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Article snippet: Nickel by nickel, dollar by dollar, token by token, billions in cash moved through bus fareboxes, subway turnstiles and station booths over the last century. All that currency was handled by station agents who worked in armored kiosks around the clock, 365 days a year, part of a vast circuit of money that was broken with the introduction of the MetroCard in 1997. Today, more than 83 percent of fares are sold by machines. Despite dwindling tasks and urgent needs for workers elsewhere, New York City Transit still employs 2,660 agents to stand vigil in booths, at an annual cost in wages and benefits of $298.6 million. Their continued presence is welcomed by many riders, and laws limit changes to staffing of stations. But even as their original duties have shrunk, agents — once familiarly known as token clerks — have been assigned few significant new responsibilities for helping passengers get where they are going. Nearly all other major transit systems in the world have long since redeployed their ticket-sellers, but New York remains lodged in an archaic labor-management permafrost that poorly serves the public and creates insecurity for the workers. Now, with the elimination of their remaining cash duties expected after a new fare system is introduced in the coming years, both management and the main transit union agree that the agents need to become more useful. It’s not that there is any shortage of badly needed work, but most of it cannot be done behind the five... Link to the full article to read more