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 the average ridership for that month during the pre-pandemic period from 2017 to 2019. Ridership reached 71 percent of pre-pandemic levels in February 2024, then fluctuated below that level until September 2024 when it reached 73.5 percent. Ridership has not dropped below 70 percent since then and has hovered around 73 percent of pre-pandemic levels in most months, rising to more than 75 percent in April 2025, which held into the summer months.

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. Since September 2024, many stations in the Bronx, Upper Manhattan and outer Brooklyn have been lagging behind, while stations in the downtown areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn helped to fuel the recovery. 

Most and Least Recovered Stations

Note: Least recovered stations exclude those closed for station and track work. These included the 181st Street stop (1 line) from January 2021 to October 2021, the Clark Street stop (2, 3 lines) from December 2021 to April 2022 and A line stops at Beach 25th Street, Beach 44th Street, Beach 90th Street, Beach 98th Street, Broad Channel and Rockaway Park-Beach 116th Street from February 2025 to April 2025.

The accompanying interactive map shows the recent history of ridership at 424 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 Metropolitan Transportation Authority (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. 

Station and Citywide Ridership Trends

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

Sources: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis

As of September 2024, at least one-half of the 20 largest station hubs across the City had reached sustained ridership recovery levels of at least 70 percent, lending to the same result for the citywide recovery rate. Notably, the average recovery rate of the three large outer borough hubs — Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Av/74th Street-Broadway and Flushing-Main Street in Queens, and Atlantic Av-Barclays Center in Brooklyn — were among the top five recovered station hubs. 

By March of 2026, almost 13 of the 20 station hubs had ridership recovery levels that were higher than citywide. Among the seven hubs that were below the City average, three were located in Lower Manhattan (14 Street/Union Square, Fulton Street, and Chambers Street/World Trade Center/Park Place), three were in Midtown (34th Street-Penn Station (1, 2, 3 lines) and 34 Street-Herald Square and Times Square-42nd Street/Port Authority), and one was north of 57th Street (Lexington Avenue/59th Street). 

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 65.7 percent and 71 percent of pre-pandemic ridership though August 2024, then between 72.3 percent and 80.7 percent since then to March 2026. 

The MTA anticipates that ridership will reach 78 percent of 2019 levels in 2026 and stay at about that level through 2029. 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. 

Data Note: The monthly baseline ridership for each station is measured as the average number of station entries for the respective month for the period February 2017 through December 2019, adjusted to exclude extended closures due to construction work where relevant. Citywide baseline ridership for each month is the aggregate of all station baseline ridership for that month. As of February 2026, ridership recovery analysis is based on Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s databases of hourly ridership per station. Data for Staten Island Railway and for Roosevelt Island tram trips are excluded.

Data Source: Metropolitan Transportation Authority; OSC analysis. Data as of 2025: https://data.ny.gov/Transportation/MTA-Subway-Hourly-Ridership-Beginning-2025/5wq4-mkjj/about_data; Data for 2020 to 2024: https://data.ny.gov/Transportation/MTA-Subway-Hourly-Ridership-2020-2024/wujg-7c2s.