MTA TrainTime Reviews

I don’t trust my mobile device to always have a full battery or to always have access to the internet. Consequently, I generally purchase a paper monthly and that works out. But once in a while my paper monthly doesn’t get me where I need to go. Last week the subway had a major delay to the point where I couldn’t expect an e train out of Jamaica for about 40 minutes. So, jumping back on the LIRR was the best option. I figured I’d start my Etix app, buy a saved ticket on my saved card and be done with it. My train was 2 minutes away. Could have been plenty of time. But oh no, what’s this? I cannot start my app because an update is required. Now I have to download the update over 4G on my iPhone 5C (at the time) Not going to make it in two minutes, I ran to the ticket counter to buy a paper one way.

I’m a technologist. I’ve worked closely with developers. I found that with the proper planning it is very possible to achieve app forward compatibility. Updates are great. They fix bugs. The add or enhance features. But mandatory updates can be wildly inconvenient.

MTA etix is a pretty reliable app. Let’s keep it that way.

Thanks :)

I would give 5 stars but I didn’t want people to thing this review was fake. People I take the train to the city every fricken day, and this is the easiest way to get tickets. I don’t have to wait on a line, and the train workers don’t need to punch my card, i just show them my phone and they nod at me and my ticket. Some people were complaining IT do est process a payment but that only happens when WiFi is low, try again in a couple minutes and it should work fine. It’s only happened to me once and I was able to purchase a ticket in legit the next 2 Minutes. MTATrainTime doesn’t take forever to load, it’s incredibly easy and useful. Seriously people it’s a free app, there’s no advertisements or anything. Just try it a couple times and if it’s not for you then it’s not for you, but seriously MTATrainTime is way better than waiting on line. That’s just my opinion.

Convenience is great with MTATrainTime.
I’m a Uni. Student who has to take the LIRR every four days out of the week. I’ve only bought a paper ticket once and have had no issues with buying or activating tickets, yet. Been using MTATrainTime for about 2 months regularly and it’s great. Especially when I’m just able to catch a train without taking time to buy a ticket at the station. Less chance of misplacing my phone instead of my ticket. Don’t need to fumble my bag for my ticket. I just buy the amount of tickets I need for two weeks and stockpile ‘em for use. Just easier overall. However, I’m not keen on their refund policy for mistakenly ordered/ unused tickets- but the convenience is just too great. Unless there is a major problem, I’ll continue to keep using this time saver of an app.

If you still use the combined Metro-North & MetroCard, then Mail&Ride is the way to go.

Otherwise MTATrainTime gets the job done and has been improving since it launched (being able to use 2 cards to split payment with QTB cards, adding a shortcut to the monthly ticket in the home screen, shortcut to repurchase ticket, etc.)

MTATrainTime is sometimes slow to load, especially if you didn’t see the conductor coming and are rushing to get it opened. It would also be nice for it to Auto-Renew on the first of each month instead of having to go thru all the screens of “Purchase Again”. MTATrainTime should also add Touch ID for the Account Settings, and also combine it with train time, maybe a ticker/departure board on the main page for our origin/destination stations depending on time of day with the track number.

I got MTATrainTime with the intention to use it in my wallet for convenience but I was unable to add it so I called 1 week ago to ask how I can add my monthly ticket to my wallet and the person that was on the phone with me was unable to find out how to add it and said he needed to contact the engineers that work on MTATrainTime because he was unable to figure out how to and said I would get an answer within 2 day. Today (1 week later) I call again to try again but now the lady tells me that it actually does not support wallet nor family sharing. She said you can use Apple Pay to make purchases but can’t put your ticket in your wallet and family share also does not work because the ticket is only valid for 1 person. I reason I got MTATrainTime was because of the wallet but now I will never again use MTATrainTime after my ticket expires. I am incredibly displeased with this false advertisement

I used MTATrainTime to purchase four tickets, and the transaction didn’t seem to go through. I waited for a few minutes and tried a different credit card. But then both credit cards went through! Since I don’t normally travel on LIRR, I tried to cancel the extra set of tickets. It did give you an option, but the cancellation has to be made within 2 mins of purchase, which I thought I was lucky to catch the charge on time and made the cancellation. But then MTA charged me 10 dollars refund fees for each $15 tickets! And apparently there were footnotes at the bottom that says that, but the font was so small and the 2 mins window adds so much stress, I missed that. It’s so extremely unfair since it’s their app malfunctioning, yet I have to pay the price. Extremely disappointed. So be very careful when you make purchase with MTATrainTime !

MTA app is a big step forward, but desperately needs some quick and simple improvements:

- App only keeps ticket active/live for 5-10 minutes, but you need to show tickets multiple times on most trips. Why not keep tickets live for 30 min so you don’t have to reload the ticket multiple times in your trip?

- As noted by others, schedules should be integrated into 1 app. There’s no need to toggle between multiple apps. Favorite trips, notifications and track information should be right at your fingertips.

You might also consider:

- Integrating into Apple Wallet to speed pulling tickets up for conductor.

- Enable location services to automatically activate ticket whenever you are on train line. This would save conductors lots of time as riders open app and wait for MTATrainTime to activate their ticket.

Anyone complaining about MTATrainTime is complaining about something completely irrelevant to the application itself. From what I’ve seen in complaints so far:

1) “No ability to add my paper monthly into MTATrainTime ,” — obviously not, or else you could use your phone and someone else could use the paper ticket
2) “Why are there mandatory auto updates?? This slowed me down!” — Why do you not have auto app updates enabled? Is it the MTAs fault that you don’t? Clearly not.
3) “Ticket prices are ridiculous!”— the prices are no different than the paper tickets... get a grip.

MTATrainTime works as it should and anyone who isn’t incompetent will definitely benefit from the use of it over paper tickets. My only gripe would be that if your phone were to die, then you couldn’t access your tickets. That’s not MTAs fault — maybe if you can’t keep your phone charged all day you shouldn’t be purchasing electronic tickets... or even have a smart phone... either way:

5/5 stars, have never had a problem with MTATrainTime

Idk why the overall rating is so low! MTATrainTime is a blessing. Incredibly user friendly and very convenient for a commuter. I love the feature of the ticket activation because it it lets you use tickets only when you activate them. There is also a benefit of getting refunds within 5 minutes of buying the ticket. If one happens to make an error, they’ll most probably catch the error within minutes and can get a refund. That isn’t possible with paper tickets.
Also, and my most fav reason of all, it’s environment friendly and is a huge step head of the digitization of the MTA.

I can appreciate the development and technology behind this and it's cool but I know better is possible based on other similar apps I've used. MTATrainTime is super unreliable, choppy at times, and has a lot of issues that should really be worked in. Haven't seen anything major change in the couple years I've been using it. The big problem for me is every time I open it, it's super slow (and I have one of the newer iPhones with no issues on other apps). It takes forever to load a ticket and for some reason every time I go to activate a ticket my ticket wallet is magically empty, despite me having probably 60 tickets on file. I have to refresh and wait for several minutes for my tickets to load.

MTATrainTime works most of the time for my needs. I am a monthly ticket buyer and commute via Metro North daily during the work week. When opening MTATrainTime, sometimes it immediately starts right up, and sometimes it’s about 10 minutes of closing and reopening, restarting my phone, etc to get MTATrainTime to do anything but be a blank, blue square. The conductors don’t care if MTATrainTime isn’t working, they still want you to show a ticket. When there are outages, they expect you to purchase a paper ticket, despite already having purchased one digitally. Super annoying, and seems very common. Not sure if it’s a network thing or an app thing, but a solution is needed, whatever it may be.

I was reluctant to use MTATrainTime because of other reviews about the slow ticket loading and other problems. Yesterday I gave it a try because I didn’t want to carry around paper ticket. I purchased my usual 10 trip ticket with iPhone XS Max, had no difficulty. I activated my ticket as we departed train station. The ticket screen was easy to get back to after I switched to another app or after turning off my phone. I did not appear to have problems getting to ticket screen with poor/no internet connection. I will not be going back to paper ticket anymore.

The overall use of MTATrainTime is OK for buying tickets, but it is very annoying to both riders and ticket takers that MTATrainTime is very slow to load and slow to display your ticket, especially for monthly ticket holders. Also, if I switch from MTATrainTime to another and back within just a minute I’m usually forced to reload my ticket again, which can take about 20-30 seconds again that’s very annoying as a user and to the ticket takers.
It shouldn’t take so long to load a ticket and it should not have to be 3 steps to get to a ticket for monthly ticket holders. Monthly tickets should be the first thing that appears when MTATrainTime loads along with the option to access a menu - not the other way around.

MTATrainTime randomly decides not to accept your card anymore. I’ve gone through 3 cards that it no longer accepts. The same 3 cards that the train conductor had no problem using to give me a more expensive ticket. The amount of money in step up fees MTATrainTime has cost me because of its problems is ridiculous. What’s more ridiculous is that even though MTATrainTime says the payment can’t be processed, it’s still pending in your account. When you contact the lirr, they say the problems with your bank. The bank says the problems with the lirr. After this many unaffiliated cards being declined, the problems definitely with the lirr. At $5 more for an on train ticket purchase, this will quickly become the most expensive app you’ve ever downloaded. Don’t use it.

This is what happens when a train company decides to make an app instead of hiring the right programmers or paying some smart consultants.
MTATrainTime is buggy. I won’t get into all of it. You can read all the bugs in others reviews. My biggest peeve is MTATrainTime cannot remember my I.D and password. Which makes me wonder if it is stored secured. My password are not simple so it’s a chore to find it and plug it in.
Simple feature. Remember my password. Can’t do it.
Also as others noted. This isn’t a wallet. A wallet stores your purchases without any internet connection. Nope MTATrainTime needs internet all the time to lookup our purchase which makes it slow an sometimes fail to find your purchase. Great for those monthly’s.

The only time I try to use MTATrainTime is when I forget or don’t have time to buy a ticket at a machine. However, there is a bug where it cannot connect to the internet over LTE so it’s very impractical for me.

I bought a monthly once on MTATrainTime (over wifi) and it will let you show your tickets offline for a time. But you need to remember to “sync wallet” every week or two. If you don’t, then it won’t show your ticket and you can’t sync over LTE. This happened to me and I had to pay the step-up fair even though I pay $400 for a monthly and I showed the email receipt to the conductor.

Please fix this bug. I have an IPhone 7, I’m not sure if this is an issue for other phones.

I purchased a monthly ticket then had issues with my phone. It turns out I was hacked and as a result it appeared that, according to the powers that be at the ticket center, I “had transferred tickets to too many devices too many times”. Naturally, I called the number for assistance and was informed they would let me “go” this time but have placed the incident in my “file” and will not authorize another transfer for me for 6 months.
I had to go to the apple store to fix my phone and it had to be reset to factory Condition. Guess what happened next? That’s right. I’m out $449 and now have to buy weekly tickets to get to work. Almost $500 in metro north’s pocket plus $200 a week in tickets.
Paper monthly tickets fro here on out. I’m done

There was absolutely zero investment made in the user experience for MTATrainTime. The fact that there is a ticking clock for when you want to use a ticket, in comparison to when you buy one in person and it doesn’t expire for weeks shows that profits were at the forefront for MTATrainTime.

Why are there two apps in the first place for train times and ticket purchasing? This is such a great opportunity to develop an app for the public to make the process of ticket purchasing much more accessible, available, and simply easier. If you want a bang for your buck don’t waste your time with MTATrainTime, just buy a ticket in person instead.

Bought a round trip ticket from penn station to Mets-Willets Point. Activated ticket just before boarding train in Penn Station but ticket wasn’t checked until I got off at willets point. When I pulled up MTATrainTime to show attendant my ticket at the gate check, it was gone. Only the return ticket was available in MTATrainTime and the attendant wouldn’t let me proceed until I activated the return ticket, which expired a short time later. I ended up having to buy another one way ticket to return to penn station. App design not consistent with the methodology of LLIR staff (checking ticket after the ride is over and the electronic ticket disappears). A paper ticket works better.

My account was disabled because they want you to activate the mobile tickets before you get on the train. But if I had a physical ticket it wouldn’t get punched until an agent came by and asked for it. Sometimes I ride the train and don’t see an agent come for my ticket, leaving me with a valid ticket for future use. My account also was not restored in time for me to use the other tickets I purchased on MTATrainTime so I had to purchase physical tickets. I’m also curious on how MTATrainTime could tell the ticket was activated on the train when MTATrainTime doesn’t ask for location permissions. After I can use the rest of my tickets I will o longer be using MTATrainTime .

I love the convenience of MTATrainTime and the fact that I no longer need to wait for a ticket machine to be available at Penn; I can just buy my monthly pass at home at my convenience. Or any other kind of ticket. And I can use it for both the LIRR and Metro North.

That being said please fix the Touch ID function. MTATrainTime always asks if I want to save my details in order to login with Touch ID and yet the next time I login I have to enter my password and and am asked the same question again. Doesn’t work.

The application opens for more than a minute on iPhone 6.0!! All I need it to do it just open fast and show my monthly ticket! And ticket must be in first screen full size!

Instead it is opening sooooo slooow!! It is trying to connect to some network, receive some stupid updates I never care, do something else I never asked it to do. Why is it to complicated to just open the picture, fast, and save my time - I don’t need to click open more time, I already have MONTHLY ticket and all I need to do is to show it! Please make my life easier and do not make me loose four hour of my life every year just waiting for MTATrainTime to open!