NYCTIP. I wish I could offer lots of great advice regarding the upcoming MTA subway/bus discounts, but my head starts to spin when I look over the offerings and notice their peculiarities. Leave it to the MTA to offer a straphanger "gift" with so many complications! Making things worse are the MTA's shockingly Santa-centric online advisories, which can be as hard to understand as those garbled announcements reverberating through the subway system.

So my advisement is to look over the MTA Bonus Program yourself and feel free to share your insights and suggestions with the rest of us.

For instance, I'm pretty sure that normal single-ride tickets will be automatically recognized as half-fare on the following dates only:

November 24-27 (four-day weekend)
December 3-4 (two-day weekend)
December 10-11 (two-day weekend)
December 17-18 (two-day weekend)
December 24-January 2 (end-of-year holiday week)

Regarding the normal Unlimited Ride MetroCard, if you want to get bonus days, you should make sure you use the card for the first time during the special bonus period, between Thanksgiving, November 24 and January 2, 2006.

As for the $76/41 day Holiday Unlimited MetroCard, the MTA started off saying that it was good for 40 days, but now it seems that the ticket will be good for 41 days because it will last from November 23 through January 2 instead of January 1, which is the date pre-printed on the card. (That's one of those complicating peculiarities.) Anyway, you'll need $76 in cash to buy the Holiday Unlimited MetroCard, which will only be available at booths from November 17 through November 29 at the latest, because the quantity is limited.

Do you feel the MTA love?

Photo of newish hybrid MTA bus: David Marc Fischer