happen in the second half of this year... ... We didn't have software in some of the specialty locations like Roosevelt Island Tram, the Air Train in Jamaica Station and a few other places. The software has to catch up and we are working on it but that right now the projection it's going to be the second half of this year....

After the RIOC Board meeting, I asked a representative of Roosevelt Island's NY State Senator Liz Krueger's office:

Shelton said during his President’s report tonight that OMNY will be installed at the Tram Station by end of the 2nd quarter this year. 

At the end of the meeting I asked him if I heard him correctly and he confirmed that he said OMNY will be installed by end of 2nd quarter. I told him that my understanding was MTA says it will be installed by the end of the year. Shelton says he talks to the MTA almost weekly and he was told by end of 2nd quarter. 

Has your office heard anything new about timing of OMNY installation for the tram.

After speaking with the MTA, Ms Kreuger's representative replied:

We are HAPPY  to confirm the date has been moved up from the end of the year!

On April 10, I asked the MTA to confirm OMNY installation on the Roosevelt Island Tram by August June 2023, the end of the 2nd quarter and received a mixed signal that did not confirm the earlier date. 

According to the MTA spokesperson:

In October, the MTA Capital Program Committee updated the OMNY forecast for substantial completion to Q2 2025. The MTA is currently engaged with the vendor in a scheduling re-baselining process on the OMNY project.

The MTA is building out OMNY functionality for New York City Transit first, before addressing other agencies, including AirTrain and the Roosevelt Island Tram; we plan on integrating the Roosevelt Island tram with OMNY before the end of 2023.

OMNY continues to grow as New Yorkers tap and enter the transit system in record numbers – with 2 million taps in one day recorded this month. Commuter railroad customers already have the benefit of mobile ticketing and contactless payment through the extraordinarily popular TrainTime App, which has seen 1.5 million users purchase over 24 million tickets since its launch in August and has a 4.9 star rating on the App Store.

  The NY Post reported:

In that vein of slip-slip-slip:
- The timeline for getting the Roosevelt Island Tram onto OMNY is now before the end of 2023 instead of the second half of 2023;
- It'll be the first non-MTA agency, so the JFK AirTrain now looks to be 2024 at the earliest.

— Nolan Hicks (@ndhapple) March 29, 2023

One resident says there is a silver lining in not having OMNY on the Tram yet:

Not having a OMNY scanner is actually the best thing it can happen to RI residents as it allows us to cut the long line of people looking to purchase tickets and go straight to the tram.

Here's a bit of Roosevelt Island OMNY history. Former RIOC Chief Financial Officer spoke to Manhattan Community Board 8 in September 2021 about efforts to get the OMNY system installed at the Roosevelt Island Tram  

 

and during a June 8, 2022 RIOC audit committee meeting (at 7 minute mark), CFO O'Reilly reported that RIOC receives only $2.00 of the $2.75 Roosevelt Island Tram fare.