NYC subway ridership hits new milestone, but still far short of pre-pandemic levels

New York City subway ridership is hitting new milestones as it inches toward pre-pandemic familiarity, but MTA data shows there are still at least 1 million fewer daily entries at turnstiles than there were five years ago.

The subway has on five days this fall carried more than 4.3 million paid riders, a benchmark not seen since the city shut down in March 2020 as it became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s about 75% of the roughly 5.7 million who rode the subway on comparable weekdays in 2019, according to data published by the agency.

MTA Chair Janno Lieber said at a news conference on Monday that the data is still a sign of progress, both for the subway and city at large.

Daily subway ridership dipped below 500,000 during the spring of 2020, imperiling the finances of the transit agency, which relies largely on fares to balance its books. By the time COVID vaccines rolled out in 2021, the subways carried just 2 million riders per day — less than half of the typical pre-pandemic ridership on weekdays

“We took a bet that New York was coming back, that New York depended on transit," Lieber said. "Never bet against New York. I think that’s the punchline that I would deliver when you’re talking about the rising ridership."

Daily subway ridership in 2023 surpassed 4 million on 39 different days. With just over two months left in 2024, the subway has already carried more than 4 million daily riders on 38 different days so far this year.

Experts say the normalization of remote and hybrid work since the pandemic is an obvious reason why ridership hasn’t rebounded completely. Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City, which advocates for the city’s private sector, said keeping the subways safe and clean is also key to attracting more riders.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have deployed NYPD officers and National Guard soldiers into the subway system over the last two years to crack down on transit crime, which increased following the pandemic.

Wylde said “police in the subways has created an impression of greater safety” that could be coaxing more people back onto trains. She argued that even more riders would have returned had Hochul not paused congestion pricing in June. MTA officials believed the Manhattan tolls would have pushed commuters out of cars and into public transit.

“It’s not simply return to office, people have to feel the subway is safe, and [the MTA] has to tackle the fare evasion issue,” said Wylde. “Cleanliness issues also come up. People want to feel like they’ve got a reliable, clean, modern transportation system if they’re regular users. And we were hoping the real test would have been had we implemented congestion pricing, which was going to drive more people onto the subway.”

The rebound of subway ridership is in roughly line with a projection by the consultancy McKinsey that the MTA commissioned in 2022. The group’s midpoint estimate said subway ridership would grow to 80% of pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2026 if there is a “continued return to the office, a return of non-work trips and consumer mode shift back to transit.”

Wylde said that projection is plausible if Hochul allows a version of congestion pricing to launch and tourism continues to rebound.

Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who studies remote work habits, said more riders would return to the subways and commute to work more frequently if the system were more reliable.

“At this point, growth in ridership is going to really have to come from improved service, better quality, improved safety,” he said. “Back to work’s kind of stalled out.”

According to research by Bloom, commuting in general has decreased across the country since the pandemic, but the number of “super commuters,” or people who travel more than 50 miles to work, has grown.