Station clerks started a new role on Thursday that requires them to walk around and assist the public instead of being closed off in booths.
For as long as the New York City subway has existed, thousands of station workers have been largely confined around the clock to cramped booths where, in recent years, they have had less and less to do.
But starting Thursday, 20 years after the subway stopped using tokens, the transit workers who staff what many New Yorkers still call token booths have finally been set free.
The roughly 2,300 station agents have begun a new role, walking around stations to help riders navigate the sprawling transit system and utilize OMNY, the fully digital tap-and-go payment screens that are replacing swipe readers for the yellow-and-blue MetroCard.
For many New Yorkers, the token agent role was seen as increasingly obsolete; yet it had survived because of powerful unions that fought to protect the workers’ jobs. Subway users may have wondered what it was, exactly, that transit workers did from their 8-by-12-foot enclosures.
Some agents have welcomed spending more time outside the booth, saying it enables them to assist riders more easily. “It’s something innovative they’re trying to implement, a little bit more personal touch with the customers,” said Keith Frett, 59, a station agent for three years.
The subway’s 450 booths, which are made from sheet metal, heavy glass and aluminum trim, will remain available to workers in stations “for communications and to sit from time to time,” a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. The use of booths was introduced at the inception of the subway in 1904, along with the job of clerks hired to work inside of them.
Other agents said the change would not affect their day-to-day job much, since they were already helping riders from inside the booth and could walk out at their leisure. But the change is likely to mean that they will have more direct interactions.
“It kind of tugs at the heartstrings to try to help,” said Mohammed Tushar, 34, a station agent for about five years. Mr. Tushar had just swapped a cellphone back and forth with a woman who was using a translation app to ask him for directions in Spanish.
But some station agents said they were apprehensive about emerging from the booths because they have the same worries about safety as some passengers.
Cassandra Allison, from Brooklyn and a station agent for five years who sometimes works overnight shifts, said she has had to deal with a number of undesirable situations, including getting unwanted romantic advances from passengers. “Usually going later into the evening, that’s when a lot of concern comes,” she said. “Some of the things I see,” she added, trailing off.
Richard Davey, president of New York City Transit, the division of the M.T.A. that runs the city’s subway and buses, said the change was meant to boost passenger satisfaction while putting workers to good use. He said station agents will be no more in danger than cleaning staff who regularly walk around stations and interact with customers, and they will be given phones to report emergencies.
“We’re changing with the times,” Mr. Davey said. “Hopefully New Yorkers will see that we’re doing everything within our control to improve their experience on our system.”
Maria Vernaza, the woman who Mr. Tushar helped on Thursday, said she was glad to see agents out of the booth because sometimes it can be difficult to get their attention from the other side of the booths’ thick glass walls, especially because she does not speak English.
“It’s better to have more contact with them,” Ms. Vernaza, 62, from Queens, said in Spanish.“They’re more helpful now,” Ms. Vernaza added.
Besides showing riders how to get around and pay their fare, station agents will also assist older riders and people with disabilities and will report any problems at stations, such as litter and broken signs. But there are limitations to what they can do, Mr. Davey said. For instance, they will not be asked to clean facilities, lift heavy objects or personally intervene if they witness a possible crime.
But, the hope is that the more visible presence of station agents may also make riders feel safer. Their new role comes after officials have deployed more police officers in the subway, installed cameras in train cars and increased efforts to remove homeless people who shelter in the system.
When transit leaders banned cash transactions at the start of the pandemic, booth agents lost one of the final ties to their original purpose. Officials did not say how many clerks were employed by the M.T.A. at the height of their utility, but noted that the number has diminished after some booths were unstaffed as recently as 2004 and in 2009. Nearly all other major transit systems in the world redeployed ticket sellers long ago.
The station agents earn a starting salary of about $25 per hour, which climbs to $35 per hour after five years. “These jobs were under a very real threat,” Robert Kelley, a vice president with Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which represents the former booth workers, said in a statement. “We agreed to bring station agents out of booths to protect their employment and maintain their ability to take care of their families.”
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