If you ride the bus, you should be prepared to present your OMNY card, credit card or phone to members of the MTA’s civilian Eagle Teams, who will use a small device called a payment validator to see if you paid.
“With the growing use of the new tap-and-ride fare system, Eagle Team members began to verify taps with handheld mobile tools known as onboard validation devices,” New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said recently. “We’ll call them OVDs, for short, on the SBS service.”
At first, the Eagle Teams just watched whether people paid the fare and wrote tickets, but couldn’t verify payment via MetroCard…