The city is slowly but surely getting closer to pre-pandemic ways of life, and that includes the NYC subway.
The MTA recently announced that on Friday, March 12 daily subway ridership hit 1,912,774 total trips, beating the Thursday total of 1,881,024. That was more subway trips recorded than on any other day since the start of the pandemic about one year ago.
Daily bus trips also passed 1 million this week.
“It is so great to see more and more New Yorkers riding the subway again. To set back-to-back record highs in the same week is an indicator that people are eager to return to their normal lives,” said Sarah Feinberg, Interim President of New York City Transit. “Our team will continue to keep the system as clean as it has ever been and as safe as it has ever been as New York City comes back.”
Of course, there’s still a long way to go. Before the pandemic, the daily average number of trips was over 5,000,000 (on weekdays). Last April, that plummeted to 300,000 daily trips.
⭐️ NEW RECORD ⭐️
On Friday, 1.92 million folks rode the subway.
Thank you for riding with us.
Keep washing your hands. Keep wearing your mask. Keep coming back. 🗽 pic.twitter.com/fs50zhMMPK
— MTA (@MTA) March 15, 2021
Back in June, it topped 800,000 for the first time on a single day, so it has risen significantly since then.
The announcements comes at a time when the federal stimulus package — which included $6 billion in funding for the MTA — was passed, hopefully promising a continued recovery for NYC mass transit.
featured image source: MTA