The single most useful thing a first-time visitor can do in New York is stop hailing cabs. In daytime Manhattan traffic the subway is faster, costs a fraction as much, and reaches places a taxi will quietly refuse to go.
The system looks intimidating and mostly isn’t. Trains run uptown and downtown; express trains skip stops, locals take them all. Tap a contactless card or phone straight onto the OMNY reader — no paper ticket, no fumbling — and after a week of rides the fare caps, so the rest of the week is effectively free.
The one rule that matters
Know whether you want uptown or downtown before you reach the turnstile, because at many stations the two directions have separate entrances on opposite sides of the street. Guess wrong and you pay again to cross. Everything else you can learn on the way.
