{"id":15741,"date":"2025-10-25T01:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15741\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T01:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:26:10","slug":"nyc-subway-ridership-reaches-post-pandemic-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15741\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC subway ridership reaches post-pandemic high"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New York City subway system carried 4.56 million riders on Thursday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/zYVWX-SdVKM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">transit officials said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBusiest day on the subway since the onset of COVID,\u201d MTA Chairman Janno Lieber told reporters Friday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a big day when we hit these new records,\u201d Lieber said. \u201cBringing people back to transit has been the mission of a lifetime, because we knew how much it was connected to the revival of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thursday\u2019s numbers indicate the subway is nearly back to its ridership levels from right before the lockdown: The last time subway ridership was higher was March 1, 2020, when the seven-day rolling average was 4.57 million riders per day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith significant progress in safety and reliability this year, it\u2019s no surprise that we are breaking yet another ridership record on the subway,\u201d Gov. Hochul said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"The Atlantic Avenue - Barclays Center subway station in Brooklyn is pictured on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)\" width=\"9504\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/TNY-P15-20251016-104649.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"8558587\" \/>The Atlantic Avenue &#8211; Barclays Center subway station in Brooklyn is pictured on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n<p>But ridership still lags behind 2019 numbers, when it was not uncommon to have more than 5 million daily straphangers riding the rails.<\/p>\n<p>Ridership plummeted during the initial outbreak of COVID, as New Yorkers sheltered in their homes and the MTA ended 24-hour subway service to better facilitate cleaning.<\/p>\n<p>Round-the-clock subway service resumed in May 2021, but the agency initially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2023\/03\/17\/nyc-subway-ridership-reaches-post-pandemic-record-with-394-million-riders-on-thursday\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">struggled<\/a> to regain pre-COVID ridership as many New Yorkers continued to work remotely.<\/p>\n<p>Ridership benchmarks have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2023\/03\/17\/nyc-subway-ridership-reaches-post-pandemic-record-with-394-million-riders-on-thursday\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trending upward recently<\/a>, though, with the system reaching its billionth annual ride earlier each successive year.<\/p>\n<p>The billionth rider of 2025 \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2025\/10\/14\/mta-celebrates-billionth-subway-rider-of-2025-as-pandemic-bounce-back-continues\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a young Brooklynite on his way to the Rockaways<\/a> to surf during a nor\u2019easter \u2014 was celebrated last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York City subway system carried 4.56 million riders on Thursday, transit officials said. \u201cBusiest day on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[85,267,9,24,264,10,12,56,63,65,64,608],"class_list":{"0":"post-15741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-county","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-headlines","18":"tag-nyc-news","19":"tag-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}