The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound and disparate impact on subway ridership in New York City. Initially, the emergence of the virus in March and April 2020 corresponded with a steep and uniform drop in subway usage across all five boroughs. Citywide, April 2020 ridership was just 8.3 percent of what it was in April 2019, and through the summer of 2024 ridership has yet to regularly surpass 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The early stages of the recovery were marked by great disparities between parts of the City where ridership returned more quickly and parts where it did not. As demonstrated by OSDC’s archived subway recovery tracker, ridership through early 2022 remained much higher (as a percentage of pre-COVID levels) in lower-income neighborhoods than it did in wealthier ones.

More recent recovery patterns are different and correlation with neighborhood income disparities has become markedly less pronounced. Currently, many stations in the Bronx and central Brooklyn are lagging behind, while much of Queens, lower Manhattan, and western Brooklyn are fueling the recovery.

Most and Least Recovered Stations

Note: Least recovered stations exclude those closed for station and track work. As of February 2025, these included A line stops at Beach 25 Street, Beach 44 Street, Beach 90 Street, Beach 98 Street, Broad Channel and Rockaway Park-Beach 116 Street

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

However, ridership recovery systemwide has slowed through 2024, and is in danger of falling behind the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) budgeted projections. The accompanying interactive map shows the recent history of ridership at 423 stations identified in the dataset. Select a station on the map to view its ridership recovery as a share of pre-pandemic levels and to compare it to the system’s recovery as a whole.

Station Ridership Citywide

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

For the first two years following the pandemic, subway turnstile data published by the MTA showed a strong correlation between neighborhood median household income and subway ridership. Residents of higher-income neighborhoods were more likely to be employed in sectors that were more easily adaptable to remote work models, such as financial activities or business services. Ridership in these neighborhoods — and particularly at the major hubs in the City’s Central Business District — is also more dependent upon business, tourism, and commuters. In neighborhoods where residents were more likely to continue using the subway throughout the pandemic, common areas of employment are the health care and social assistance sector, as well as the leisure and hospitality sector.

As the recovery continued, this correlation became weaker, and by 2022 it was replaced by a more geographic relationship, as ridership recovery at major hubs in Manhattan neighborhoods failed to keep pace with recovery among outer borough stations. This trend continued until the spring of 2023, when significant improvement at a number of Manhattan hubs began to reach closer to citywide ridership recovery rates.

However, in mid-2023, the MTA altered the way it reports ridership at the individual station level. While the new system does include useful information on the share of rides paid for through the new OMNY system (whereby riders can simply tap a credit or debit card at the turnstile rather than purchase a pre-loaded MetroCard), the new data format is not comparable to the old data format and does not include any reporting from the first two years of the pandemic.

OMNY Share of Station Ridership

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

This new data shows that ridership has remained mostly flat over the past year with some seasonal fluctuation. Citywide, ridership hit 68.5 percent of pre-pandemic levels in May 2023, a number that it matched again in November but did not surpass until it hit 69.5 percent in February 2024, and then again in May 2024 when it reached 69.8 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Station and Citywide Ridership Trends

Note: Some stations may show zero (or near-zero) ridership in months of when they were closed for refurbishment or track work.

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

Among the 18 largest station hubs in the City, 11 were above the citywide recovery rate of 65.9 percent in August 2024. Large outer borough hubs have fared better, with 74th Street/Jackson Heights and Flushing/Main Street in Queens ranking among the top three hubs citywide for most months through August 2024. Of the two main commuter hubs, Grand Central/42nd Street also recorded better ridership recovery (70.9 percent of pre-pandemic ridership) while 34th Street/Penn Station (65.1 percent) was more in line with citywide levels. Four Manhattan hubs (Chambers Street/World Trade Center/Park Place, 34th Street/Herald Square, and the 53rd Street and 59th Street stations along Lexington Avenue) remain significantly below citywide levels. However, by and large, many stations in midtown and lower Manhattan have seen recovery rates continue to rise. Much of Queens and western Brooklyn are also showing significant recovery while many Bronx and central Brooklyn stations lag behind citywide levels.

Ridership at Largest Hub Stations

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

Overall, subway ridership recovery citywide has remained fairly stable since May 2023, fluctuating between a low of 68.6 percent of pre-pandemic ridership and a high of 73.6 percent. The MTA anticipates that ridership will reach 77 percent of 2019 levels by 2028. Ridership levels are currently close to these projections, but returns will need to improve at both major midtown hubs and certain smaller outlying stations for the MTA to reach the farebox recovery rates included in the later years of its financial plan. One key may be improved OMNY adoption at outlying stations (which appear to lag behind OMNY usage at the central hubs) as the MTA implements its plan to phase out MetroCards by the end of 2025.

Data Note: Ridership is measured by numbers of station exits. Baseline ridership data is the average number of exits for the respective month for the period 2015 through 2019, adjusted to exclude for extended closures due to construction work where relevant.

Data Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC Analysis