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There’s an article that does a better job describing it written when the guy who ran the operation retired.

https://www.curbed.com/2021/04/al-putre-mta-money-room.html

Basically the money train was a dinosaur with operational issues. They moved to armored cars. My guess is that the transition reduced the number of station agents required and reduced shrink, but increased NYPD overtime. (MTA lost the transit police in the 90s)

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I think this explains why:

> Once the MetroCard vending machines came into the picture, it took a lot longer to collect all the money from a given station than it had from just the token booths, and the money train would sit for long stretches as passenger trains backed up behind it. Also, you can’t do money-collection runs at night if you’re doing track maintenance, and these days the MTA is always doing track maintenance.

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